There’s more to an interview than algorithms (e.g. coding, communication), so it’s not a death sentence.
In the hundred or so interviews I’ve given, I’ve never had a candidate persist in forcing questions along these lines from the very start, even after I have turned the question back around at them. If you force me to give you hints out of the gate, something very weird is going on.
I agreed with you up until this point, which seems unnecessarily harsh to me