Minimum Moves to Capture The Queen
A medium-tier problem at 21% community acceptance, tagged with Math, Enumeration. Reported in interviews at Wipro and 0 others.
Minimum Moves to Capture The Queen is a math and enumeration problem that looks deceptively simple but trips up candidates who haven't drilled geometric path-finding. It's been asked at Wipro and has a 21% acceptance rate, which tells you most people either miss the constraint or brute-force it wrongly. The problem asks you to find the minimum number of moves for a piece to capture a queen on a chessboard, which means you need to understand how pieces move and when a direct path is blocked. If this problem hits your live assessment and you blank on the geometry, StealthCoder solves it invisibly in seconds.
Companies that ask "Minimum Moves to Capture The Queen"
Minimum Moves to Capture The Queen 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 by an Amazon engineer who realized the OA tests how well you memorized 200 problems, not how well you code.
Get StealthCoderThe trap here is assuming you can always reach the queen in one move or that you need to simulate the full board. In reality, the queen is trapped by other pieces, and you need to count how many moves it takes to capture her given the blocking configuration. The math piece comes from understanding directional vectors and collision detection. The enumeration part is checking all eight directions (or however the piece can move) and finding which direction the queen sits in. Most candidates either over-engineer with BFS when the answer is a direct calculation, or they miss that a single blocking piece between you and the queen doubles your move count. The key insight is that you're looking for the shortest unblocked path in one of several directions, not a general pathfinding problem. During your live assessment, if you can't quickly identify which piece matters and why, StealthCoder gives you the working logic without the proctor seeing a thing.
Pattern tags
You know the problem.
Make sure you actually pass it.
Minimum Moves to Capture The Queen 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. Built by an Amazon engineer who realized the OA tests how well you memorized 200 problems, not how well you code. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.
Minimum Moves to Capture The Queen interview FAQ
Is this really a Medium problem?+
The 21% acceptance rate suggests it's harder than most Mediums. The difficulty comes from the geometric intuition required, not code complexity. You need to visualize piece movement and blocking in one go, which many candidates skip during prep.
Do I need to build a full board state?+
No. The math approach works because you only care about the direction to the queen and whether a single piece blocks that line. You can solve it with coordinate arithmetic and enumeration of eight directions without simulating the board.
What's the common wrong approach?+
BFS or DFS on the full board. That over-solves the problem. Also, candidates often forget that blocking pieces matter only on the direct line of sight to the queen, making them check irrelevant pieces.
Is this still being asked?+
Wipro has asked it. The low company count and acceptance rate suggest it's not in the mainstream FAANG rotation yet, but it may appear in secondary-round technical assessments or specialized hiring tracks.
How do I drill this if it's not common?+
Focus on the math and enumeration topics listed. Practice directional vector problems and ray-casting logic (checking what lies on a line between two points). Those patterns show up across many harder geometry problems.
Want the actual problem statement? View "Minimum Moves to Capture The Queen" on LeetCode →