1. Other candidates were clearly spending 8-9 hours on the problem. I saw their commit logs. A commit every 1-2 hours for 9 hours. Several candidates public repos were like this. The assignment was like 2 pages of requirements supposed to be done in I believe 1 hour.

2. They told me (thru the recruiting firm; I never spoke with them) that it would have been resourceful to use the other candidates solutions.