Flower Planting With No Adjacent
A medium-tier problem at 52% community acceptance, tagged with Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Graph. Reported in interviews at Vimeo and 0 others.
You've got a graph coloring problem dressed up as a gardening puzzle. Given n plots where adjacent plots can't share the same flower, you need to assign colors from a fixed palette. It's graph coloring in disguise, and it shows up in assessments testing your graph theory fundamentals. The acceptance rate hovers around 52%, which means half the candidates either miss the greedy insight or overcomplicate the traversal. Vimeo has asked this one. If you freeze on the constraint-satisfaction angle during your live OA, StealthCoder surfaces a working solution in seconds, invisible to the proctor.
Companies that ask "Flower Planting With No Adjacent"
Flower Planting With No Adjacent 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 for the engineer who has done the work but might still blank with a webcam pointed at him.
Get StealthCoderThe trick is that you don't need fancy algorithms here. Since the maximum degree of any node in a valid input is bounded by 3, a greedy coloring with just 4 colors always works, regardless of graph structure. Walk through the nodes via DFS or BFS, and for each node, assign the smallest flower ID that none of its neighbors have claimed. Most candidates either try to detect cycles first or overthink the color count. The real insight is that the problem constraints guarantee a simple greedy pass succeeds. If your live assessment hits this and you blank on why 4 colors suffice, StealthCoder handles the graph traversal and greedy assignment instantly, leaving you looking prepared.
Pattern tags
You know the problem.
Make sure you actually pass it.
Flower Planting With No Adjacent 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 for the engineer who has done the work but might still blank with a webcam pointed at him. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.
Flower Planting With No Adjacent interview FAQ
Is this really just graph coloring?+
Yes. The flowers are colors, plots are nodes, adjacency is edges. The flower-planting framing is a wrapper. Understanding the graph coloring pattern matters because it shows up across industries testing algorithmic thinking.
Why can you always use exactly 4 flowers?+
Graph theory guarantees that any planar graph is 4-colorable. Since the problem constraint ensures maximum degree is bounded by 3, greedy assignment always finds a valid coloring with 4 colors. No complex proof needed during the OA.
DFS or BFS? Does it matter?+
For this problem, either works. The coloring result is the same. Pick whichever you code faster. DFS is often cleaner recursively, but BFS with a queue is equally valid. Your traversal order doesn't affect correctness on this specific constraint set.
What's the common mistake?+
Candidates often try to dynamically calculate the minimum colors needed or search for a cycle-free ordering first. You don't. Just greedily assign the smallest available color to each node as you visit it. The problem guarantees 4 always works.
Will this come up at other companies after Vimeo?+
Graph coloring is a canonical topic in tech interviews. This specific problem variant appears in lower frequency, but the pattern is fundamental. Mastering it prepares you for broader graph constraint-satisfaction questions across many assessments.
Want the actual problem statement? View "Flower Planting With No Adjacent" on LeetCode →