Chime Software Engineer Onsite Coding Questions

LeetCode #1472: Design Browser History. Difficulty: Medium. Topics: Array, Linked List, Stack, Design, Doubly-Linked List, Data Stream. Asked at Chime in the last 6 months.

## Problem Design a food rating system that supports updating ratings and querying the highest-rated food in a cuisine. ## Likely LeetCode equivalent Similar to LC 2353 but not confirmed as identical. ## Tags hash_table, heap, design

## Problem Given a phone number string, return all possible letter combinations using a T9 keypad mapping via backtracking. ## Likely LeetCode equivalent LeetCode 17 - Letter Combinations of a Phone Number. ## Tags backtracking, strings, recursion

## Problem Find the mine that, when detonated, triggers the most chain explosions given each mine has a blast radius. ## Likely LeetCode equivalent LeetCode 2101 - Detonate the Maximum Bombs. ## Tags graph, bfs, arrays

## Problem Given an array of candy flavors, find the number of unique flavors remaining after removing K consecutive candies using a sliding window. ## Likely LeetCode equivalent No direct unambiguous LC match. ## Tags sliding_window, hash_table, arrays

## Problem You are given a list of `(employee, manager)` pairs representing a company org chart. The root node has no manager. Print the hierarchy as an indented ASCII tree where each level of depth adds 2 spaces. ```python def print_hierarchy(pairs: list[tuple[str, str]]) -> None: pass ``` **Example:** ``` pairs = [("Bob","Alice"),("Carol","Alice"),("Dave","Bob"),("Alice",None)] output: Alice Bob Dave Carol ``` ## Approach Build an adjacency list (parent -> children). DFS from the root, passing current depth to compute indent. Sort children alphabetically for determinism. ## Follow-ups 1. What if the input contains a cycle (data error)? How do you detect and report it? 2. The company has 1 million employees. The recursion overflows the call stack. How do you convert the DFS to iterative? 3. Add the ability to print only the subtree rooted at a given employee. 4. Output valid JSON instead of ASCII, preserving the nested hierarchy structure.

## Problem Guess a secret number or value using binary search or interactive API calls to minimize guesses. ## Likely LeetCode equivalent No direct unambiguous match. ## Tags binary_search, math

## Problem Given a sentence and a screen of rows x cols, count how many times the sentence can fit on the screen. ## Likely LeetCode equivalent LeetCode 418 - Sentence Screen Fitting. ## Tags dynamic_programming, strings

## Problem Traverse or generate an m x n matrix in spiral order. ## Likely LeetCode equivalent LeetCode 54 - Spiral Matrix. ## Tags matrix, arrays

## Problem Implement a T9 phone keyboard input method that maps digit sequences to possible word suggestions. ## Likely LeetCode equivalent No direct unambiguous match. ## Tags strings, hash_table, backtracking

## Problem Determine if a partially filled 9x9 Sudoku board is valid according to row, column, and box constraints. ## Likely LeetCode equivalent LeetCode 36 - Valid Sudoku. ## Tags backtracking, hash_table, matrix