> One cannot but wonder what happens if you answer the question in a different manner than that suggested by Wikipedia or whichever resource the CBP draws their questions from.
They're looking at your overall attitude, not checking your knowledge of trivia. Answering the question about inverting a binary tree wrongly still means you understand what "binary tree" is and can at least come up with a couple of sentences with that term that sound coherent and resemble what is written in Wikipedia in broadest terms. For comparison, ask your non-engineering friends to answer the same question, even to try to fake an answer as best as they can.
They're looking at your overall attitude, not checking your knowledge of trivia. Answering the question about inverting a binary tree wrongly still means you understand what "binary tree" is and can at least come up with a couple of sentences with that term that sound coherent and resemble what is written in Wikipedia in broadest terms. For comparison, ask your non-engineering friends to answer the same question, even to try to fake an answer as best as they can.