Leet code - interviewer's perspective

I know, asking people to do leet code tasks during interviews is evil. But here's my shower thought based on my recent experience as an interviewer. However, Ive recently had an opportunity to lead an

I know, asking people to do leet code tasks during interviews is evil. But here's my shower thought based on my recent experience as an interviewer. However, Ive recently had an opportunity to lead an interview for a mid level engineer position, and the current company expects me to blast him with a medium leet code problem or two if hes awfully stuck with the first one. It was my first time on this side of the leet code challenge, and the guy I talked to clearly did not do any leet code challenges in his life. Most of us who grinded for months can easily see the patterns and we think in hash maps/dictionaries/2d arrays immediately. This guy was a pure soul, absolutely untainted by the filthy leet code grind. And he was honest about it too, he said he's never practiced those kinds of challenges. He kept on struggling and thinking about ways to solve this challenge, coming up with quick test-driven solutions (well, more like console log driven but I like it), and at one point he was pretty much on track to get to the actual solution - but just didn't have enough time. I would say he would get a 40% ish score for the challenge itself with the final state of his code. But here's my main point: I was very impressed with his engineering based on his thinking out loud, wrestling with the code and the problem at hand. He was moving forwards, and I'm sure he would eventually do it. I voted yes for this guy despite him not completing a single challenge. And I'm 100% sure I would be less impressed with a candidate who would just blast through the challenges, but it would be clear he's a grinder. Am I crazy to see things this way? Am I advocating for candidates not to grind leet code and just wing it during a super sweaty coding session? Not sure. Thanks!