Reported October 2026
OpenAIarray

Checkpointed Dynamic Sequence

Reported by candidates from OpenAI's online assessment. Pattern, common pitfall, and the honest play if you blank under the timer.

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Founder's read

The OpenAI OA reported in October 2026, Checkpointed Dynamic Sequence, sounds like a design problem, but it's really an indexable list with insert and get. You get a linked list, a checkpoint interval, and a stream of ADD and GET operations. Index values come in as decimal strings, which is a small trap on its own. The pattern is array-flavored: positional access with inserts in the middle. If you blank on the checkpoint bookkeeping during the live OA, StealthCoder runs invisibly as a safety net and gives you a working structure while you keep typing.

The problem

Maintain a dynamic sequence of strings. The sequence starts empty and is represented by a linked list plus checkpoint references spaced every checkpointInterval positions.
Process operations in order. Each operation has one of these forms:
["ADD", index, value]: insert value immediately before the current element at the zero-based index. When index equals the current size, append the value. This operation produces no output.
["GET", index]: return the value at the zero-based index.
The index and interval fields are decimal strings. All operations are valid when they are processed. Return the GET results in operation order.

Examples
Example 1
checkpointInterval = 3
operations = [["ADD","0","A"],["ADD","1","C"],["ADD","1","B"],["GET","0"],["GET","1"],["GET","2"]]
return = ["A","B","C"]
The middle insertion places B before C. The three reads then return the sequence in index order.

Reported by candidates. Source: FastPrep

Pattern and pitfall

Here's the reduction. Every ADD inserts before position index, and every GET reads position index. A plain array or list gives you both, and it passes the sample. The checkpoint idea is the optimization. Keep a reference to every checkpointInterval-th node, so you jump to the nearest checkpoint at or before the index, then walk at most interval-1 steps. The pitfall is maintenance. An insert shifts every later element by one position, so checkpoints after the insertion point are now off. Rebuild them from the insertion point forward, or rebuild lazily before the next GET. Also parse the strings to ints first, and handle index equal to size as an append. Don't forget the empty-list case. If the constraints are small, a simple list wins. If they're large, do the checkpoints. StealthCoder is the hedge if the rebuild logic tangles under the clock.

Drill it cold or hedge it with StealthCoder. Either way, don't walk into the OA hoping you remember the trick.

If this hits your live OA

You can drill Checkpointed Dynamic Sequence 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.

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Related leaked OAs

⏵ The honest play

You've seen the question. Make sure you actually pass OpenAI's OA.

OpenAI 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.

Checkpointed Dynamic Sequence FAQ

What's the trick in Checkpointed Dynamic Sequence?+

It's an ordered list with insert-at-index and read-at-index. The checkpoints only speed up traversal. Jump to the nearest checkpoint, walk a few nodes, then insert or read. The real work is keeping checkpoints correct after each insertion shifts positions.

How hard is this OpenAI OA question really?+

Easy on logic, medium on care. Nothing needs a fancy algorithm. You lose points on off-by-one errors, append at index equal to size, and stale checkpoints after inserts. Test the sample plus an insert at the head and at the tail.

Do I need to implement a real linked list?+

The statement describes one, so a faithful implementation is safest. If the grader only checks GET output, a dynamic array gives the same results. Read the constraints first. Large input with many operations is where checkpoints start to matter.

How do I handle the string indexes?+

Convert index and checkpointInterval to integers as soon as you read each operation. Keep values as strings. A common bug is comparing the string index to the integer size, which silently breaks the append case.

How do I prepare in 48 hours?+

Write a singly linked list with insert-at-index and get-at-index from scratch. Then add checkpoint rebuilding after insertion. Run the sample, then edge cases: empty list, insert at 0, append at size, and repeated inserts at the same index. Do it once under a timer.

Problem reported by candidates from a real Online Assessment. Sourced from a publicly-available candidate-aggregated repository. Not affiliated with OpenAI.

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