Code RoomStone pile game score
HardPrep Room Coding #1326

Stone pile game score

CodingAlgorithms & data structuresSenior–Staff~40 min

Two players play optimally with a row of stone piles of given positive values. On each turn a player takes the entire pile from either the left or right end. Each player tries to maximize their own total. Return the first player's score minus the second player's score under optimal play. Constraints: 1 <= n <= 500, 1 <= pile <= 1000.

Implement
stone_game_diff(piles: list[int]) → int
Examples
in[[5,3,4,5]]out1
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.

0:00 of about 40 min
InputExpectedGot
[[5,3,4,5]]1not run yetsample