Problem Set of the Month
Solving problems is what code is all about. Can you code your way out of this month's problem set?
Level 1
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Given some decimal digits in a int[] digits, build an integer with the minimum possible number of factors, using each of the digits exactly once. If more than one number has the same (minimum) number of factors, return the smallest one among them.
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Representatives of company A ( countA) and representatives of company B ( countB) are having a meeting at a round table, and they want to sit in such a way that no company A representative is sitting closer than minDistance to a company B representative. Return the number of ways that such a seating arrangement is possible.
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You are in a Manhattan-type city with intersecting avenues and streets. Given distance and width, as well as the representation of two crossings, start and target, return the minimum distance you have to travel beginning from the center of the crossing start to reach the center of the crossing target if you travel only on streets and avenues.
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Level 2
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The Hamming distance between two numbers is defined as the number of positions in their binary representations at which they differ. Given a String[] numbers containing the binary representations of some numbers (all having the same length), return the minimum among the Hamming distances of all pairs of the given numbers.
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Given some two-dimensional vectors, you can use some (or all) of them to construct a polygon by appending them end to end. Find the convex polygon that you can construct using some (or all) of the given vectors in some order that has the maximum area, and return this area.
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Solutions to Last Month's Problems
Compound words are concatenations of any two entries in a dictionary of distinct words. The potential problem is that a compound word is ambiguous if it already is a dictionary word and/or it can be formed in more than one way. Determine the number of ambiguous words that would result from allowing the compounding of distinct pairs of dictionary words. > click here for solution
You win a collection of tickets for luxury cruises. You can use each ticket only once, but you can use it in either direction between the two cities printed on the ticket. Your prize gives you free airfare both to any city of departure and from any destination. How many additional tickets would you have to buy so that your cruise can use all of your tickets? > click here for solution
A C-style multi-line comment (MLC) starts with /* and ends with the first following */ but is unwieldy because it doesn't allow nesting of other multi-line comments. Redefine MLC so that, instead of ending with the first following */, it ends with */ such that the intervening characters contain only properly nested /* */ pairs. > click here for solution
You've already designed a crossword puzzle, but now you need to come up with words of various sizes to put in it. Given a String[] board, representing an empty crossword puzzle, and an int size, return the number of horizontal slots in the puzzle that are exactly size characters in length. > click here for solution
You have a collection of possibly overlapping 45-degree isosceles right triangles. Each triangle is oriented with its hypotenuse at the bottom, parallel with the X axis. Determine the area that is covered by the collection of triangles, taking care not to count overlapping areas multiple times. > click here for solution For complete problem sets and live tournament competition, visit topcoder.com.
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