Detect anagram in matrix
Last updated: January 17, 2026
Quick Overview
Given a matrix of characters, write a function to detect all occurrences of anagrams of a given target string within the matrix. The function should return the starting coordinates of each anagram found, and the search should consider all possible directions (horizontally, vertically, and diagonally). The input will consist of the matrix and the target string, and the output should be a list of coordinate pairs.
Slack
January 17, 2026182
12
3,842 solved
Given a matrix of characters, write a function to detect all occurrences of anagrams of a given target string within the matrix. The function should return the starting coordinates of each anagram found, and the search should consider all possible directions (horizontally, vertically, and diagonally). The input will consist of the matrix and the target string, and the output should be a list of coordinate pairs.
Slack uses this problem in the Technical Screen to evaluate your algorithmic thinking. They expect you to discuss multiple approaches, analyze trade-offs between them, and implement the optimal solution with clean, readable code.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Quickly identify the optimal approach and its theoretical basis
- Handle complex algorithm design with multiple interacting components
- Write concise, elegant code under time pressure
- Prove correctness of your approach and discuss alternative solutions
- Optimize beyond the obvious: discuss constant factor improvements
- Address follow-up variations and explain how the solution generalizes
Key Topics to Cover
How to Approach This
- Clarify input constraints and edge cases before writing code.
- Walk through your approach verbally and confirm with the interviewer before coding.
- Start with a brute force solution, then optimize. Mention time and space complexity.
- Test your solution with examples, including edge cases like empty input or duplicates.
- Consider common patterns: sliding window, two pointers, hash map, BFS/DFS, dynamic programming.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- Can you solve this in a single pass?
- How would you parallelize this solution?
- What happens if the input contains duplicates?
- How would you modify your solution to handle streaming input?
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Practice DSA ProblemsSample Answer
Problem Analysis
To detect anagrams in a matrix, we need to consider various traversal directions: horizontally (left-to-right and right-to-left), vertically (top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top), and diagonally (both mai...
Approach
- Frequency Count: First, create a frequency count of the target string using a dictionary. For example, for the target 'abc', the frequency count would be {'a': 1, 'b': 1, 'c': 1}.
- **Traversa...
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