Question: A duck that is being chased by a fox saves itself by sitting at the center of circular pond of radius r. The duck can fly from land but cannot fly from the water. Furthermore, the fox cannot swim. The fox is four times faster than the duck. Assuming that the duck and fox [...]
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17 Feb 10
10 Google Interview Puzzles
Here is a list of 10 puzzles which have been asked on a Google Interview. They are not in any specific order. Is your husband a cheat? A certain town comprises of 100 married couples. Everyone in the town lives by the following rule: If a husband cheats on his wife, the husband is executed as [...]
3 Feb 10
Anagrams in an Array of Strings
Question: You are given an array of strings and you are asked to display all the anagrams within the array. For those who don’t know, two words are anagrams if they contain the same characters. Answer: The brute force solution would be to take each string and compare it to every other string in the [...]
30 Jan 10
Three Switches
Question: You are standing outside a room next to three switches, all of which are off. Each switch operates a different light bulb in the room. The room door is closed, so you cannot see which switch operates which bulb. You are only allowed to go into the room once. Determine which switch operates which [...]
29 Jan 10
Pick a Random Byte
Question: You have a stream of bytes from which you can read one byte at a time. You only have enough space to store one byte. After processing those bytes, you have to return a random byte. Note: The probability of picking any one of those bytes should be equal. Answer: Since we can only store [...]
22 Jan 10
6 Pirates Fight for 1 Gold Coin
Question: Six pirates discover a chest containing 1 gold coin. They decide to sit down and devise a distribution strategy. The pirates are ranked based on their experience (Pirate 1 to Pirate 6, where Pirate 6 is the most experienced). The most experienced pirate gets to propose a plan and then all the pirates vote [...]
19 Jan 10
What’s Your Eye Color?
Question: On a certain island there are people with assorted eye colors. There are 100 people with blue eyes and 100 people with brown eyes. Since there are no mirrors on this island, no person knows the color of their own eyes. The people on the island are not allowed to talk or communicate with [...]
17 Jan 10
Is Your Husband a Cheat?
Question: A certain town comprises of 100 married couples. Everyone in the town lives by the following rule: If a husband cheats on his wife, the husband is executed as soon as his wife finds out about him. All the women in the town only gossip about the husbands of other women. No woman ever tells [...]
15 Jan 10
Sub-Array with the Largest Sum
Question: You are given an array with integers (both positive and negative) in any random order. Find the sub-array with the largest sum. Answer: This is an all-time favorite software interview question. The best way to solve this puzzle is to use Kadane’s algorithm which runs in O(n) time. The idea is to keep scanning [...]
13 Jan 10
Four People on a Rickety Bridge
Question: Four people need to cross a rickety bridge at night. Unfortunately, they have only one torch and the bridge is too dangerous to cross without one. The bridge is only strong enough to support two people at a time. Not all people take the same time to cross the bridge. Times for each person: [...]
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