@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @ai @ExtraSpecialK @MercurialBlack @meso @mia @p @scenesbycolleen @shibao amusingly enough what actually got me was comprehending the scenario itself. I failed to notice that the depth to which the partitioning search runs is dependent on the direction in which you branch at each step. as soon as I saw "sorted search" I apparently stopped thinking :blobfoxlaughsweat:

as a conceptual explanation I actually really like AI's scenario with the adversary

it's interesting that this property which seems somewhat unusual from the perspective of a search algorithm running on a dataset that fits within RAM is probably the norm in the physical realm (most irl scenarios have severely non-uniform cost functions, resources are usually severely limited, success is often not guaranteed)

but learning that it's been used as an interview question I have to wonder what candidate characteristics the problem was actually filtering for. in a situation where someone is expecting you to pose scenarios with which to quickly demonstrate some basic proficiency I think they're quite likely to miss unusual details and I'm not sure what catching that is supposed to accomplish

:blobcatsuit: aHA! you *thought* I wanted you to demonstrate inverting a binary tree but you were in fact mistaken!

:gura_pain: so then if you hire me, can I expect such confusing communication of requirements to be a regular thing?