I would hope they are clear about what they are looking for when they talk to candidates (Given the time, I doubt they were though!) but I've seen things like this as a way to see how people approach a novel/new problem. Are they excited about giving it a try? Are they meticulous, slow, careful? What kinds of optimizations do they attempt in the process, what questions are they asking along the way?

I work in support though, and being able to be resourceful, creative, comfortable with contradiction and complexity, but ultimately you need to reduce issues to something you can communicate to a less technical customer, so an exercise like that, at least if presented clearly to a candidate, can give a really good idea of how they handle new situations they may run into when there isn't anyone there to help them (like their right hand for example).

Put more simply, I learn more from how people react to and approach hitting a wall/a problem they've never seen before than testing their ability to follow simple instructions (write algorithm X in language Z).

There’s probably something to be said about doing something quickly with high quality, and also in an unfamiliar way.

I'd guess that if you need 25 years experience at the job first then you've heard of and practiced the origami cat test.

Or designed some pretty nice cars for your portfolio.

I’d like to see a portfolio of origami cats tbh