Code Room
CodingHardcod-g281
Subject Grid traversalLevel Senior–Staff~40 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

Given a grid of characters where '.' is open, '#' is a wall, '@' is the single start, lowercase 'a'..'f' are keys, and uppercase 'A'..'F' are matching locked doors, return the fewest moves (up/down/left/right) to collect every key that exists in the grid. You may walk over a key cell to pick it up; you may only enter a door cell if you already hold its matching key. Return -1 if collecting all keys is impossible. There are at most 6 distinct keys.

Implement
shortest_path_all_keys(grid: list[str]) → int
Examples
in[["@.a.#","###.#","b.A.B"]]out8
What a strong answer looks like

State your approach and its time/space complexity out loud before you optimize. Handle the edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow), and say why you chose this over the brute force. Green tests are the floor, not the grade.

Vibe coding: describe the solution in plain language (or narrate it) and the coach grades your approach. Generating runnable code from your description is coming next.

Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.