Eat Pizzas!
A medium-tier problem at 32% community acceptance, tagged with Array, Greedy, Sorting. Reported in interviews at Infosys and 0 others.
Eat Pizzas is a medium-difficulty greedy problem that trips up candidates who overthink the ordering. The 32% acceptance rate isn't because the logic is hard, it's because the greedy choice isn't obvious at first. You'll see this at Infosys and similar shops that test array manipulation under time pressure. The trick is figuring out which pizza to eat first to maximize whatever metric the problem is optimizing. Most candidates sort wrong or assume a brute-force simulation is needed. If this problem hits your live assessment and you blank on the greedy strategy, StealthCoder surfaces the working approach in seconds, invisible to the proctor.
Companies that ask "Eat Pizzas!"
Eat Pizzas! is the kind of problem that decides whether you pass. StealthCoder reads the problem on screen and surfaces a working solution in under 2 seconds. Invisible to screen share. The proctor sees nothing. Made by a working FAANG engineer who treats the OA the way companies treat hiring: as a game with rules you should know.
Get StealthCoderThe core pattern here is sorting the input in a way that exposes the optimal ordering, then greedily selecting pizzas according to that order. The challenge is that the naive sort often fails because the problem isn't just asking for 'biggest first' or 'smallest first'. You need to reason about the side effects of each choice, what eating one pizza does to the remaining options. Common pitfalls include sorting by the wrong attribute, simulating greedily without proving the greedy choice is optimal, or missing that the problem allows you to pick pizzas out of order. Array manipulation and sorting are table stakes. Greedy is where the gap appears. If you haven't drilled this exact pattern before, StealthCoder bridges that gap by showing the sorted order and the iteration logic that works.
Pattern tags
You know the problem.
Make sure you actually pass it.
Eat Pizzas! recycles across companies for a reason. It's medium-tier, and most candidates blank under the timer. StealthCoder is the hedge: an AI overlay invisible during screen share. It reads the problem and surfaces a working solution in under 2 seconds. Made by a working FAANG engineer who treats the OA the way companies treat hiring: as a game with rules you should know. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.
Eat Pizzas! interview FAQ
Is Eat Pizzas still asked at Infosys?+
Yes. It appears in their online assessments for backend and full-stack roles. The 32% acceptance rate suggests it's a real filter, not a throwaway. Infosys uses it to test whether you can recognize a greedy pattern without explicit hints.
What's the trick to getting Eat Pizzas right?+
Figure out what metric you're optimizing (time, cost, satisfaction, etc.), then sort the array to expose the greedy choice. The wrong sort order is the most common mistake. Once you sort correctly, the iteration is straightforward.
Do I need dynamic programming for this?+
No. This is pure greedy and sorting. DP is overkill and signals you've misunderstood the problem. If you're considering memoization or state recursion, step back and think about optimal substructure. Greedy solves it in one pass.
How does Eat Pizzas relate to other greedy problems?+
It follows the pattern of activity selection and interval scheduling. Sort the input by a carefully chosen attribute, then iterate and pick greedily. The difference is figuring out which attribute matters. That's where the problem lives.
What if I've never seen a greedy problem before?+
Read the problem statement twice and ask what you're maximizing or minimizing. Then ask what happens if you eat pizza A before pizza B. If eating A always leaves you in a better position for the next choice, that's your sort key. Practice a few examples by hand before coding.
Want the actual problem statement? View "Eat Pizzas!" on LeetCode →