erisod

What's your favorite programming interview question?

I assume your goal is to see if they ask for clarification, or maybe even see if they can navigate someone who is not skilled (using strange language). It requires them to demonstrate they are confused about the question which is a vulnerable place as a person being interviewed. For senior hires it is probably reasonable, they need to navigate misunderstandings between teams all the time.

I think this kind of question is not good if your aim is to hire quality entry level programmers who are nervous when interviewing and bad at social conflict (aka a lot of them).

Your question immediately pushes them into being confused and feeling like they failed in the first second by not even understanding the question. They go in circles with you for a moment and find out what you mean. At least phrase it like: "if someone asked about a self referential foreign key in a schema design what do you think they mean? How would you go about understanding what they might intend for sure?". Then ask, ok, what's the purpose of that thing.