I went through a similar struggle at my first interview out of school, at least in regards to an interview.
As I did non-majors courses at a community college before an intense 2.75 years at a full course university, I sometimes had to compromise on my course selection, as some things were taught in semesters I was unable to take them in.
In the interview(consisting of multiple interviewers, this was my first) in my first I was given the task to create a small class that would hand out read or write access, allowing many reads, and one write, and never a read and a write at the same time.
I thought for a moment, and started dictating my solution. Unfortunately, due to the above, I was never able to take an Operating Systems or Parallel Programming course. Thus, I had never even heard of a semaphore (I now consider that inexcusable, but perhaps understandable). As I set to work implementing two locking list structures, the interviewer would constantly interrupt me, trying to steer me elsewhere - a place I could not have possibly even known about - an unknown unknown if you will. This ultimately resulted in what was, to me, and I'm sure to him, a very frustrating 15 minutes and maybe 3 lines of code.
All this to say, I think sometimes there are just vastly different expectations on each side of the table, and it can result in mutually poor experiences in the interview room.