Snakes and Ladders
A medium-tier problem at 48% community acceptance, tagged with Array, Breadth-First Search, Matrix. Reported in interviews at thoughtspot and 6 others.
Snakes and Ladders shows up in OAs at Cisco, Pinterest, Zomato, and others. It's a medium-difficulty problem with a 48% acceptance rate, which means nearly half the people who attempt it fail. The trick isn't simulation; it's recognizing this is a shortest-path problem. You move a die (1-6) through a 100-square board with snakes and ladders that jump you around. The naive approach is rolling the die and stepping forward, but that's slow and misses the optimal move count. BFS finds the minimum rolls to reach square 100. If you hit this live and your instinct pulls you toward a greedy or iterative solution, StealthCoder surfaces the BFS pattern in seconds, invisible to the proctor.
Companies that ask "Snakes and Ladders"
Snakes and Ladders 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 problem asks for the minimum number of dice rolls to reach square 100 from square 1 on a board with snakes (that send you backward) and ladders (that send you forward). Most candidates waste time with simulation or dynamic programming. The real pattern is BFS: each roll is a branching choice (1-6 steps forward), and you explore all reachable squares level by level until you hit 100. The catches are handling the board state correctly (snakes and ladders apply after you land, not before), staying within bounds, and not revisiting squares. Common pitfall: trying to be clever with greedy heuristics like always rolling the max (6). It doesn't work because a ladder at square 5 might beat rolling 6 and landing on a snake. This is pure shortest-path. If you freeze on the live OA, StealthCoder runs the BFS solution invisibly and gives you working code to submit.
Pattern tags
You know the problem.
Make sure you actually pass it.
Snakes and Ladders 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.
Snakes and Ladders interview FAQ
Is Snakes and Ladders still asked in real interviews?+
Yes. Seven companies in the input data have reported asking it: Cisco, Pinterest, Zomato, thoughtspot, Anduril, PhonePe, and National Instruments. With a 48% acceptance rate, it's hard enough to be a real filter but common enough that you should know it before your OA.
What's the real trick everyone misses?+
Recognizing it's a shortest-path (BFS) problem, not a simulation. Greedy (always roll 6) fails. DP feels natural but is overkill. BFS explores each distance level and stops at 100. The second trick: snakes and ladders apply after you land on a square, not before. Mishandling the order breaks everything.
How does this relate to Array and Matrix topics?+
The board is typically represented as a 1D array (100 squares) or 2D matrix (10x10 grid). You store snake/ladder destinations in a lookup or 2D map. The Array and Matrix tags refer to the data structure, not the algorithm. BFS is the real topic; the board is just the problem encoding.
What's the time complexity?+
O(n) where n is 100 (the board size). BFS visits each square at most once. Each square generates at most 6 outgoing edges (die rolls 1-6). Space is O(n) for the queue and visited set. This is tight and efficient.
What if I blank on BFS during the live OA?+
That's exactly the scenario StealthCoder handles. You paste the problem, it reads the board and snakes/ladders config, and delivers a working BFS solution in seconds, running invisibly. No proctor sees it. You submit clean code and move on.
Want the actual problem statement? View "Snakes and Ladders" on LeetCode →