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3Sum

Alex Chen30 min readMedium

Sort the array, then run Two Sum II once for every element. That's the entire algorithm, and it takes brute force from O(n³) down to O(n²). What actually costs people points is the duplicate handling. Skip too eagerly and you drop valid triplets; skip too little and the same triplet lands in your output twice. That balance is the only genuinely hard part of this problem.

What's inside
  • 1 problem, worked step by step
  • 2 diagrams
  • about 30 min

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