I'm with you B2N2.
The average PPL here in the UK does 20 hours a year if he's lucky, possibly flying once a month, many do less. Certainly, I couldn't afford much more for the first ten years. I could also introduce you to many pilots who haven't picked up a book in decades, having only just scraped through their writtens. They probably didn't revise the areas they failed questions in either. The hope is that they remember the bits that really matter.
I would suggest it may have been better to show the candidate a picture of a squall line ahead of the aircraft and give four choices of what to do.
The sort of question the OP quoted is fine for RAF trainees and ATPL students, with their advanced capabilities, but not for a PPL student with possibly below average intelligence. Or as I call it, simply not that clever.