Minimum Number of Food Buckets to Feed the Hamsters
A medium-tier problem at 47% community acceptance, tagged with String, Dynamic Programming, Greedy. Reported in interviews at Grab and 2 others.
You're staring at a string of hamsters and empty spots, and you need to place the minimum buckets so every hamster gets fed. Grab, Geico, and Sprinklr have all asked this. It's a medium-difficulty problem that sits at the intersection of greedy placement and dynamic programming thinking, and your gut instinct on what 'minimum' means will probably steer you wrong. The acceptance rate is around 47%, which means a lot of people who code it confidently still fail test cases. If you hit this in your assessment and freeze on whether to use DP or greedy, StealthCoder gives you the working solution in seconds while you stay invisible to the proctor.
Companies that ask "Minimum Number of Food Buckets to Feed the Hamsters"
Minimum Number of Food Buckets to Feed the Hamsters 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 because the OA filter rejects engineers who'd pass the on-site. That's a broken filter. This is the workaround.
Get StealthCoderThe trap here is thinking this is a pure DP problem when it's actually greedy with a DP flavor. You're placing buckets on a string to cover hamsters within some range (usually 1 or 2 spots away depending on the problem variant). The greedy insight is: scan left to right, and the moment you encounter a hamster that isn't covered, place a bucket as far right as legally possible to maximize future coverage. Most candidates either over-complicate with memoization or place buckets too early and waste resources. The String and Greedy topics are core, but people who default to DP first often code a correct but inefficient solution that times out on large inputs. When you're live and the test cases start failing, you don't have time to restructure your whole approach. StealthCoder solves that problem: if greedy isn't your first instinct, you get a correct template in real time.
Pattern tags
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Minimum Number of Food Buckets to Feed the Hamsters 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 because the OA filter rejects engineers who'd pass the on-site. That's a broken filter. This is the workaround. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.
Minimum Number of Food Buckets to Feed the Hamsters interview FAQ
Is this really greedy, or do I need DP?+
It's greedy first, DP second. The greedy approach scans left to right and places buckets reactively when a hamster has no coverage. DP works but is slower and unnecessary. Grab and similar companies test your ability to recognize when greedy is optimal, not just code whatever comes to mind.
Why is the acceptance rate so low if it's just medium difficulty?+
People guess wrong on the strategy. They either code a correct but inefficient DP solution that times out, or they place buckets greedily but not in the optimal position (e.g., too far left, not maximizing future coverage). The logic is tight and test cases punish both bugs.
What's the biggest pitfall when placing buckets greedily?+
Placing a bucket the moment you see a hamster instead of waiting to place it as far right as possible within the legal range. That wastes bucket coverage. You scan left to right, find the first uncovered hamster, then place the bucket at the farthest valid position that still covers it.
Does this come up at top companies often?+
Yes. Grab, Geico, and Sprinklr have all asked it. It's a favorite filter because it tests whether you can switch strategies mid-interview if your first approach times out, not just whether you can code correctly.
How does the String topic fit in?+
You're iterating and indexing through a string, so String is foundational. But the algorithmic meat is greedy placement logic. Don't overthink the string parsing part. Focus on the placement strategy.
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