Google New Grad R1: Guess the Word Interactive Hard Problem

Role: Software Engineer, New Grad
Result: Final outcome not disclosed
Report time: January 2026

Coding: Guess the Word

The candidate received the interactive Guess the Word problem. They described it as an unusually tricky Hard-level question.

The task provides a list of candidate words and an oracle that reports how many positions match the secret word after each guess. The goal is to identify the secret within a limited number of guesses by choosing informative candidates and narrowing the remaining set.

The candidate reached an implementation with significant interviewer help and left the round unsure whether the result would be strong enough.

Practice: Guess the Word

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