I think a lot of technical people interpret interview questions literally. Like yes of course the prompt starts with a negative - but you don't actually have to answer the question fully and literally, this isn't a college exam.

You could for example start talking about how you thought something was a colossal failure only to realize looking back that it was an incredible learning experience and how sometimes the only way to learn big lessons like that is by trying the experiment. And how it's only a failure if you stop. But you kept going so it wasn't really a failure.

Honestly we should probably take a page out of politicians' or media trained people's playbooks and not even answer the question as asked but relentlessly steer towards what you really want to talk about.

I too am capable of waffling to an interviewer. My favourite "took down production" story is a segue into why, when your interns ask you to look over the command they're about to run against the prod environment because they're not 100% comfortable, you should do it, and a broader chat about infrastructure-as-code and review processes.

I don't think it's good practice for the interviewer to require the ability to dissemble from software engineers, though.

Is it too much to ask for interviewers not to ask questions where the "right" answer is to give a BS answer?