You are a hiker preparing for an upcoming hike. You are given heights, a 2D array of size rows x columns, where heights[row][col] represents the height of cell (row, col). You are situated in the top-left cell, (0, 0), and you hope to travel to the bottom-right cell, (rows-1, columns-1) (i.e., 0-indexed). You can move updownleft, or right, and you wish to find a route that requires the minimum effort.

A route’s effort is the maximum absolute differencein heights between two consecutive cells of the route.

Return the minimum effort required to travel from the top-left cell to the bottom-right cell.

Example 1:

Input: heights = [[1,2,2],[3,8,2],[5,3,5]]
Output: 2
Explanation: The route of [1,3,5,3,5] has a maximum absolute difference of 2 in consecutive cells.
This is better than the route of [1,2,2,2,5], where the maximum absolute difference is 3.


Example 2:

Input: heights = [[1,2,3],[3,8,4],[5,3,5]]
Output: 1
Explanation: The route of [1,2,3,4,5] has a maximum absolute difference of 1 in consecutive cells, which is better than route [1,3,5,3,5].


Example 3:

Input: heights = [[1,2,1,1,1],[1,2,1,2,1],[1,2,1,2,1],[1,2,1,2,1],[1,1,1,2,1]]
Output: 0
Explanation: This route does not require any effort.


Constraints:

• rows == heights.length
• columns == heights[i].length
• 1 <= rows, columns <= 100
• 1 <= heights[i][j] <= 106

## Solution: “Lazy BFS / DP”

dp[y][x] = min(max(dp[ty][tx], abs(h[ty][tx] – h[y][x]))) (x, y) and (tx, ty) are neighbors
repeat this process for at most rows * cols times.
if dp does not change after one round which means we found the optimal solution and can break earlier.

Time complexity: O(n^2*m^2))
Space complexity: O(nm)

## Solution 2: Binary Search + BFS

Use binary search to guess a cost and then check whether there is path that is under the cost.

Time complexity: O(mn*log(max(h) – min(h)))
Space complexity: O(mn)

## Solution 3: Dijkstra

Time complexity: O(mnlog(mn))
Space complexity: O(mn)

## C++

A sequence of numbers is called arithmetic if it consists of at least two elements, and the difference between every two consecutive elements is the same. More formally, a sequence s is arithmetic if and only if s[i+1] - s[i] == s[1] - s[0] for all valid i.

For example, these are arithmetic sequences:

The following sequence is not arithmetic:

1, 1, 2, 5, 7

You are given an array of n integers, nums, and two arrays of m integers each, l and r, representing the m range queries, where the ith query is the range [l[i], r[i]]. All the arrays are 0-indexed.

Return a list of boolean elements answer, where answer[i] is true if the subarray nums[l[i]], nums[l[i]+1], ... , nums[r[i]] can be rearranged to form an arithmetic sequence, and false otherwise.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [4,6,5,9,3,7], l = [0,0,2], r = [2,3,5]
Output: [true,false,true]
Explanation:
In the 0th query, the subarray is [4,6,5]. This can be rearranged as [6,5,4], which is an arithmetic sequence.
In the 1st query, the subarray is [4,6,5,9]. This cannot be rearranged as an arithmetic sequence.
In the 2nd query, the subarray is [5,9,3,7]. This can be rearranged as [3,5,7,9], which is an arithmetic sequence.

Example 2:

Input: nums = [-12,-9,-3,-12,-6,15,20,-25,-20,-15,-10], l = [0,1,6,4,8,7], r = [4,4,9,7,9,10]
Output: [false,true,false,false,true,true]


Constraints:

• n == nums.length
• m == l.length
• m == r.length
• 2 <= n <= 500
• 1 <= m <= 500
• 0 <= l[i] < r[i] < n
• -105 <= nums[i] <= 105

## Solution: Brute Force

Sort the range of each query and check.

Time complexity: O(nlogn * m)
Space complexity: O(n)

## C++

A newly designed keypad was tested, where a tester pressed a sequence of n keys, one at a time.

You are given a string keysPressed of length n, where keysPressed[i] was the ith key pressed in the testing sequence, and a sorted list releaseTimes, where releaseTimes[i] was the time the ith key was released. Both arrays are 0-indexed. The 0th key was pressed at the time 0, and every subsequent key was pressed at the exact time the previous key was released.

The tester wants to know the key of the keypress that had the longest duration. The ithkeypress had a duration of releaseTimes[i] - releaseTimes[i - 1], and the 0th keypress had a duration of releaseTimes[0].

Note that the same key could have been pressed multiple times during the test, and these multiple presses of the same key may not have had the same duration.

Return the key of the keypress that had the longest duration. If there are multiple such keypresses, return the lexicographically largest key of the keypresses.

Example 1:

Input: releaseTimes = [9,29,49,50], keysPressed = "cbcd"
Output: "c"
Explanation: The keypresses were as follows:
Keypress for 'c' had a duration of 9 (pressed at time 0 and released at time 9).
Keypress for 'b' had a duration of 29 - 9 = 20 (pressed at time 9 right after the release of the previous character and released at time 29).
Keypress for 'c' had a duration of 49 - 29 = 20 (pressed at time 29 right after the release of the previous character and released at time 49).
Keypress for 'd' had a duration of 50 - 49 = 1 (pressed at time 49 right after the release of the previous character and released at time 50).
The longest of these was the keypress for 'b' and the second keypress for 'c', both with duration 20.
'c' is lexicographically larger than 'b', so the answer is 'c'.


Example 2:

Input: releaseTimes = [12,23,36,46,62], keysPressed = "spuda"
Output: "a"
Explanation: The keypresses were as follows:
Keypress for 's' had a duration of 12.
Keypress for 'p' had a duration of 23 - 12 = 11.
Keypress for 'u' had a duration of 36 - 23 = 13.
Keypress for 'd' had a duration of 46 - 36 = 10.
Keypress for 'a' had a duration of 62 - 46 = 16.
The longest of these was the keypress for 'a' with duration 16.

Constraints:

• releaseTimes.length == n
• keysPressed.length == n
• 2 <= n <= 1000
• 0 <= releaseTimes[i] <= 109
• releaseTimes[i] < releaseTimes[i+1]
• keysPressed contains only lowercase English letters.

## Solution: Straightforward

Time complexity: O(n)
Space complexity: O(1)

## C++

class Solution {
public:
char slowestKey(vector& releaseTimes, string keysPressed) {
int l = releaseTimes[0];
char ans = keysPressed[0];

for (int i = 1; i < releaseTimes.size(); ++i) {
int t = releaseTimes[i] - releaseTimes[i - 1];
if (t > l) {
ans = keysPressed[i];
l = t;
} else if (t == l) {
ans = max(ans, keysPressed[i]);
}
}
return ans;
}
};


We have n cities labeled from 1 to n. Two different cities with labels x and y are directly connected by a bidirectional road if and only if x and y share a common divisor strictly greater than some threshold. More formally, cities with labels x and y have a road between them if there exists an integer z such that all of the following are true:

• x % z == 0,
• y % z == 0, and
• z > threshold.

Given the two integers, n and threshold, and an array of queries, you must determine for each queries[i] = [ai, bi] if cities ai and bi are connected (i.e. there is some path between them).

Return an array answer, where answer.length == queries.length and answer[i] is true if for the ith query, there is a path between ai and bi, or answer[i] is false if there is no path.

Example 1:

Input: n = 6, threshold = 2, queries = [[1,4],[2,5],[3,6]]
Output: [false,false,true]
Explanation: The divisors for each number:
1:   1
2:   1, 2
3:   1, 3
4:   1, 2, 4
5:   1, 5
6:   1, 2, 3, 6
Using the underlined divisors above the threshold, only cities 3 and 6 share a common divisor, so they are the
only ones directly connected. The result of each query:
[1,4]   1 is not connected to 4
[2,5]   2 is not connected to 5
[3,6]   3 is connected to 6 through path 3--6


Example 2:

Input: n = 6, threshold = 0, queries = [[4,5],[3,4],[3,2],[2,6],[1,3]]
Output: [true,true,true,true,true]
Explanation: The divisors for each number are the same as the previous example. However, since the threshold is 0,
all divisors can be used. Since all numbers share 1 as a divisor, all cities are connected.


Example 3:

Input: n = 5, threshold = 1, queries = [[4,5],[4,5],[3,2],[2,3],[3,4]]
Output: [false,false,false,false,false]
Explanation: Only cities 2 and 4 share a common divisor 2 which is strictly greater than the threshold 1, so they are the only ones directly connected.
Please notice that there can be multiple queries for the same pair of nodes [x, y], and that the query [x, y] is equivalent to the query [y, x].


Constraints:

• 2 <= n <= 104
• 0 <= threshold <= n
• 1 <= queries.length <= 105
• queries[i].length == 2
• 1 <= ai, bi <= cities
• ai != bi

## Solution: Union Find

For x, merge 2x, 3x, 4x, ..,
If a number is already “merged”, skip it.

Time complexity: O(nlogn? + queries)?
Space complexity: O(n)

## Python3

You are the manager of a basketball team. For the upcoming tournament, you want to choose the team with the highest overall score. The score of the team is the sum of scores of all the players in the team.

However, the basketball team is not allowed to have conflicts. A conflict exists if a younger player has a strictly higher score than an older player. A conflict does not occur between players of the same age.

Given two lists, scores and ages, where each scores[i] and ages[i] represents the score and age of the ith player, respectively, return the highest overall score of all possible basketball teams.

Example 1:

Input: scores = [1,3,5,10,15], ages = [1,2,3,4,5]
Output: 34
Explanation: You can choose all the players.


Example 2:

Input: scores = [4,5,6,5], ages = [2,1,2,1]
Output: 16
Explanation: It is best to choose the last 3 players. Notice that you are allowed to choose multiple people of the same age.


Example 3:

Input: scores = [1,2,3,5], ages = [8,9,10,1]
Output: 6
Explanation: It is best to choose the first 3 players.


Constraints:

• 1 <= scores.length, ages.length <= 1000
• scores.length == ages.length
• 1 <= scores[i] <= 106
• 1 <= ages[i] <= 1000

## Solution: Sort + DP

Sort by (age, score) in descending order. For j < i, age[j] >= age[i]

dp[i] = max(dp[j] | score[j] >= score[i], j < i) + score[i]

Basically, we want to find the player j with best score among [0, i), and make sure score[i] <= score[j] (since age[j] >= age[i]) then we won’t have any conflicts.

ans = max(dp)

## C++

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