LeetCode Card 333 — Shortest Paths / Structure
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 Structure means here
In BASIC, the Structure step is where you state the invariant, helper contract, or control-flow skeleton before coding. 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 make the plan visible before full execution. 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 state the invariant, helper contract, or control-flow skeleton before coding?”