12.0 Special Techniques and Misc Patterns

Special Techniques and Misc Patterns

Power tools and edge-case solvers that don’t fit in a single category but frequently appear in real interviews.

1.0 Merge Intervals and Sweep Line

1. Merge/insert intervals
2. Meeting rooms
3. Line sweep problems (min overlap)

2.0 Binary Search on Answer

1. Minimum feasible value (ship capacity, days)
2. Monotonic f(x) problems
3. Minimize/maximize result over decision space

3.0 Sliding Window + Monotonic

1. Maximum in window
2. Min swaps to group elements
3. Longest subarray under sum/condition

4.0 Reservoir Sampling & Randomized

1. Pick random element with unknown N
2. Shuffle array uniformly
3. Randomized hashing

5.0 Simulation and State Machines

1. Game of Life
2. Spiral matrix
3. Turing tape / DFA logic

6.0 Design + Iterator Patterns

1. Nested Iterator
2. Zigzag iterator
3. Iterator for BST