What is the optimal time complexity of solving Hand of Straights?

The optimized solution achieves a time complexity of O(n) by using sorting, mathematical shortcuts, or hash table lookups.

What is the auxiliary space complexity for Hand of Straights?

The space complexity is O(n) since we only use a minimal/constant amount of extra memory for tracking variables (or auxiliary space if dynamic structures are allocated).

What are the typical edge cases we must handle in Hand of Straights?

Key edge cases include empty collections, negative or large bounds causing integer overflow, arrays with only one element, or inputs where target criteria are not met.

How can we optimize the brute force approach for Hand of Straights?

Brute force methods often inspect all possible combinations. We optimize this by sorting the input list to enable binary search, or tracking processed items in a set to avoid redundant nested loop lookups.

Back to Practice Dashboard

Top 150 InterviewEasy

Hand of Straights

Learn how to solve the 'Hand of Straights' problem. This detailed resource details brute force and optimized approaches.

Mode Selected

Problem Statement

Easy

Alice has some number of cards and she wants to rearrange the cards into groups so that each group is of size groupSize, and consists of groupSize consecutive cards. Given an integer array hand where hand[i] is the value written on the ith card and an integer groupSize, return True if she can rearrange the cards, or False otherwise.

Write a function isNStraightHand(hand: List[int], groupSize: int) -> bool.

Constraints

•1 <= len(hand) <= 10^4
•0 <= hand[i] <= 10^9
•1 <= groupSize <= len(hand)

Examples

Example 1

Input

hand = [1,2,3,6,2,3,4,7,8], groupSize = 3

Output

True

Explanation

[1,2,3], [2,3,4], [6,7,8] are consecutive groups of 3.

Example 2

Input

hand = [1,2,3,4,5], groupSize = 4

Output

False

Explanation

Cannot rearrange cards into consecutive groups of 4.

Need a Hint?

Analyze the input constraints. Try sorting first (O(n log n)) or using a hash map/set to track seen elements in O(n) time.

Edge Cases to Watch

Empty list or null input variables
Single item lists/arrays
Extremely large input bounds causing integer or stack overflow

Ready to Solve?

Open the problem in PyRun's browser-based Python editor. Your code runs fully offline — no server required.

Open in Editor