The people who are replying and saying these problems are not the same because of the file size are are seeing the same type of illusion of complexity described in the submission. You count the number of lines you that begin with the word ERROR. That's it. At this scale, the tools you use are, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant.

Saying that the files might not fit into standard numeric types is like writing a custom BigNum implementation when I ask you to write a program that adds two numbers because I might give you value that doesn't fit into an int. It's of course fine to raise it as a potential issue, which would also show you know the practical implications. But what about if I ask you to write FizzBuzz? Are you going to give me the simple answer, or write something needlessly complex because I might test your program with a value like -3x10^78?

Perhaps I should have been clearer that the interns were fresh out of college, or part of a placement program, and that the rest of the interview wasn't technically challenging for anyone with real-world programming experience.

In my case, nearly everyone who struggled with the second question told me they thought there was some significance behind the file size and that made them avoid the obvious answer.