LeetCode Card 281 — Greedy / Breakdown
Pattern signal
This pattern usually appears when the prompt involves local-choice problems where a proof or intuition shows that the local move supports the global goal. Jump Game, Gas Station, Task Scheduler sub-variants, and interval-selection questions often lean greedy.
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 Greedy, 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 choose greedily because it feels fast, not because they can justify why the local rule works. 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 Greedy, what is the simplest way to identify the signal words, constraints, and output shape that reveal the pattern family?”