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May 16 · 4 min read · Listen

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4 Hard Python Questions That Will Probably Take You Days to Solve
Difficult questions for Python beginners.

Here are 4 questions that actually took me multiple days to solve when I was still building up my foundations in Python. Do give them a go!

1. Largest Puddle
You are given a 2D list of integers.

map = [
[5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2, 2],
[5, 4, 3, 3, 5, 2, 2],
[5, 3, 5, 3, 5, 2, 2],
[5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2],
[5, 5, 5, 5, 2, 1, 5],
[5, 3, 2, 5, 1, 4, 5],
[5, 5, 2, 5, 5, 3, 5]
]

Each coordinate here represents some land, and the number represents the height of the land. If it rains, water flows from higher coordinates to lower
coordinates (horizontally and vertically).

Puddles collect when it rains and water cannot flow out of the map. Assume that the map is surrounded by land of height 0, and that water that flows
outside of the map is lost and will not form a puddle.

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• The red area is a puddle as water cannot flow out

• The blue area is NOT a puddle, as water can flow out of bounds

• The green area is a puddle as water cannot flow out

• The yellow area is NOT a puddle as water can flow out of bounds

• The pink area is also NOT a puddle as water can flow out of bounds

In our example here, we only have 2 valid puddles — the area circled in red and green.

Our task here would be to write a function largest_puddle(map) that takes in a 2D list map , and returns the coordinates of the largest puddle on the map.

For our above example, this would be our output:

{(1,1), (2,1), (1,2), (1,3), (2,3)}

Note that these are the coordinates of the points that are inside the red area.

2. Finding Island Coordinates

You are given a 2D list of integers (either 0 or 1)

map = [
[1,1,0,1,1],
[1,1,0,0,0],
[0,0,0,0,0],
[1,1,1,0,0],
]

1’s are land coordinates, while 0’s are sea coordinates. Land coordinates that are beside one another horizontally or vertically (not diagonally) make up 1
island. In this map, we have 3 distinct islands:

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Write a function get_islands(map) that takes in a 2D list map , and returns a list of sets. Each set represents 1 island and contains all land coordinates that are

inside the island. Example of what should be returned for the above map:

[
{(0, 1), (1, 0), (0, 0), (1, 1)}, # the top-left island
{(0, 3), (0, 4)}, # the top-right island
{(3, 0), (3, 2), (3, 1)} # the bottom-right island
]

3. Longest Word Chain

You are given a list of English words:

words = ["apple", "orange", "tank", "elephant", "kitten"]

A word chain is a list of English words where the last letter of each word is equal to the first letter of the next word. For instance:

• ["apple", "elephant"] is a valid word chain

• ["tank", "kitten"] is a valid word chain

• ["elephant", "apple"] is not a valid word chain as "apple" does not begin with "t"

• ["apple", "kitten"] is not a valid word chain as "kitten" does not begin with "e"

Write a function longest_word_chain(words) that takes in a list of English words words , and returns the longest possible valid word chain. For the example

above, the longest possible valid word chain is:

["apple", "elephant", "tank", "kitten"]

Or:

["orange", "elephant", "tank", "kitten"]

4. Hollow Diamond
Write a function hollow_diamond(string) that takes in a string string , and prints the following pattern:

string = "abcdefgh"

a
b h
c g
d f
e

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If there are insufficient characters to form a perfect hollow diamond shape, append your string with * characters.
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string = "abcdefghij"

a
b *
c *
d j
e i
f h
g

Another example:

string = "abcdefghijklmnop"

a
b p
c o
d n
e m
f l
g k
h j
i

Yet another example:

string = "abcdefghijklmn"

a
b *
c *
d n
e m
f l
g k
h j
i

Some Final Words

60 1
Hope these riddles are challenging enough for you, and do let me know how long you took to solve all 4 of them.

If they are too easy for you, I challenge you to solve them using a one-liner function. (Please also write an article on how you did it and tag me or something
so I can learn a thing or 2 from you)

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