FWIW, I am not baffled by that, as the vast majority of programmers are not "talented professionals" (which is the specific category of potential employee I was balling at, along with enterprises and venture capital firms). So like, you ask your question, they say "star count", and you don't have to really continue the interview.
(When I was in high school, I used to work for a pre-Internet company that helped people pre-filter interview candidates for ads posted in classified sections of newspapers and what they did was have questions like this that could be asked by people well before they reached your calendar for an interview.)