Truncate Sentence
A easy-tier problem at 86% community acceptance, tagged with Array, String. Reported in interviews at Accenture and 0 others.
Truncate Sentence is the kind of easy problem that looks trivial until you hit it under pressure and realize you're overthinking the implementation. With an 86% acceptance rate, most candidates pass, but the ones who blank are usually those who didn't read the spec carefully or tried to be clever about string manipulation. Accenture has asked it. It's a warm-up that can cost you momentum if you don't nail it cleanly. If you freeze on the exact truncation logic during your assessment, StealthCoder surfaces a working solution instantly, invisible to the proctor.
Companies that ask "Truncate Sentence"
Truncate Sentence 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 Amazon engineer who got tired of watching qualified friends bomb OAs they'd solve cold in an IDE.
Get StealthCoderThe trick here is not algorithmic complexity. It's reading the requirement precisely: split the sentence into words, take the first k words, then join them back without the trailing space. The gotcha is that candidates often build the result greedily and forget to handle the space trimming, or they use inefficient string concatenation in a loop. The obvious pitfall is conflating 'truncate at k words' with 'truncate at k characters'. Once you understand the spec, a single pass through a split-and-slice operation solves it. Topics are String and Array manipulation, both basic. Under live OA stress, even simple string operations can derail you if you haven't coded them in a few weeks. StealthCoder catches that wall: it reads the problem statement on screen and delivers a clean, working truncation in seconds.
Pattern tags
You know the problem.
Make sure you actually pass it.
Truncate Sentence 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. Made by a working Amazon engineer who got tired of watching qualified friends bomb OAs they'd solve cold in an IDE. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.
Truncate Sentence interview FAQ
Is Truncate Sentence really that easy, or is there a trap?+
It's genuinely easy. The acceptance rate of 86% proves it. The trap is execution under pressure: off-by-one errors on the split index, forgetting to strip trailing spaces, or second-guessing yourself on what 'k words' means. Read the spec once, code it once, move on.
What's the standard approach?+
Split the sentence into words by spaces, take the first k elements, join them back with single spaces. Most languages have one-liners for this. String and Array topics cover the entire solution.
Does this problem test any advanced pattern?+
No. It's a string-and-array fundamentals check. If you know how to split and slice in your language, you pass. It's warm-up material, not a coding interview filter.
Who asks Truncate Sentence?+
Accenture has reported it. It's a low-bar screening problem, often used early in the loop to verify basic language fluency before harder problems.
Can I over-engineer this?+
Yes, and it costs you time. Don't manually iterate through characters or build the result one word at a time. Use your language's split and join primitives. Simplicity is the correct answer here.
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