Questions like this, and things like Leetcode, etc., are a measure of not only your intelligence, but one of the most valuable skills you can have as an employee: the ability to "carry a message to García".
That is, when given an assignment, to faithfully carry it out to the end, without wasting your superior's time with pointless questions or excuses as to why it cannot be done. This, and this alone, is what separates the outstanding employees from "the imbecility of the average man". Tim Bryce has observed that the average programmer is mentally lazy and prone to sloppy thinking; simple tests like this will help to weed these out. The sillier, the better, in fact, as long as the puzzle actually has a solution. OP has failed the test, and justly gotten himself preemptively fired for insubordination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_to_Garcia
That is, when given an assignment, to faithfully carry it out to the end, without wasting your superior's time with pointless questions or excuses as to why it cannot be done. This, and this alone, is what separates the outstanding employees from "the imbecility of the average man". Tim Bryce has observed that the average programmer is mentally lazy and prone to sloppy thinking; simple tests like this will help to weed these out. The sillier, the better, in fact, as long as the puzzle actually has a solution. OP has failed the test, and justly gotten himself preemptively fired for insubordination.