Jumping Kaday (Intuit India)
Reported by candidates from Intuit's online assessment. Pattern, common pitfall, and the honest play if you blank under the timer.
Intuit's February 2024 OA included a jumping problem, and if you see it, you need to recognize the pattern fast. This is a dynamic programming trap disguised as a traversal question. The candidate who blanks on the recurrence relation is the one who runs out of time. StealthCoder exists for this exact moment: you hit the problem, the pattern clicks or doesn't, and if it doesn't, you have a real-time safety net while you're on the clock.
Pattern and pitfall
Jumping problems almost always reduce to DP: state is your current position, transition is the set of positions you can reach in one jump, and the goal is min jumps or reachability. The trick is recognizing whether you're building bottom-up (iterative) or top-down (memoized recursion). Intuit tends to ask for the minimum number of jumps to reach the end or determine if a position is reachable. The pitfall is naive recursion without memoization, which times out. Set up a DP array where dp[i] represents the answer for position i, then iterate forward or backward depending on the jump constraints. If the problem allows variable jump lengths, use a greedy sweep or BFS for O(n) instead of O(n^2). StealthCoder can surface the pattern and skeleton in seconds if you're stuck on the transition logic.
Drill it cold or hedge it with StealthCoder. Either way, don't walk into the OA hoping you remember the trick.
You can drill Jumping Kaday (Intuit India) 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 for the candidate who got the OA invite this morning and has 72 hours, not six months.
Get StealthCoderRelated leaked OAs
This OA pattern shows up on LeetCode as jump game. If you have time before the OA, drill that.
You've seen the question.
Make sure you actually pass Intuit's OA.
Intuit reuses patterns across OAs. Made for the candidate who got the OA invite this morning and has 72 hours, not six months. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.
Jumping Kaday (Intuit India) FAQ
Is this asking for minimum jumps or just reachability?+
Without the full problem text, either is possible. If it's minimum jumps, use DP with state transitions. If it's reachability, BFS or DP with a boolean array works. Check the output format in the examples; that tells you which one Intuit wants.
What if the jump distance varies at each position?+
Then you need DP where dp[i] = min jumps to reach i, and for each position you check all reachable next positions. If the constraint allows it, a greedy approach (always jump as far as possible) can reduce it to O(n).
Can I solve this with BFS instead of DP?+
Yes. Model each position as a node, each valid jump as an edge, and run BFS to find shortest path. It's O(n^2) worst case but cleaner to code under pressure. Use it if DP feels shaky.
How do I handle edge cases in 48 hours?+
Start at position 0, check if position 0 is itself (jump distance 0). Handle out-of-bounds jumps. Test on a position that's unreachable. Intuit's test cases usually catch off-by-one errors in loop bounds.
Is this still a common Intuit pattern?+
Yes. Intuit asks jumping/path problems regularly. It's a core DP pattern for them. If you see it, you're looking at DP or greedy. Assume DP unless the problem screams greedy.