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Problem: Last Stone Weight

Explore how to apply heap data structures in Python to solve the Last Stone Weight problem. Learn to simulate max heaps using negation, efficiently retrieve and smash the two heaviest stones repeatedly, and understand the algorithm's time and space complexity to implement an optimized solution.

Statement

You are given an integer array stones, where each element stones[i] represents the weight of the ithi^{th} stone.

A game is played with these stones. In each turn, the two heaviest stones are selected and smashed together. Let the weights of these two stones be x and y, where x \leq y. The outcome of the smash is as follows:

  • If x == y, both stones are completely destroyed.

  • If x \neq ...