That's why the best coding interview questions are the ones that can be solved without fancy algorithms.

Interviews almost never require fancy algorithms, just the super basic ones that you learn in the first course in college.

I've seen a ton of interviews at Google, none of them required fancy algorithms. They did require you to take some fundamental algorithm and change it up a bit, but the end result wasn't fancy algorithms just basic ones with a twist.

If you have been creative with algorithms then you will have the fundamental ones in your head. Every time you add layers the last layers needs to be really stable, so testing the layers they need to have built upon is a good way to filter out people who haven't progressed past that layer.

> If you have been creative with algorithms then you will have the fundamental ones in your head.

You can be creative with algorithms without having the "fundamental" ones in your head because you know where to look them up. Therefore, testing the layers; tests for recall and not for those layers. In most situations, these tests only test for short-term preparation.