LeetCode Card 216 — Two Pointers / Breakdown
Pattern signal
This pattern usually appears when the prompt involves sorted input, pair discovery, compaction, palindromic checks, or in-place partitioning. Think Two Sum II, 3Sum sub-steps, Remove Duplicates, Container With Most Water, or palindrome checks.
What Breakdown means here
In BASIC, the Breakdown step is where you identify the signal words, constraints, and output shape that reveal the pattern family. For Two Pointers, that matters because the pattern only becomes useful once the candidate is explicit about what is being tracked, reduced, or preserved.
Interview move
A strong move is to split the problem before trying to solve it. In this pattern family, say out loud what representation makes the problem easier: the map entry, the pointer invariant, the recursion contract, the queue contents, or the DP state. That keeps the implementation attached to a reason.
Common miss
Candidates move pointers without naming the invariant that justifies why the search space can shrink safely. BASIC reduces that risk because the stage sequence forces you to earn the implementation instead of jumping straight into it.
BASIC prompt
“Given that this looks like Two Pointers, what is the simplest way to identify the signal words, constraints, and output shape that reveal the pattern family?”