A recurring Temu coding round built around a poker-hand theme: given a list of cards, detect or complete a straight flush. A common variant asks you to find the missing card needed to complete a hand, where 0 can stand in for either an Ace or a 1.

Requirements - Given a list of characters / values representing playing cards, reason over their ranks (and suits where relevant). - Two variants recur: - Straight flush detection: determine whether (or which) cards form a straight flush — five consecutive ranks in the same suit. - Missing-card completion: given a near-complete hand, find the missing card that completes a straight. Wildcard rule: a 0 may represent either an Ace or a 1 , so both ends of the run must be considered. - In at least one round the interviewer supplied the algorithm up front and asked only for a clean implementation. - The same straight-flush prompt also appears for Ads algorithm-engineer candidates, in a 60-minute round led by an Ads technical VP. There the interviewer again outlined the approach, and the task was mainly to implement it. Notes - The wildcard ambiguity (0 = Ace or 1) is the main correctness trap — clarify how Aces wrap before coding. - These rounds run roughly 10-20 minutes after a long project deep dive, so a clean, bug-free pass matters more than heavy optimization. Preparation - Drill run / sequence detection over sorted rank arrays, grouping by suit with a hashmap. - Write a helper that enumerates both Ace-high and Ace-low (or 0 = Ace / 1) interpretations and re-checks the straight.

Playing Cards: Straight Flush / Missing Card — Temu / Pinduoduo Interview Question

Requirements

Given a list of characters / values representing playing cards, reason over their ranks (and suits where relevant).
Two variants recur:
- Straight flush detection: determine whether (or which) cards form a straight flush — five consecutive ranks in the same suit.
- Missing-card completion: given a near-complete hand, find the missing card that completes a straight. Wildcard rule: a 0 may represent either an Ace or a 1, so both ends of the run must be considered.
In at least one round the interviewer supplied the algorithm up front and asked only for a clean implementation.
The same straight-flush prompt also appears for Ads algorithm-engineer candidates, in a 60-minute round led by an Ads technical VP. There the interviewer again outlined the approach, and the task was mainly to implement it.

Notes

The wildcard ambiguity (0 = Ace or 1) is the main correctness trap — clarify how Aces wrap before coding.
These rounds run roughly 10-20 minutes after a long project deep dive, so a clean, bug-free pass matters more than heavy optimization.

Preparation

Drill run / sequence detection over sorted rank arrays, grouping by suit with a hashmap.
Write a helper that enumerates both Ace-high and Ace-low (or 0 = Ace / 1) interpretations and re-checks the straight.

Requirements

Notes

Preparation

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