Remove One Element to Make the Array Strictly Increasing
A easy-tier problem at 29% community acceptance, tagged with Array. Reported in interviews at eBay and 0 others.
You're staring at an array and have to decide: remove at most one element to make it strictly increasing. eBay has asked this. The acceptance rate is 28.7%, which means a lot of people are overthinking it or missing the straightforward path. The trap is trying to be too clever about which element to remove. You don't need dynamic programming or greedy selection algorithms here. The candidate who passes this one usually spotted the pattern fast and coded it clean.
Companies that ask "Remove One Element to Make the Array Strictly Increasing"
Remove One Element to Make the Array Strictly Increasing 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. Built because the OA filter rejects engineers who'd pass the on-site. That's a broken filter. This is the workaround.
Get StealthCoderThe trick is simple once you see it: walk through the array and track where it stops being strictly increasing. When you find a violation (arr[i] >= arr[i+1]), you have two choices: remove arr[i] or remove arr[i+1]. Try removing each one and check if the rest of the array is strictly increasing. Most candidates waste time building a complex state machine when a brute-force check on two candidates wins. The edge case that kills people: removing the first or last element, or realizing the array is already valid. If you hit this in the live assessment and blank on the logic, StealthCoder runs invisibly and hands you the working solution in seconds, no proctor visibility.
Pattern tags
You know the problem.
Make sure you actually pass it.
Remove One Element to Make the Array Strictly Increasing recycles across companies for a reason. It's easy-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. Built because the OA filter rejects engineers who'd pass the on-site. That's a broken filter. This is the workaround. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.
Remove One Element to Make the Array Strictly Increasing interview FAQ
Is this actually an easy problem if 28.7% pass it?+
Yes. The acceptance rate is low because people overthink it or try to solve it in one pass without backtracking. The solution is short once you realize you only need to test two removal candidates. Most who see the pattern code it in under 10 minutes.
What's the common mistake on this problem?+
Trying to decide which element to remove with a greedy rule (remove the larger one, remove the smaller one, etc.) without actually verifying the result. The safe move is always to test both options and validate what's left.
Does this problem require dynamic programming?+
No. It's pure array iteration. You find one violation, try two fixes, and validate. DP is overkill and a sign you've misread what the problem is asking for.
How does this relate to other array problems?+
It's a subset of "validate a condition with minimal modification." If you've seen two-pointer or prefix validation problems, the mental model transfers. This one just adds the remove-and-check step.
Was this asked at eBay recently?+
eBay has reported asking this problem. It's not a heavy-rotation problem across tech (only 1 company in the data), so if you see it in your OA, it's a real ask, not a guess.
Want the actual problem statement? View "Remove One Element to Make the Array Strictly Increasing" on LeetCode →