Unless the end result is a completely incompetent applicant getting an offer, I wouldn't call the system "horribly broken". Very few companies are in the business of reversing linked lists, and hence make binary decisions depending on the outcome of just that one question.
I don't think gaming the system is that trivial - an interview is a conversation, so things like computational complexity, runtime restrictions, data structures, implementation differences in various programming languages, and other things are bound to come into conversation. Now, if one can maintain that conversation as it moves along, and seem like a pleasant person to work with, it seems that they're no longer purely "faking".
Exactly. I've had lots of candidates basically pass the initial question and then sink their own battleship by volunteering some running commentary that happened to be totally wrong. Memorizing enough crap to impress an interviewer about even a basic reverse the linked list question without understanding it is actually quite hard. It's not enough to remember to drop the terms stack and heap, you have to remember which one is which.
I also don't think that what the article describes is "gaming" the system, except maybe for the part about pretending to have not heard the questions before.
Generally, the reason I ask such questions of candidates is to make sure I'm dealing with someone who can actually analyze a problem and get a reasonable result. So if they nail the questions because they took time to study and get good at interview-style brain teasers, that's actually fine with me - it proves the person can execute a plan to get correct results.
I'm not sure I'd call anyone who successfully "games" the system incompetent.
I don't think gaming the system is that trivial - an interview is a conversation, so things like computational complexity, runtime restrictions, data structures, implementation differences in various programming languages, and other things are bound to come into conversation. Now, if one can maintain that conversation as it moves along, and seem like a pleasant person to work with, it seems that they're no longer purely "faking".