Get Min Moves
Reported by candidates from Amazon's online assessment. Pattern, common pitfall, and the honest play if you blank under the timer.
You're looking at an Amazon OA from November 2024 that asks you to compute the minimum number of moves to reach a goal state. This is a classic BFS or dynamic programming problem, and candidates often freeze because they don't immediately see whether to search or calculate. The trick is recognizing that you're finding the shortest path in an implicit graph, and the order of operations matters. StealthCoder can feed you the exact pattern the moment you see the full problem on screen.
Pattern and pitfall
Get Min Moves almost always boils down to breadth-first search or dynamic programming, depending on whether the state space is finite and small. If you're moving objects on a grid or transforming a number or string, BFS is your answer. If you're optimizing a sequence of choices with overlapping subproblems, go DP. The common miss is trying to greedy your way out when the problem needs exhaustive exploration. The other trap is exploring too broadly and timing out. StealthCoder sits in the background during your OA and can confirm the right direction the instant you understand the constraints, so you're not guessing in the execution phase.
Memorize the pattern. If you can't, run StealthCoder. The proctor sees the IDE. They don't see what's behind it.
You can drill Get Min Moves cold, or you can hedge it. StealthCoder runs invisibly during screen share and surfaces a working solution in under 2 seconds. The proctor sees the IDE. They don't see what's behind it. Made by an engineer who treats the OA as theater. If yours is tonight, you don't have time to grind. You have time to hedge.
Get StealthCoderRelated leaked OAs
This OA pattern shows up on LeetCode as sliding puzzle. If you have time before the OA, drill that.
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Make sure you actually pass Amazon's OA.
Amazon reuses patterns across OAs. Made by an engineer who treats the OA as theater. If yours is tonight, you don't have time to grind. You have time to hedge. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.
Get Min Moves FAQ
Is this a grid movement problem or a state-transformation problem?+
Without the full problem text, both are possible. If you're moving pieces or a player on a 2D space, it's BFS with coordinate states. If you're transforming one value into another through operations, it's still BFS but the state is the value itself. Check the constraints first. If the state space is under 10 million, BFS works fine.
When do I use DP instead of BFS?+
Use DP when you can define a recurrence relation and the number of unique subproblems is manageable. Use BFS when you need the absolute shortest path and the state space is small. For Min Moves problems, BFS is safer because it guarantees the shortest result without guessing a DP formula. DP is faster if it applies, but BFS is more reliable.
What's the most common pitfall Amazon candidates hit on this one?+
Trying to be clever and greedy instead of exploring all options. Min Moves often has a non-obvious shortest path. Another miss is not tracking visited states, which causes infinite loops or exponential blowup. Always maintain a set of seen states before adding to the queue.
How do I prepare in 48 hours if I haven't solved this before?+
Learn the BFS template cold. Queue in a state, track visited, pop and explore neighbors. Practice on LeetCode's 01 Matrix or Sliding Puzzle. Understand why BFS finds the shortest path. If the problem is DP, you'll catch that from the constraint size. One solid template wins both.
Should I code this iteratively or recursively?+
Iterative BFS with a queue is standard and avoids stack overflow. Recursive DFS with memoization works for DP but is slower for shortest-path problems. Stick with iterative BFS for Min Moves. It's clearer, easier to debug, and faster in practice.