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Aren't most questions like this are simply looking at what approach you try and not a solution? They've been at it for years so they can easily tell if you're trying something that makes sense or something trivial even if they don't have a solution or even if there isn't one.
The problem is you're effectively leaving "can I program and work through the kinds of tasks this job entails" and entering "how do you work through a complex theoretical research topic" land.
White board questions should be relative softballs related to the work you're actually doing to see how you think... Now that's often forgon for "welcome to a game of algorithm and data structure trivia!" but this is just a much more extreme version of that.
Also if you don't actually know the answer, how can you judge the direction? Even if you do know the answer for a problem that complicated, can you say the interviewee isn't solving the problem in a novel and possibly better way?
I presume he was looking for specific terms like DAWG (directed acyclic word graph) and things like that as well... Which I know because he would teach me the names of things as I slowly rediscovered them in conversation. Personally, I don't put much stock in grading someone on their knowledge of obscure data structures and algorithms either.
When I give interviews, I'm more concerned with the process than the results for some questions. I don't really do it any more, but I'd sometimes ask one question not related to programming or anything on their CV just to see how someone works through a situation given a little bit of a curveball.