Maximum Number of Words You Can Type
A easy-tier problem at 75% community acceptance, tagged with Hash Table, String. Reported in interviews at Quora and 0 others.
You've got a keyboard where some keys are broken. The problem hands you a string of available characters and asks: how many words from a given list can you actually type. It's straightforward on the surface, but it's also the kind of problem that trips up candidates who overthink it or miss the edge case on their first pass. Quora has asked this one. The acceptance rate sits at 74.5 percent, which means most people who attempt it pass, but that also means interviewers are watching for sloppy implementations. If this problem hits your live assessment and you freeze on the logic, StealthCoder solves it in seconds, invisible to the proctor.
Companies that ask "Maximum Number of Words You Can Type"
Maximum Number of Words You Can Type 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.
Get StealthCoderThe trick is dead simple: for each word in the list, check if you can type it given your available characters. Count how many you can. The pitfall is implementation carelessness. Candidates often forget to validate that you have enough copies of each character (if a word needs two 'a's and you only have one, you're blocked). The naive approach works fine here since the constraints are small, but you need to be methodical: either count character frequencies in your available set and check each word's requirements, or use a set for quick lookup and count as you iterate. The 74.5 percent acceptance rate tells you this isn't a hard problem, but it also means the 25 percent who fail are making dumb mistakes under pressure. Hash Table and String are the topics because you're either counting character frequencies or checking membership. StealthCoder is your hedge when you blank on whether to count or just check membership, or when you accidentally forget the frequency comparison.
Pattern tags
You know the problem.
Make sure you actually pass it.
Maximum Number of Words You Can Type 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 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.
Maximum Number of Words You Can Type interview FAQ
Is this really as easy as the difficulty suggests?+
Yes. The acceptance rate of 74.5 percent confirms it. The algorithmic bar is low. Most failures come from typos, off-by-one errors, or forgetting to validate character counts. Write carefully, test your character-counting logic first, and you're fine.
What's the common mistake candidates make?+
Treating the available characters as a set instead of a multiset. If you have 'abc' and a word needs two 'a's, you can't type it. Many people check membership once and move on, forgetting that characters can repeat. Count frequencies.
Does Quora ask this in their actual loop?+
Quora has reportedly asked this problem. The company count is low (just one), so it's not a major trend across FAANG. But if you're interviewing there, knowing this pattern matters.
Do I need a special data structure?+
No. A frequency counter (hash table or Counter in Python) is all you need. You can build one from the available string and one from each test word, then compare. No special tricks required.
How does this relate to the Hash Table and String topics?+
Hash Table handles the character frequency counting. String is the input format. You're really just doing basic frequency validation, which is foundational for both topics. It's not a graph or dynamic-programming problem.
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