Week 1 — Execution Baseline + First Patterns
Days 1–7 · 5 flagship problems · ~25 LC Bank · 0 mocks
Goals
- Internalize the 16-step framework on trivial problems (so you can use it on hard ones)
- Two-pass over Phase 0 labs
- Acquire HashMap-1-pass, Stack-validation, Greedy-1-pass, Two-pointer-from-end, 1D-DP-intro patterns
Daily Schedule
| Day | Reading | Flagship | Bank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | FRAMEWORK.md re-read; phase-00 labs 1–3 | p01 Two Sum | 3 LC Easies |
| Tue | phase-00 labs 4–5 | p02 Valid Parentheses | 3 LC Easies |
| Wed | phase-00 labs 6–7 | p03 Best Time Buy/Sell | 3 LC Easies |
| Thu | phase-01 §1 Arrays | p04 Merge Sorted Array | 3 LC Easies |
| Fri | phase-01 §2 Strings + §6 Heap intro | p05 Climbing Stairs | 3 LC Easies |
| Sat | Re-solve p01–p05 unaided | — | 5 LC Easies + REVIEW |
| Sun | COMMUNICATION.md + spaced repetition logging | — | 5 LC Easies |
LC Bank (Problems to solve on your own after flagship)
LC 217 (Contains Duplicate), 169 (Majority Element), 268 (Missing Number), 53 (Maximum Subarray), 136 (Single Number), 283 (Move Zeroes), 26 (Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array), 27 (Remove Element), 1 (Two Sum — variant), 9 (Palindrome Number), 14 (Longest Common Prefix), 28 (strStr — naive), 35 (Search Insert Position), 66 (Plus One), 67 (Add Binary), 69 (Sqrt(x) — binary search intro), 88 (Merge Sorted Array — variant), 100 (Same Tree), 101 (Symmetric Tree), 104 (Maximum Depth — preview), 108 (Sorted Array → BST), 112 (Path Sum), 118 (Pascal’s Triangle), 226 (Invert Binary Tree), 543 (Diameter of Binary Tree).
Readiness Gate
- All 5 flagship problems Section 9 checklists green
- 25+ Bank problems solved unaided
- Framework Steps 1–9 executed audibly (talk through) on at least 10 problems
- No off-by-one errors on 5 consecutive binary-search-flavored problems
- Honest self-assessment: Level Delta = Mid or above on at least 3 flagships