Google 2026 New Grad OA Pass: Collect Tokens and Common-Digit Group

Role: Software Engineer, New Grad / Early Career
Result: Passed the OA and advanced to R1
Report time: December 2025

The OA contained two questions in 90 minutes. The candidate added extra test cases and comments based on a referrer's advice.

Question 1: collect coins with moving tokens

A board of N positions contains empty cells ., tokens T, and coins C. The player may have multiple tokens. A coin is collected when a token lands on it, and each coin can be collected once.

This was the repeated Google OA task where every token moves exactly three positions to the right and may not land on another token.

Practice: Maximum Coins With Moving Tokens

Question 2: largest common-digit group

Given two-digit numbers, choose as many array elements as possible so that every selected number contains at least one digit shared by the whole group.

For example, 52, 25, 55 can be selected through digit 5, while 11, 52, 34 do not share one common digit.

Practice: Maximum Elements With a Common Digit

Timeline

The candidate received the OA before Thanksgiving, completed it on December 1, and received the R1 scheduling request plus a transcript request on December 2. They said nearby reports from roughly a month earlier contained the same two questions.