Mim Steps Required
Reported by candidates from Barclays's online assessment. Pattern, common pitfall, and the honest play if you blank under the timer.
Barclays hit you with 'Min Steps Required' in April, and the title alone tells you it's a shortest-path or graph traversal problem. You're looking for the minimum number of moves to go from point A to point B, which almost always means BFS or dynamic programming. This is a breadth-first search play. The OA will expect you to recognize the pattern instantly and code it clean. StealthCoder can read the exact constraints and feed you the template if you freeze, but knowing it's BFS before you even see the full problem puts you ahead.
Pattern and pitfall
Min Steps problems almost always reduce to BFS when the graph is unweighted. You start from a source, explore neighbors level by level, and return the depth when you hit the target. The common trap: candidates overthink it and try DP when a simple queue solves it in one pass. The constraints matter hugely. If it's a grid or a game state, BFS with a visited set is standard. If it's a number transformation problem like 'reduce N to 1', you might explore operations (divide by 2, subtract 1, etc.) as edges. During the live OA, if the problem description is ambiguous, StealthCoder reads it and confirms the state space. Most Barclays assessments expect clean, readable BFS code with proper edge case handling.
Memorize the pattern. If you can't, run StealthCoder. The proctor sees the IDE. They don't see what's behind it.
You can drill Mim Steps Required cold, or you can hedge it. StealthCoder runs invisibly during screen share and surfaces a working solution in under 2 seconds. The proctor sees the IDE. They don't see what's behind it. Made by an engineer who treats the OA as theater. If yours is tonight, you don't have time to grind. You have time to hedge.
Get StealthCoderRelated leaked OAs
This OA pattern shows up on LeetCode as shortest path in binary matrix. If you have time before the OA, drill that.
You've seen the question.
Make sure you actually pass Barclays's OA.
Barclays reuses patterns across OAs. Made by an engineer who treats the OA as theater. If yours is tonight, you don't have time to grind. You have time to hedge. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.
Mim Steps Required FAQ
Is this always BFS, or could it be DP?+
BFS if the graph is unweighted and you need the shortest path. DP if you're optimizing a recurrence with overlapping subproblems. 'Min steps' on a grid or game state is BFS. 'Min cost' with weights is Dijkstra. Test the examples: if one path of length 3 is always shorter than a longer path, it's BFS.
What's the most common mistake?+
Forgetting to mark nodes as visited. BFS explores nodes level by level, so you must track visited states to avoid cycles and infinite loops. A visited set or hash table is mandatory. Second mistake: assuming the state space. Clarify what a 'step' means. Is it a grid move, a number operation, or a game action?
How do I set up the BFS in 2 minutes?+
Initialize a queue with the start state. Add a visited set. Pop from the queue, check if it's the target. If yes, return the step count. Otherwise, generate all valid next states, add unvisited ones to the queue and visited set, increment steps. Loop until found. Python deque is fastest.
What if there's no solution?+
Return -1 or 'impossible'. The queue will become empty if the target is unreachable. Make sure your BFS exits cleanly and doesn't loop infinitely. Check the problem statement for whether a solution is always guaranteed.
Will Barclays ask for the path itself or just the count?+
Usually just the count, but be ready. If they ask for the path, maintain a parent map during BFS and backtrack from target to source after you find it. Same BFS logic, just extra bookkeeping. Check the expected output type in the examples first.