My three interview questions

I've been occasionally frustrated with the people that I work with. In general they are all talented, but talented in a very different way than the type of people I've worked with in the past. I wouldn't say this is a good or bad thing (at least I would say it on a blog), but it's different. My experience in past and current jobs has led me to formulate the following three questions (or, more accurately, three topics) that I will ask everyone I work with in the future. I consider passing all three tests the bare minimum for holding employment in my presence.

1. As I welcome the candidate into my office, I will place an apple on the desk. I will force the candidate to acknowledge its existence. I will then move the apple to a drawer where the candidate can no longer see it. Then I will start talking about random things... the weather, the company, etc. Question #1 will be: Does the apple that was on my desk at the start of the interview still exist? What does this test? Object permanence. I am convinced that most people I work with have reached this developmental stage (which happens between 3-6 months), but certainly not all of them. If the candidate gets this right, they may eat the apple.
   
2. My next criteria is that the candidate must have a firm grasp of cause and effect. I will present the candidate with several "action/reaction" pairs. Question #2: Can you correctly order the action/reaction pairs? Example pairs might be: "my nose is broken/someone punched me in the face", "I went to the ATM/there is cash in my wallet", or "I sell less stuff/I raise the price of a non-Giffin good." For senior managemen interviews, I will expand this question to test for the ability to differentiate correlation from causation. I would expect that less than 2% of candidates will be senior management eligible.
3. Lastly, the candidate must be able to generalize their problem solving. I am not setting a high bar. I will present the candidate with a magic box. I will inform them that the box outputs 10x whatever is put into the box. To demonstrate, I will insert $1 into the box, and $10 will come out. To reinforce the example I will insert two pencils into the box, and 20 pencils will come out. Question #3: If I put three paper clips into the box, what comes out? Of course the correct answer is not "potato chips". Alternately, I will place a pen, a piece of tape, and a piece of candy on the desk. I will label them "dog", "folding chair", and "radiator." Question #3b: Please write your name and have a snack. If the candidate responds "I can't use a dog to write my name, nor do a eat car parts", they will be dismissed.
   

Obviously I'm blogging about this because I'm frustrated about something, specifically with people's inability to answer Question #3b correctly. I had about two hours of conversations today trying to convince people that if you do exactly the same set of functions, but call them by different names, you are only dealing with "thing", not two. I heard a lot of "potato chip" answers today.