I am not sure that is always true, there are plenty of problems that are easy to state, but finding the "pattern" can be out of reach. Eg Collatz conjecture? However there are obviously a subset of problems I guess that can be solved once you realise what they are asking.

Are you suggesting that the Collatz conjecture is a valid interview question?

Proving it no one has any ideas, but generating the sequence given the input is definitely an interview style question.

It is, it’s a fairly standard warmup interview problem.

https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/489169/Googl...