Minimum Number of Pushes to Type Word II
A medium-tier problem at 80% community acceptance, tagged with Hash Table, String, Greedy. Reported in interviews at DE Shaw and 0 others.
Minimum Number of Pushes to Type Word II is a medium-difficulty problem that's uncommon but deceptively tricky. You're optimizing key press counts on a phone keypad, and the greedy insight most candidates miss is that frequency ranking matters more than alphabetical order. At 79.9% acceptance, it looks forgiving until you hit the OA and realize the obvious approach wastes moves. DE Shaw reportedly asks this. If you blank on why greedy sorting by frequency wins, StealthCoder solves it invisibly during your assessment and surfaces the working solution in seconds.
Companies that ask "Minimum Number of Pushes to Type Word II"
Minimum Number of Pushes to Type Word II 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 trick is that each key can map multiple characters, but every additional character on that key costs one more press. You need to assign high-frequency characters to low-press slots. Sort by frequency descending, then greedily pack characters into the available key-press combinations. The naive approach is to assign characters in alphabetical order or randomly, which bloats the total presses. The key insight: Counting frequencies, sorting them, and distributing across a fixed number of keys in priority order is pure greedy optimization. Common pitfall is misunderstanding how many slots exist (4 keys times 8 presses max on standard phone layout), or forgetting that frequency ranking must override any other assignment heuristic. StealthCoder catches these mistakes in real time during your live assessment.
Pattern tags
You know the problem.
Make sure you actually pass it.
Minimum Number of Pushes to Type Word II 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.
Minimum Number of Pushes to Type Word II interview FAQ
Is this problem really asked in live interviews?+
Yes. DE Shaw reports asking it. Uncommon but real. It tests whether you understand greedy resource allocation and can spot that frequency sorting is the winning strategy, not alphabetical assignment or ad-hoc mapping. If you haven't drilled frequency-based greedy problems, this is a wall-hitter.
What's the core trick I'm missing if I get the brute-force wrong?+
You're probably assigning characters to keys in the wrong order. The trick is sorting by frequency (highest first) then distributing across key-press slots greedily. Each character gets assigned to the lowest-cost available slot. Skip alphabetical order entirely; it's a red herring.
How does Counting relate to the solution?+
Counting tallies character frequencies in the input word. Once you have frequencies, you sort that count array descending. Then you greedily assign the most frequent characters to the cheapest press slots. Without accurate Counting, your greedy strategy has no foundation.
Why does Greedy work here and not just brute-force every permutation?+
Greedy works because assigning high-frequency characters to low-cost slots is always optimal. You don't need to test all permutations. Each assignment is independent and locally optimal, making the global solution optimal. Brute-force is exponential; greedy is linear after sorting.
Is 79.9% acceptance a sign this is actually easy?+
Not quite. High acceptance usually means the problem statement is clear and the brute-force path is obvious, so many pass initial test cases. But the greedy insight is subtle. You might pass 80% of test cases with a weaker approach and not realize your solution is suboptimal until edge cases fail or the OA times out.
Want the actual problem statement? View "Minimum Number of Pushes to Type Word II" on LeetCode →