How should I practice Count Disappearing Connected Tiles?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related Indeed phone screen problems in FastPrep.

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FastPrep tags this as a Indeed phone screen coding practice problem when the problem catalog has that company and stage context.

Count Disappearing Connected Tiles

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Problem statement

A player selects the tile at [row,col] in a rectangular integer grid. The selected tile disappears, along with every tile with the same value connected to it directly or transitively through immediately adjacent cells above, below, left or right. Tiles are not connected diagonally.

Return how many tiles disappear, including the selected tile. Other components with the same number are not counted; tiles with different values stop connectivity.

For this exercise, assume a nonempty equal-width board with 1 to 30 rows and columns, integer digits 0 through 9, and a valid zero-based selection.

Function

disappear(grid: int[][], row: int, col: int) → int

Examples

Example 1

grid = [[4,4,4,4],[5,5,5,4],[2,5,7,5]]row = 0col = 0return = 5

This exact source testcase removes 5 equal-valued tiles from the selected four-neighbor component.

Example 2

grid = [[4,4,4,4],[5,5,5,4],[2,5,7,5]]row = 1col = 1return = 4

This exact source testcase removes 4 equal-valued tiles from the selected four-neighbor component.

Example 3

grid = [[4,4,4,4],[5,5,5,4],[2,5,7,5]]row = 1col = 0return = 4

This exact source testcase removes 4 equal-valued tiles from the selected four-neighbor component.

Example 4

grid = [[0,3,3,3,3,3,3],[0,1,1,1,1,1,3],[0,2,2,0,2,1,4],[0,1,2,2,2,1,3],[0,1,1,1,1,1,3],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0]]row = 0col = 0return = 12

This exact source testcase removes 12 equal-valued tiles from the selected four-neighbor component.

Example 5

grid = [[0,3,3,3,3,3,3],[0,1,1,1,1,1,3],[0,2,2,0,2,1,4],[0,1,2,2,2,1,3],[0,1,1,1,1,1,3],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0]]row = 3col = 0return = 12

This exact source testcase removes 12 equal-valued tiles from the selected four-neighbor component.

Example 6

grid = [[0,3,3,3,3,3,3],[0,1,1,1,1,1,3],[0,2,2,0,2,1,4],[0,1,2,2,2,1,3],[0,1,1,1,1,1,3],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0]]row = 1col = 1return = 13

This exact source testcase removes 13 equal-valued tiles from the selected four-neighbor component.

Example 7

grid = [[0,3,3,3,3,3,3],[0,1,1,1,1,1,3],[0,2,2,0,2,1,4],[0,1,2,2,2,1,3],[0,1,1,1,1,1,3],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0]]row = 2col = 2return = 6

This exact source testcase removes 6 equal-valued tiles from the selected four-neighbor component.

Example 8

grid = [[0,3,3,3,3,3,3],[0,1,1,1,1,1,3],[0,2,2,0,2,1,4],[0,1,2,2,2,1,3],[0,1,1,1,1,1,3],[0,0,0,0,0,0,0]]row = 0col = 3return = 7

This exact source testcase removes 7 equal-valued tiles from the selected four-neighbor component.

Example 9

grid = [[0]]row = 0col = 0return = 1

This exact source testcase removes 1 equal-valued tiles from the selected four-neighbor component.

Example 10

grid = [[1,1,1],[1,1,1],[1,1,1]]row = 0col = 0return = 9

This exact source testcase removes 9 equal-valued tiles from the selected four-neighbor component.

Constraints

For this exercise, assume 1 <= grid.length, grid[0].length <=30 and every row has the same length.
0 <= grid[r][c] <=9.
0 <= row < grid.length and 0 <= col < grid[0].length.