Week 16 Cold Revisit

There is no pair of problems this Friday, because this entire week is the cold revisit. Every prior week named two problems to re-solve blind; Week 16 names all of them. The four mock interviews and the recognition speed drill are the capstone cold revisit of the whole course: any problem from Weeks 1 through 15 is in scope, drawn at random, and you do not know which pattern is coming until you have read the statement cold and named it yourself.

This is the same machinery you have run every Friday since Week 2, scaled up to the entire course at once. The first solve of each problem, weeks ago, taught the pattern. The Friday revisits made each one stick. This week proves the whole set sticks together, under time, with a human or the clock watching.

How the revisit runs this week

The schedule and the full instructions live in the week README; do not duplicate it. The rules that carry over from every prior cold revisit:

  • You do not pick the problem, and you do not know its pattern going in. A human partner, a peer platform, or the tutor in graduate mode draws it at random from any prior week. Recognizing it cold, from the statement alone, is the entire point; nobody tells you the pattern.
  • Start each from a blank file. Name the pattern aloud, write the plain-English approach as a comment, then code, while talking through it (this week the talking is part of the test).
  • The 25-minute struggle floor still applies to each mock problem. Past the floor, the hint ladder is one rung per ask, as always. The tutor in graduate mode still refuses to solve and still refuses to name the pattern for you.
  • The judge is the oracle, not the tutor. Submit to LeetCode where you can; in a live mock, drive a worked example by hand and test the edges yourself (empty input, single element, all duplicates, the largest allowed n).
  • Debrief each mock problem with the five questions, and log the outcome, plus every miss from the speed drill, in .tutor/revisit-log.md with dates.

Because the draw spans the whole course, the misses this week are the most valuable signal you will get all program: a problem that comes back slow now is a pattern that did not fully stick, and it goes straight onto the weak-pattern list in your RETROSPECTIVE.md. That list, not a passing judge verdict, is the real output of the week. Where you stall is where your next twelve weeks begin.