The year was 2015. After an arduous 5 years of undergraduate coursework, my time in college was close to an end. I was looking for my first full-time software engineering gig. Up until this point, I had never passed a traditional coding/algorithm interview. With a handful of interviews scheduled lined up, I was hoping this fact would soon change.

In this write up, I intend to gather a list of tips that have helped me approach unknown algorithm/coding interview questions. Appropriate use of data structures and algorithms is out of scope for this post. Instead, I will focus on generic tips that one can use to simplify the problem and consequently, its solution. The following problem statement is a question I have faced recently in a technical interview.