How did Gang of Four hijack all of my recent interviews?

Every lead / principal software engineer, manager, or software architect job interview I've had in the last year, the following question has popped up, "what patterns do you use?" Did the Gang of Four ruin interviewing techniques and the hiring decision process in the last 5 years since I've been working with academia? Why the focus on buzzword patterns? I've seen and used every one listed in Design Patterns, and never once did someone ask me in a Spiral, Waterfall, ITIL, CMM, or Scrum design meeting or to document the "pattern," those usually fell under best practices. Why in the world do I need to be able to list out and explain the patterns in interviews, lately? Has Design Patterns become that critical to the software engineering (and API design) industry?