HCSS Software Engineer interview experience

The task was math-focused: I was asked to determine whether a square was a magic square, with conditions that the sums had to match and all values had to be unique and distinct from 1 through n squared.

I submitted my solution with about six test cases demonstrating it worked, and I approached the uniqueness requirement mathematically instead of brute-forcing through the square. I wrote comments explaining that reasoning clearly, and I expected it to land because my interpretation matched the constraints I was given. Instead, I got rejected with feedback suggesting my solution didn’t meet