LeetCode Card 332 — Shortest Paths / Assess
Pattern signal
This pattern usually appears when the prompt involves weighted path optimization or repeated frontier relaxation. Network Delay Time, Cheapest Flights Within K Stops, Dijkstra-like routing, and graph cost problems use this family.
What Assess means here
In BASIC, the Assess step is where you compare the viable data structures or traversals and decide what complexity target fits. For Shortest Paths, 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 compare plausible approaches before committing. 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 confuse unweighted BFS with weighted shortest-path logic. 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 Shortest Paths, what is the simplest way to compare the viable data structures or traversals and decide what complexity target fits?”