MEDIUMasked at 2 companies

Is Graph Bipartite?

A medium-tier problem at 58% community acceptance, tagged with Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Union Find. Reported in interviews at Samsung and 1 others.

Founder's read

Is Graph Bipartite hits your screen during an OA, and you're not immediately sure which algorithm applies. The acceptance rate sits just above 57%, which means half the candidates who attempt it either time out, mis-code the coloring logic, or walk down the wrong path entirely. Samsung and Pinterest ask this one. The trap is thinking you need a fancy algorithm when the real work is careful graph traversal with a two-color constraint. If you blank on the pattern during your live assessment, StealthCoder surfaces a working solution in seconds, invisible to the proctor.

Companies asking
2
Difficulty
MEDIUM
Acceptance
58%

Companies that ask "Is Graph Bipartite?"

If this hits your live OA

Is Graph Bipartite? 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 an Amazon engineer who watched the leaked-problem repo become an industry secret. He decided you should have it too.

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What this means

Bipartite checking boils down to assigning one of two colors to every node such that no adjacent nodes share the same color. BFS or DFS both work, but the implementation details matter. Most candidates start strong, then botch the visited tracking or forget to handle disconnected components. The common failure mode: assuming the graph is connected. Union Find also works but adds unnecessary overhead here. The algorithm itself is straightforward once you see it, which is exactly why it trips people up in real time. You know the names of the techniques. You know what bipartite means. But under pressure, the wiring between concept and code frays. StealthCoder is your safety net if this specific problem lands in your OA and the obvious approach suddenly doesn't feel obvious anymore.

Pattern tags

The honest play

You know the problem. Make sure you actually pass it.

Is Graph Bipartite? 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 an Amazon engineer who watched the leaked-problem repo become an industry secret. He decided you should have it too. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.

Is Graph Bipartite? interview FAQ

Is this problem really asked at top tech companies?+

Yes. Samsung and Pinterest report it. At 57% acceptance, it's neither trivial nor rare. It's the kind of problem that separates solid graph knowledge from shaky fundamentals. Medium difficulty is accurate.

What's the trick I'm supposed to know?+

The trick is recognizing that bipartite checking is graph coloring with exactly two colors. BFS and DFS both work equally well. The real gotcha: don't assume the graph is connected. You must check every unvisited node and start a fresh traversal if needed.

Which algorithm is faster, BFS or DFS for this problem?+

Both visit each node and edge exactly once, so they're O(V+E) time. Pick whichever you're more confident coding under pressure. Neither has a meaningful speed advantage here. Implementation correctness matters more than algorithm choice.

When would Union Find be better than coloring?+

Union Find works but it's overkill. Coloring via BFS or DFS is simpler, faster to code, and less error-prone. Union Find shines on problems where you're merging sets. For bipartite checking, it adds friction without benefit.

What if the graph has isolated nodes?+

Isolated nodes are trivially bipartite (assign them any color). Your code must loop through all nodes, not just start from node zero. Many candidates forget this, hit a disconnected component, and miss checking it entirely.

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