They're not asking for a disproportionate amount of time, the candidate just gave that amount of time, whilst still missing the brief.
I've done take-homes before and have been rejected because I followed the prompt to a tee and only did the exact amount of effort they wanted, and was quite literally told that they expected me to do more (outside of the prompt). If you've done enough of this game then everything in the OP will be extremely familiar to you.
The only explanation I can presume is that these people are mistaking TUI for a CLI app, which would be a fatal mistake.