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Grokking the Coding Interview Patterns in JavaScript

Open the Lock

Understand how to apply breadth-first search to navigate a combination lock puzzle. Learn to calculate the minimum moves to reach a target while avoiding deadends. This lesson helps you implement an algorithm that traverses all possible lock states systematically to find the shortest path.

We'll cover the following...

Statement

You are given a lock with 44 circular wheels, each containing digits '0' through '9'.

  • The wheels can rotate freely and wrap around cyclically; turning '9' forward leads to '0', and turning '0’ backward leads to '9'.

  • Each move consists of rotating one wheel by one position (either forward or backward). ...