[makeitdouble]

You ask many kind of questions.

A candidate can do very well on personal and web project experience questions, and suddenly blank when you ask them how an http request is structured. Or what's CORS.

Then you dig further and discover a lot more thing about them that wouldn't have surfaced otherwise because hou assumed they knew all of that.

My best advice would be to never skip "dumb" and easy technical questions. You can do it very quick, and warn ahead that it's dumb questions but you ask them to everyone.

[ListeningPie]

Knowing the structure of an http request and CORS is a check for a common technical vocabulary, but I would strike a blank when asked directly. It feels a bit a like, “I had to learn it” even though it’s just googleable labels for simple topics. I heard of interviewees being dropped for not knowing the difference between 402 and 401.

[makeitdouble]

I think blanking is actually OK. From there you could probably explain what you know about it, how it was set in your project, or any peripheral story that comes to mind at that time.

I see it as a different angle to get more information.

[throwaway2037]

I agree with the "drill down" technique. Example: How does a dynamic array class (Vector, List, etc.) work? The very best interview questions have "fractal complexity" that allow you to drill deep.