Funny, I was asked that exact question at Google. Granted, it was ping pong balls, and it was an airplane, but same thing. It was also 2005, for an APM position, coming straight out of college.
Truthfully, for a kid coming straight out of college, that's not such a terrible question to ask. (No, I didn't get the job. :P) It allows you to start from a totally neutral knowledge position, and lets you see how a person thinks critically about an unorthodox problem - one they almost certainly haven't seen before.
The problem comes when kids start training for such problems, instead of just tackling the sorts of interesting challenges that would inadvertently cause them to approach this question well...
Truthfully, for a kid coming straight out of college, that's not such a terrible question to ask. (No, I didn't get the job. :P) It allows you to start from a totally neutral knowledge position, and lets you see how a person thinks critically about an unorthodox problem - one they almost certainly haven't seen before.
The problem comes when kids start training for such problems, instead of just tackling the sorts of interesting challenges that would inadvertently cause them to approach this question well...