Bada boom, bada bing! Although that might not get you hired. :)
Could an applicant just say that it’s a stupid question because one cannot be shrunk down to the size of a pencil of any other object?
I dunno, they shrank the economy about that much, proportionately...
The point of the question is to attempt to see how a person thinks. The actual question is irrelevant, how the applicant produces an answer is what the interviewer wants to witness.
My answer would have been to have to tell the first person that walks by to get the lead out!.
Part of the reason I don’t work for GS.