Wayfair HackerRank Round
Question Details
Time Duration: 50 Minutes Assessment Type : 2 DSA Questions Cutt-off for next round: 60 Points Question 1 : (75 Points) You are given a binary maze where every cell has an obstacle (denoted...
Full Details
Time Duration: 50 Minutes
Assessment Type : 2 DSA Questions
Cutt-off for next round: 60 Points
Question 1 : (75 Points)
You are given a binary maze where every cell has an obstacle (denoted by 1) or free ( denoted by 0).
You are standing at (0,0) and want to reach (n-1,m-1) which is the last cell of the maze.
You can move from current cell to four directionally adjacent cells at a magintude of atmost K iff all cells from
current cell to that cell doesn\'t have obstacles!
Find Minimum number of moves required to reach last cell starting from origin!
If its not possible to go to last cell,
return -1.
Example 1:
Maze =
[0 0 0 0]
[0 1 1 0]
k = 3
Answer : 2 (Jump from (0,0) ->(0,3) -> (1,3) whichi s last cell.
Example 2 :
Maze =
[0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0]
[1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0]
[0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0]
[0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0]
k = 4
Answer = -1 (We will not be able to move to any of the adjacent cells since we have obstacles on all paths!)
Question 2 : (50 Points)
You are given dictionary of words as strings and given set of queries strings.
Return all words in dictionary which are anagrams for current query in sorted order!!
Example :
Dictionary : ["duel" , "speed" , "dule", "cars"]
Queries : ["spede" , "deul"]
Answer:
[
\t["speed"],
\t["duel" , "dule"]
]
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a wayfair interview for a swe role during the oa round reported in 2025.
It covers the following topics: Hash Table, Sql, Strings .
Topics
More Wayfair Interview Questions
About Wayfair Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Wayfair. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Wayfair are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Wayfair interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Wayfair reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Wayfair Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Wayfair reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.