The Aladdin OA

The OA is graded by hidden test cases that award partial credit, and that fact should drive every decision you make in the hour. You do not get a pass or fail on a problem. Your score is proportional to how many of a batch of unseen cases your code clears. Most of them probe the edges: an empty collection, a single element, a target exactly on a boundary, an input large enough that a quadratic loop times out. A clean solution that handles the ordinary case and the obvious edges banks most of the points on a problem even if you never find the elegant optimum. A brilliant approach you are still typing when time expires banks nothing. Prep the fundamentals cold so the standard structure comes out fast. Spend the saved minutes on edges and on the second problem instead of polishing the first once its points are already yours.