May I ask if the approach you describe here was what you applied in the FAANG interview? I would be pleasantly surprised if it worked! :)
I also think the FAANG interview was pretty bad overall (took 6 months to go through), the last question was great. It required no algorithms, but a difficult problem to solve that required me to think on my feet rather than apply a known algorithm.
I can also tell you that my current team leads have both emphasized the importance of being able to find information, less importance being able to do it off the cuff (which I agree with).
What was the question?