"can't Google for solutions"?

I will never understand the desire to handicap interviewees like that. I recently passed an live-coding interview in which I was asked to use an unfamiliar library; bc it was open-book I was able to look up its docs and use it to solve the problem. At one point I also hopped onto MDN to confirm a browser API. The ability to search and effectively leverage available resources is fundamental to our profession. Closed-book "pop quiz"-style puzzles -- where the surface area of the relevant material is unbelievably vast, and the relevance of the problem to the job's requisite skills is tenuous at best -- are highly problematic.

I don't want to speak for the last commenter, but I think they meant google for literal solutions to this take-home (i.e. cheating to beat the timer).

I do strongly agree that people should be able to use whatever resources they normally have (google, mdn, autocompleting editor, etc.). This is how they would work on the job. Getting quizzed on easily referenced random trivia about language features is so dumb.

OP was not suggesting that search engines cannot be used as a tool in the process of taking the test. Rather, that your test should not be something which a candidate can Google a pre-existing solution to and submit as their own.

What if I have a lot going on and need to divide my time? I understand why you're choosing to do this, but ultimately it's assuming a lot on part of the interviewee, and doesn't offer any flexibility.

If you gave me such a code challenge, I'd probably take it as a sign that company culture is to put employees under pressure and I would immediately decline.

Compared to committing to a specific hour block of time for a normal interview, isn't it more flexible?

I guess it depends on how the company uses it - if they just stick the take-home in as an extra filter vs trying to replace live interview time

Years ago I interviewed somewhere that had a system like this. I was told ahead of time only to click the link when I was ready to sit down for two hours to do the work because the clock started then.