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Grokking the Coding Interview Patterns in JavaScript

Solution: Minimum Moves to Spread Stones Over Grid

Explore the method of solving a 3x3 grid stone distribution problem by using backtracking. Understand how to identify empty cells and extra stones, calculate moves via Manhattan distance, and recursively find the minimal moves required to place one stone in each cell efficiently.

We'll cover the following...

Statement

Given a 2D grid of integers of size (3×33 \times 3), where each value represents the number of stones in the given cell, return the minimum number of moves required to place exactly one stone in each grid cell.

Constraints:

  • Only one stone can be moved in one move.

  • Stone from a cell can only be moved to another cell if they are adjacent (share a side).

  • The sum of all stones in the grid must be equal to 99.

  • grid.length, grid[i].length ...