That said, really... finding a trivial python function using google search, that is a real life work skill. It's 100% real and not made up for interviews. I guess these days one would ask the LLM, too. The only artificial thing was the time pressure which, granted, complicates things needlessly, but other than that, the fact the candidate didn't come up with an answer is still a red flag. (I wouldn't disqualify them just for this, but maybe there were other red flags already?).
(The biggest one is that they still think there is nothing wrong about this and decide to victimize themselves on HN.)