Practice: Container With Most Water

Problem: https://leetcode.com/problems/container-with-most-water/

Recognition reminder: you are pinching inward from both ends to maximize an area bounded by the shorter of two walls. “From both ends toward the middle” is the opposite-ends two-pointer cue; the input is not sorted, but you never need it sorted, because the move is driven by which wall is shorter, not by a sum.

Before you start (the five-beat rhythm)

  1. Your Pattern Card for this week is already written.
  2. Name the pattern aloud and write your approach as a plain-English comment before any code.
  3. Struggle floor: 25 minutes unaided. No hints, no AI, no Discuss tab.
  4. If stuck past the floor, ask the tutor for a hint. Six rungs, one per ask.
  5. Debrief in your commit message before moving to the next problem.

Your target

Fill these in yourself before you look at anyone else’s solution:

Target time complexity:  ____
Target space complexity: ____

The brute force checks every pair of walls in O(n^2). The two-pointer solution does it in one pass. The crux is deciding which pointer to move at each step, and proving that move never skips the best answer. Work that argument out before you code it.

Where your code goes

Write your solution in your own work repo (see getting-started.md), not in this folder. This folder ships only the problem spec and a provided-example test (tests/test_provided.py) so you can check the given cases locally before you submit to LeetCode’s judge. The judge is the oracle; the tutor will not confirm your answer by reading it.

Debrief (paste into your commit message) 

1. What pattern did this turn out to be?
2. What was the trigger phrase or input shape that should have made me reach for it?
3. What was the time and space complexity, and what would dominate at scale?
4. What edge case would have broken my first attempt?
5. What would I do differently in three days when I see this cold?