Play along at home while I interview a brave software engineer and explain what they're doing well and how they can better impress an interviewer.

In this week's session I ask the candidate a coding question that is similar in complexity to what Facebook asks (so I'm told). Here it is:

Write a function that takes two lists of colors called secret and guess.

The function returns a list of pegs, which imperfectly indicate how close the guess is to the secret:

• 'O' peg: one of the secret colors is in the guess, BUT in the wrong location
• '1' peg: one of the secret colors is in the guess, AND in the correct location

This question is intentional ambiguous and complicated, to mimic a situation where the candidate needs to clarify the question and load a lot of new context into their brain.

Note: I've even reworded the question above to make it a little bit kinder

Watch the video to find out how things resolve, or ask a friend to learn MasterMind and ask you this question so you can practice communicating about an ambiguous and confusing question under pressure.

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