Does studying logic puzzles help to pass interviews or limit you? [closed]

Question

It is still under question—a Programmers.SE question—if competence in solving logic puzzles is a good assessment of programming skills. Nevertheless, they're still used, and chances are high that you will bump into such a question when you decide to change your employer next time.

Mr. Job recommends in a comment to the answer that you should just "study the puzzles, and pass interview". Indeed, there is a plenty of them, and you may have a lot of fun and practice solving them, and you will probably demonstrate (to yourself only, unfortunately) your ability to crack them without any help.

However, I'm not sure how it would help you at an interview.

Assume you've studied a lot of these puzzles, and come to a job interview. The interviewer asks you to solve X, and...you already know how, because you've solved it before. You tell that you've solved this puzzle before, but it does not matter that you've solved it: what counts is that you've seen it, and thus the interviewer can't tell if you're capable to solve it, or just read the solution coined by someone else. He picks another puzzle—and you've seen it before too. And again, and again.

Finally, the interviewer finds a problem you haven't seen: a badly formulated one with quite a stupid and illogical solution (that's why you haven't encountered it during your practice). No wonder you fail to solve it. But the assessment's been already made: you failed to solve a puzzle you were eligible for.

The question is, how should you behave if you like logic puzzles, solve a lot of them (on your own), and encounter them at an interview?

Answer 1

While searching for my current job, I had a string of interviews with various companies that all did puzzles in one interview or another. They all used common questions at that. After the first interview I took some time to look up puzzle questions and how to answer them.

When I came to the next interview and the question was one I knew, I commented to the interviewer "Actually, I have seen this question before," and gave the normal answer. The interviewer thanked me for my honesty then said 'so, let's take it a step further then.....' and we looked at the puzzle from another angle. The next question I had seen he asked me a similar question but one that was slightly harder.

So, to answer your question, if the interviewer is on the ball and is actually using these questions as a basis for something other than 'b/c the company told me to ask them,' they can get a lot out of you even if you have seen the questions before. It can show them how you use current knowledge to help you understand a similar problem.

Answer 2

Neither. I think studying logic problems is fun, and that's about it.

I think you might be underestimating interviewers. They're often engineers like you and me. When I interview, I don't just ask for the answer, I ask the candidate to discuss it. If they've heard the problem before, I change it around. I ask for a general solution. I ask which constraints are necessary for solvability and which are irrelevant.

If you're a clever candidate, you can try these strategies yourself. The interviewer will be able to figure it out.

EDIT: If a candidate solves a problem without mentioning that he's heard it before, and I asked if they had heard it before, and they say yes ... Bam, interview over. Get out.

Answer 3

Goals of an interview from an employee perspective: 1. Figure out if I want to work there. 2. Impress them enough to hire you.

Except that usually you first have to impress them to move far enough to have a chance to figure out if you want to work there. Hopefully you have done your homework through networking, google searches, hacking?, targeted resume, to asses the company, but you still need to asses the team, culture, etc.

You could admit that you have seen a bunch of puzzles before and hope that this impresses them.

• If it does not and you end up failing - you missed out on opportunity to figure out whether you want to work there and impress them enough.
• If you pretend to solve a puzzle in 5 minutes, and then another one in another 5 minutes, and hopefully move on, you will then have A) Better chance to land a job there, B) A shot at better salary (even if you end up quitting, high salary will help with getting next high salary), C) More time to figure out if you want to work there and interviewers more willing to talk about what is in it for you (and more likely to lie about that).

If they are complete idiots, you can still ask for a 2x your market rate, and either get overpaid, working with retards, or make them feel like they have just let an Einstein slip by because they are underfunded. The later is fun, but does not help you much.

I would still say: "solve those puzzles ASAP and move on with the interview". If you have not seen a puzzle before and it is decent, you might enjoy doing there, unless you have test anxiety.

However, think hard before accepting an offer. There are many crappy employers, but decent ones are out there. After a dozen of interviews something will come up. Hopefully a puzzle is not the only factor/part of the interview process. Better yet if it is a pre-interview screen that you have a bunch of time to work on and submit.

Answer 4

I was actually a philosophy major in addition to being a comp sci major. Nothing I like more than being handed a logic puzzle.

I find it funny that schools persist in the belief that it is math and only math that prepares you for a career in comp sci, but businesses obsess over logic problems more even than sample code. I went to a great school for compsci and philosophy, and the compsci logic courses were a complete joke...Even though programming is one of the only practical applications of deductive logic, it's not treated seriously.

I think on some level that this is recognized: that it is understood that you must be able to reason deductively at a high level to be a good programmer, and that is the reason people focus on the logic puzzles. Asking someone to iterate a linked list on a whiteboard is all well and good, but it just tells you that they can complete a routine technical task, not that they can reason.

Answer 5

I will answer the puzzles, whether I had seen them before or not.

Only if asked by the interviewer if I have seen the puzzle before would I tell them.

As far as something like this is concerned, an interviewer should be prepared for candidates that have seen his puzzles before and adjust accordingly.

Frankly, if this (and only this) is what is used to asses my programming skills, I'd rather not work there.

Answer 6

If you're studying logic puzzles to prepare for the interview, you wouldn't normally volunteer that you'd seen the puzzle (or one generally similar), you'd simply present the solution and let the interviewer assume that you were coming up with the solution on the spot.

If you just happen to enjoy these sorts of puzzles, on the other hand, and you're uncomfortable implying to the interviewer that you're solving a problem on the spot, it's much more likely that if you say you already knew the answer to the first couple of problems that you'd end up with a problem that strikes you initially as new but then you realize can be transformed into a problem that you have seen before. In that case, it strikes me as perfectly reasonable to present that as your solution just as you would prove that something is NP complete by showing how it reduces to a problem that has already been proved NP complete rather than actually showing that the problem itself is NP complete.

Answer 7

as with everything, all you learn you may have some kind indirect or direct use so I don't think learning puzzles is a bad thing. That said, knowing how to solve puzzles seems rather questionable if it has broad use in "normal" programming. In an interview focus is often on other things, like if the candidate can actually program, has he/she the right can-do attitude and wants to learn, can he communicate clearly and so on. puzzle solving seem more like a curiosity than a necessity in a candidate.

Answer 8

Unfortunately, this puzzle solving type of interviews started because of one man's obsession with puzzles Typically, some interviewers stick to language agnostic questions dealing with algorithm and data structures, but some go a step ahead and ask these class of questions. There might be some truth to the argument that logic puzzles test an engineer's ability to deduce solutions to new problems, but it is a totally different fact that when it comes to real work, all they have is maintaining code written by the cheapest vendor.

If the interviewer pick one from a pile of puzzles, and without understanding the reason but only tries to compare answers, the best you could do is to attempt to solve it. Preparation definitely helps. When you encounter a puzzle you have solved before, I do not know if you should act as if you are solving then, or you should admit that you know the puzzles (as another answer points out.) The other option probably is to ignore these, and stick to technical questions, and tell them that though you will attempt the question, you do not believe that it truly reflects your strengths.

Answer 9

If you study logic puzzles correctly (instead of memorizing them in rot fashion), then they should help you in problem solving, reasoning and deductive logic (skills that have application in any type of work requiring analysis.)

Whether they help you with a particular interview, that's an open question as every interview is different (not counting any agendas brought to the table by the interviewer.)

They will certainly not help you if you treat them as square pegs to be pushed in whatever hole is presented to you, or if you try to use them in cookie cutter fashion.

Speaking of which, if you haven't read "Mocking a Mocking Bird", you should.