LeetCode 75 vs Blind 75 vs NeetCode 150: Which to Grind for CS Interviews (2026 Guide)

Which list should you grind: LeetCode 75, Blind 75, or NeetCode 150

Blind 75 if you have under three weeks. NeetCode 150 if you have three to six weeks. LeetCode 75 only if a specific company asked you to use it (rare). That's the decision. Most CS new grads I've seen fail their phone screens didn't fail because they picked the wrong list. They failed because they ground 400+ problems without ever learning to articulate which pattern matches which input shape.

Three lists. Same goal: cover the algorithmic surface area that comes up in coding interviews. Different philosophies on how to get there. This guide breaks down what's different about each list, who built it and why, which one fits your timeline, and how to grind it without falling into the memorization trap that has roommates with 600 problems solved still bombing screens.

What each curated list is

Three distinct projects with three distinct authors and three distinct goals. Knowing the origin story changes how you should use each one.

Blind 75 was compiled in 2020 by a software engineer at Amazon, posted to the anonymous tech forum Blind, and immediately became the most-referenced interview prep list in the CS community. The author's frame: I've passed FAANG screens, here are the 75 problems that hit every pattern category I've seen in real interviews. The list lives at multiple URLs because the original poster never owned the brand. The canonical version is hosted on TeamBlind's site, but most candidates use the NeetCode-hosted version because it has better filtering and video solutions.

NeetCode 150 is a 2021-2022 expansion by a YouTube creator (former Google engineer) who built NeetCode.io as a free curated-list site with companion video solutions. NeetCode took Blind 75, kept what he agreed with, replaced a few problems he thought were weaker, and added 75 more for deeper pattern coverage. NeetCode 150 is the 150-problem version. NeetCode 75 is the smaller curated version that's roughly equivalent to Blind 75. NeetCode All is the 250+ problem version with maximum coverage.

LeetCode 75 is LeetCode's own curated study plan, launched in 2022. It's a 14-week structured path organized by topic, free to access without LeetCode Premium. It's the platform's attempt to compete with the community-driven Blind 75 / NeetCode lists. The problems are well-chosen but the list is less referenced in interview chatter, partly because it's newer and partly because most candidates already use NeetCode's lists as their default.

The practical upshot: when a peer says "I'm grinding Blind 75" they almost always mean the NeetCode-hosted version of Blind 75. When they say "I'm doing NeetCode" they usually mean NeetCode 150. When they mention LeetCode 75 they're talking about the official platform plan.

Side-by-side comparison: LeetCode 75 vs Blind 75 vs NeetCode 150

The headline numbers and where each list shines.

A few caveats on the difficulty mix. NeetCode 150 has more Hard problems in absolute count but a similar Hard percentage to Blind 75. The 21 Easies in NeetCode 150 include some that I'd argue should be skipped if you've already done Blind 75 (they're the same problems counted toward both lists).

Which list should you grind first: decision tree

Two questions decide which list to pick. Be honest about your real time budget. The aspirational version overestimates by 2-3x.

Step 1: How many actual study hours do you have before your next confirmed interview?

• Under 20 hours total → do the Blind 75 Hot Topics subset (about 30 problems, see the priority list below). Full 75 isn't realistic.
• 20-60 hours → full Blind 75.
• 60-120 hours → NeetCode 150.
• 120+ hours → NeetCode 150 plus the LeetCode Top Interview 150 for variant exposure.

Step 2: What's your current pattern recognition level?

• Can't identify patterns yet ("I just try things until something works") → Blind 75 first. Pattern variety beats problem volume at this stage.
• Recognize 5-8 patterns, struggle on others → NeetCode 150 for depth on weak patterns.
• Recognize all 14 patterns, struggle on edge cases → mock interviews, not more solo problems.

The most common mistake is picking the list that sounds most impressive instead of the one that matches your actual budget and skill level. NeetCode 150 with 30 hours of study time is not better than Blind 75 with the same 30 hours. It's worse, because you'll end up with patchy coverage instead of complete coverage.

I'd add: if you're 2 days out from an interview, don't start either list. Switch to the cheat sheet (later in this guide) and 3-5 mock interviews. Cramming Blind 75 in 48 hours produces panic recall, not pattern fluency.

The 75 problems everyone should solve (Blind 75 by category)

This is the canonical Blind 75 list, organized by pattern category. Every CS new grad should be able to solve all 75 within their target time-box.

Array (10 problems)

1. Two Sum (Easy)
2. Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock (Easy)
3. Contains Duplicate (Easy)
4. Product of Array Except Self (Medium)
5. Maximum Subarray (Medium)
6. Maximum Product Subarray (Medium)
7. Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array (Medium)
8. Search in Rotated Sorted Array (Medium)
9. 3Sum (Medium)
10. Container With Most Water (Medium)

Binary (5 problems)

11. Sum of Two Integers (Medium)
12. Number of 1 Bits (Easy)
13. Counting Bits (Medium)
14. Missing Number (Easy)
15. Reverse Bits (Easy)

Dynamic Programming (11 problems)

16. Climbing Stairs (Easy)
17. Coin Change (Medium)
18. Longest Increasing Subsequence (Medium)
19. Longest Common Subsequence (Medium)
20. Word Break (Medium)
21. Combination Sum IV (Medium)
22. House Robber (Medium)
23. House Robber II (Medium)
24. Decode Ways (Medium)
25. Unique Paths (Medium)
26. Jump Game (Medium)

Graph (8 problems)

27. Clone Graph (Medium)
28. Course Schedule (Medium)
29. Pacific Atlantic Water Flow (Medium)
30. Number of Islands (Medium)
31. Longest Consecutive Sequence (Medium)
32. Alien Dictionary (Hard)
33. Graph Valid Tree (Medium)
34. Number of Connected Components in an Undirected Graph (Medium)

Interval (5 problems)

35. Insert Interval (Medium)
36. Merge Intervals (Medium)
37. Non-overlapping Intervals (Medium)
38. Meeting Rooms (Easy)
39. Meeting Rooms II (Medium)

Linked List (6 problems)

40. Reverse a Linked List (Easy)
41. Detect Cycle in a Linked List (Easy)
42. Merge Two Sorted Lists (Easy)
43. Merge K Sorted Lists (Hard)
44. Remove Nth Node From End of List (Medium)
45. Reorder List (Medium)

Matrix (4 problems)

46. Set Matrix Zeroes (Medium)
47. Spiral Matrix (Medium)
48. Rotate Image (Medium)
49. Word Search (Medium)

String (10 problems)

50. Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters (Medium)
51. Longest Repeating Character Replacement (Medium)
52. Minimum Window Substring (Hard)
53. Valid Anagram (Easy)
54. Group Anagrams (Medium)
55. Valid Parentheses (Easy)
56. Valid Palindrome (Easy)
57. Longest Palindromic Substring (Medium)
58. Palindromic Substrings (Medium)
59. Encode and Decode Strings (Medium)

Tree (14 problems)

60. Maximum Depth of Binary Tree (Easy)
61. Same Tree (Easy)
62. Invert Binary Tree (Easy)
63. Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum (Hard)
64. Binary Tree Level Order Traversal (Medium)
65. Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree (Hard)
66. Subtree of Another Tree (Easy)
67. Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Inorder Traversal (Medium)
68. Validate Binary Search Tree (Medium)
69. Kth Smallest Element in a BST (Medium)
70. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree (Easy)
71. Implement Trie (Medium)
72. Add and Search Word (Medium)
73. Word Search II (Hard)

Heap (2 problems)

74. Top K Frequent Elements (Medium)
75. Find Median from Data Stream (Hard)

The 20 highest-priority problems (if you only have a week)

If you're 7 days out and need to maximize ROI, do these 20 first. They cover the patterns most likely to show up in a 45-minute coding round:

1. Two Sum (hash map)
2. Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock (single-pass)
3. Valid Parentheses (stack)
4. Merge Two Sorted Lists (two pointer linked list)
5. Maximum Subarray (Kadane's)
6. Climbing Stairs (DP intro)
7. Number of Islands (DFS / BFS on grid)
8. Coin Change (DP unbounded knapsack)
9. Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters (sliding window)
10. 3Sum (two pointers after sort)
11. Reverse a Linked List (linked list reversal)
12. Detect Cycle in a Linked List (fast/slow pointer)
13. Validate Binary Search Tree (tree DFS with bounds)
14. Binary Tree Level Order Traversal (tree BFS)
15. Container With Most Water (two pointers)
16. Top K Frequent Elements (heap)
17. Group Anagrams (hash map with sorted key)
18. Course Schedule (topological sort)
19. Word Break (DP with strings)
20. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree (tree DFS)

These 20 hit 12 of the 14 core patterns. If you can solve all of them within their time-box (30 minutes Easy, 45 minutes Medium, 60 minutes Hard), you're ready for a CS new-grad phone screen.

NeetCode 150: the extra 75 (what's added beyond Blind 75)

NeetCode 150 is Blind 75 plus 75 more problems. The extras are mostly variations on Blind 75 patterns at slightly higher difficulty or with edge cases the original list skipped. The additions broken down by category:

• Arrays and Hashing: 4 extras including Encode/Decode Strings, Top K Frequent Elements (also in Blind 75), Product Except Self variants.
• Two Pointers: 4 extras, mostly palindrome variations.
• Sliding Window: 4 extras including the harder Permutation in String and Sliding Window Maximum.
• Stack: 7 extras (a big addition, since Blind 75 only had 1 stack problem).
• Binary Search: 6 extras covering rotated arrays, search 2D matrix, time-based key-value stores.
• Linked List: 5 extras with more edge cases on cycle detection and reversal.
• Trees: 10 extras including the harder traversal variants and serialize/deserialize.
• Tries: 1 extra (Design Add and Search Word).
• Heap / Priority Queue: 5 extras.
• Backtracking: 6 extras (a major addition over Blind 75's coverage).
• Graphs: 8 extras including weighted graph problems.
• Advanced Graphs: 5 extras (these are mostly Hard).
• 1-D DP: 7 extras.
• 2-D DP: 5 extras.
• Greedy: 4 extras.
• Intervals: 1 extra.
• Math and Geometry: 5 extras.

The high-value extras for FAANG-level interviews:

1. Sliding Window Maximum (Hard): common at Amazon and Google.
2. Design Twitter (Medium): design-flavored data structure question.
3. Trapping Rain Water (Hard): classic two-pointer / DP question.
4. Largest Rectangle in Histogram (Hard): monotonic stack pattern.
5. Last Stone Weight (Easy): heap warmup with a twist.
6. Cheapest Flights Within K Stops (Medium): Bellman-Ford or modified Dijkstra.
7. Network Delay Time (Medium): Dijkstra introduction.
8. Min Cost to Connect All Points (Medium): minimum spanning tree.
9. Swim in Rising Water (Hard): graph + binary search.
10. Edit Distance (Hard): 2D DP that interviewers love because it tests recurrence reasoning.
11. Partition Equal Subset Sum (Medium): 0/1 knapsack DP.
12. Burst Balloons (Hard): interval DP.
13. Regular Expression Matching (Hard): 2D DP on strings.
14. N-Queens (Hard): backtracking with pruning.
15. Word Search II (Hard): trie + backtracking.

If you're doing NeetCode 150 with limited time, these 15 are the highest-ROI extras to prioritize after finishing Blind 75.

Topic coverage breakdown: arrays, trees, graphs, DP, etc.

How each list distributes problem count across the 14 pattern categories. Use this to spot gaps you might want to fill from a different list.

Two takeaways. First, Blind 75 has zero 2D DP problems and zero Greedy problems. If you're doing only Blind 75 and your target company is known for 2D DP (some payments-infrastructure companies, certain quant firms), supplement with the NeetCode 150 extras in those categories. Second, NeetCode 150's coverage of Advanced Graphs is the biggest gap-filler for senior interviews; for CS new-grad screens, you can deprioritize those.

If you're a CS new grad targeting standard SWE interviews (not quant, not infra-systems-heavy), the highest-frequency patterns to prioritize are: Arrays/Hashing, Trees, Graphs (basic BFS/DFS), Sliding Window, and 1-D DP. Those five categories alone cover ~70% of the questions asked in 2026 phone screens.

How long to grind each list: time budgets per problem type

The realistic time you should spend per problem, broken down by difficulty. These numbers come from observing what works for actual CS new grads, not what reads well on Reddit.

Total time budget for each list:

• Blind 75: 14 Easies × 30m + 49 Mediums × 45m + 12 Hards × 60m = 7h + 36h 45m + 12h = ~56 hours of grinding. Plus 30% for review sessions = ~73 hours total. At 3 hours/day that's 24 days. At 5 hours/day that's 15 days.
• NeetCode 150: 21 Easies × 30m + 90 Mediums × 45m + 39 Hards × 60m = 10.5h + 67.5h + 39h = ~117 hours grinding. Plus 30% review = ~152 hours total. At 3 hours/day that's 50 days. At 5 hours/day that's 30 days.
• LeetCode 75: 6 Easies × 30m + 53 Mediums × 45m + 16 Hards × 60m = 3h + 39.75h + 16h = ~59 hours. Plus review = ~77 hours total.

Add 10-20% buffer if you're new to a category. Some patterns (DP, graphs) take longer to internalize. Two pointers and sliding window come faster.

One adjustment for the time-anxious: if you only have 2 weeks at 4 hours/day (56 hours total), prioritize Blind 75 strict (~56 hours), not NeetCode 150 with patchy coverage (~50% complete, 117-hour target). Complete coverage of a smaller list beats incomplete coverage of a bigger one.

Coding interview cheat sheet: top 20 patterns quick reference

The 16 algorithmic patterns that cover ~95% of coding interview questions, with when-to-use and template-code structure. Memorize the pattern names and the input-shape triggers. The templates are reminders, not the prep itself.

Print this. Pin it above your desk. Pattern recognition is the prep. Solving the problem is the test.

The two patterns most CS new grads weakest on, based on what I see in mock interviews: backtracking and dynamic programming. Both feel intuitive once you've done 10 problems in each. Until then they feel impossible. Don't skip them. Both show up in 2026 phone screens often.

When to switch from grinding LeetCode to mock interviews

The biggest mistake CS new grads make in LeetCode prep is grinding past 150-200 problems before doing a single mock interview. The signal-to-effort ratio of solo grinding falls off a cliff somewhere between problem 75 and problem 150. After that, the high-return work is verbalization, clarifying questions, recovery from bugs, and tradeoff discussion. None of those build in solo practice.

A friend texted me their grind log: 600 LeetCode problems solved, 0 mock interviews done. They'd bombed every phone screen they'd had. The fix wasn't problem 601. It was learning to think out loud while solving problem 76 again, this time with someone watching.

Specific case from the 2025-2026 cycle: Jordan, 23, May 2025 BS CS, 487 applications, 14 phone screens, zero offers in 11 months. He'd solved roughly 600 LeetCode problems before the Meta phone screen and bombed it 8 minutes in on a two-pointer variant. His own write-up after: "the engineer was nice tho, but I pattern-matched a memorized solution and it didn't apply." The fix wasn't problem 601. It was 5 timed mocks where he had to narrate, get interrupted, recover, and explain tradeoffs. The next phone screen landed an onsite.

Signal you should switch from grinding to mocks:

• You've completed Blind 75 (or 75 problems of NeetCode 150).
• You can identify the pattern for a new problem within 2 minutes of reading it (even if you can't solve it yet).
• You've started seeing duplicate problems across lists (every list shares ~30 problems with the others).
• Your solo solve rate on Medium is above 60% within the time-box.

When you hit those, switch your study mix to:

• 70% mock interviews (3-5 per week, with peers or paid services).
• 20% pattern review (redo 5-10 problems from the cheat sheet daily, focus on weakest categories).
• 10% new problems (the next NeetCode 150 problems or LeetCode Top 150 variants).

The mock interview format that works best for CS new grads is the 45-minute peer mock. One person interviews, one solves, then swap roles. Each mock includes: 5 minutes warm-up chat, 5 minutes clarifying questions on the problem, 25-30 minutes solving with narration, 5 minutes feedback. Do at least 8-10 of these before your next real interview.

If you don't have a peer to mock with, paid services work. Free LeetCode mock interviews work too if you can find a partner. Even a friend who isn't a software engineer can sit in and watch you narrate. The verbalization muscle is the load-bearing piece. The interviewer-quality only matters once you've done 5+ mocks.

LeetCode Playground vs solving real problems

LeetCode Playground is the in-browser code editor for testing snippets without solving an official problem. Lots of new grads ask about it because it shows up in search results next to "LeetCode practice." It's a tool, not a study path.

What Playground is good for:

• Pre-interview warm-up. Spend 5-10 minutes the morning of an interview rewriting your most-rehearsed template (e.g., a binary search template or a BFS template) in your interview language. Reactivate muscle memory.
• Testing language defaults. Make sure your environment has the language version, standard library, and IO conventions you expect.
• Quick what-if explorations after you've solved a problem. "What if the input was a stream instead of a list?"

What Playground is not good for:

• Replacing real problem-solving practice. The Playground lets you skip the difficulty of reading a problem statement and deriving a solution. That's exactly the skill the interview tests.
• "Just practicing coding" without a target problem. Untargeted Playground time is the same trap as opening LeetCode's discuss tab and reading solutions for an hour. Feels productive. Builds nothing.

The rule of thumb: 5-10% of your prep time is Playground time (mostly pre-interview warmups). The other 90-95% is solving real curated problems with a time-box.

Honest assessment: is the official LeetCode 75 worth doing

The candid take on LeetCode 75, since it gets less love than Blind 75 / NeetCode 150 and you might be wondering whether to bother.

LeetCode 75 is fine. Not the best choice, not the worst. The problems are well-chosen. The 14-week structure is sensible. The progression from arrays to DP to graphs follows the natural learning curve. The pacing (about 5 problems per week) is realistic for someone studying alongside school or work.

Where it loses to Blind 75 / NeetCode 150: less community reference, fewer external video solutions, slower pace if you're under time pressure. The 14-week target assumes you have 14 weeks. Most CS new grads doing active interviews don't.

The case for using LeetCode 75 specifically: if a target company explicitly says "we recommend LeetCode 75" in their prep email (rare but happens), or if you're 8+ weeks out and want LeetCode's own opinion on pacing. Otherwise, Blind 75 / NeetCode 150 is the better default.

The one thing LeetCode 75 does well that the others don't: it tracks your completion percentage on the platform itself, which gives gamified streak motivation. Some candidates find that helpful for consistency. If checking boxes on the official platform helps you show up daily, that's a real benefit worth more than the list's slight weakness in problem selection.

Common mistakes when grinding curated LeetCode lists

The pattern of mistakes I see across hundreds of new-grad interview reports. Each one has a fix that costs nothing but discipline.

Treating it like a checklist. Solving 75 problems in order, checking the box, never revisiting. The list isn't a checklist. It's a pattern-coverage map. The goal is pattern fluency, not problem count. Mark each problem you solve with three columns: solved cold, solved with hints, solved after looking at solution. Revisit anything in columns 2 and 3 within 7 days.

Skipping the "explain your reasoning" step. Most candidates solve in silence, get the right answer, and move on. The interviewer grades reasoning, not correctness. Practice narrating out loud while solving, even when alone. The first 10 times feel awkward. By problem 30 it becomes automatic.

Memorizing solutions instead of patterns. The trap of grinding too fast. You see a problem, recognize it as "the Top K Frequent Elements one," and write the memorized heap solution. Then the interview asks a slight variant ("Top K Most Recent" instead of "Most Frequent") and the memorized solution doesn't apply. Solve the underlying pattern, not the specific problem.

Doing all Easy first. Easies are warmup. Spending 2 weeks on Easies and then 2 days on Mediums is a known anti-pattern. Spend 60% of your time on Mediums. Easies build confidence; Mediums build skill. Hards build resilience.

Avoiding hard patterns. Backtracking, DP, graphs. The patterns most candidates skip because they "haven't clicked yet." They don't click because you skipped them. Set a 30-minute timer, attempt the problem, look at the solution, redo it the next day. The third attempt is when it clicks. The first two feel like nothing's working.

Grinding without time-boxing. 4-hour solo grinds on one problem feel productive. They aren't. The interview gives you 30-45 minutes. Practice within that constraint. If you can't solve in the time-box, the issue is pattern unfamiliarity, not insufficient grinding. Look at the solution and move on.

Not redoing problems after seeing the solution. Reading the solution feels like learning. It isn't, unless you redo the problem from scratch within 24-48 hours. That second attempt is where the pattern moves from short-term memory into recall.

Comparing your problem count to peers. Jordan-style anxiety: classmate posts "300 problems and counting" on LinkedIn. You feel behind. Resist. Problem count is a vanity metric. The signal is solve rate on novel problems within the time-box. Optimize for that, not for raw count.

I'd add one more from the founder's seat: don't pick a list and then second-guess it after problem 10. Switching lists mid-grind is the most common time waste I see. Pick Blind 75, do all 75 in order, then evaluate whether to continue to NeetCode 150. Switching is paralysis disguised as discipline.

How AI tools fit into LeetCode prep in 2026

Specific guidance because the question comes up in every CS new-grad cohort. AI tools can accelerate prep or rot it, depending on how you use them.

Useful AI uses for LeetCode prep:

• After 30 minutes of stuck-ness, asking AI for a hint that nudges you toward the pattern without giving the solution.
• Explaining time/space complexity tradeoffs between two approaches you've already coded.
• Debugging your code by pasting the broken solution and asking "what's wrong with my logic on this test case."
• Reviewing your solution for readability and idiom: "is this Python code idiomatic, or am I writing Java in Python?"
• Quizzing yourself: "give me a similar problem to Container With Most Water that uses two pointers but with a different objective."

Harmful AI uses for LeetCode prep:

• Asking for the full solution before attempting the problem yourself.
• Pasting a problem you haven't read and asking AI to walk you through it.
• Using AI to "study" by reading explanations without coding anything.
• Asking AI to generate problems for you to solve (the canonical lists are better-calibrated).

The mental test: am I using AI to extend my problem-solving ability, or to skip the problem-solving? The first compounds. The second rots the recall muscle that interviews test.

A few candidates I've watched ask AI to explain the solution before they've struggled. They feel like they understand. Then the interview hits a variant, they have no derivation muscle, and they freeze. Struggle first. AI second. Always.

How to build a personal interview cheat sheet (one page)

The most useful interview preparation artifact is a one-page cheat sheet you build yourself. Not downloaded, not copy-pasted from a Reddit thread. Built by hand, from memory, after you've done the work.

The act of building the sheet is the prep. The sheet itself is a morning-of warm-up, not a study tool.

What goes on the one page:

• The 16 algorithmic patterns (from the table above), with one-line trigger and one-line template.
• Time complexity of common operations on the 4 core data structures (array, hash map, heap, tree/BST).
• The Python (or your language) idioms that come up most: enumerate, zip, collections.Counter, defaultdict, heapq.heappush/heappop, list comprehension, generator expression.
• Your personal "warm-up problem": a problem you've solved 20+ times and can reproduce in 5 minutes. Useful for the first 5 minutes of an interview when nerves are highest.
• The communication checklist: clarify, plan out loud, code, test, edge cases.

Format that works: one page, two columns, hand-written or typed in a fixed-width font. Print it. Look at it for 5 minutes before each interview. Don't try to memorize from it during the interview. By then the prep should already be in muscle memory.

Build it in week 3 of your prep, after you've done the bulk of the problem-solving. Writing it before you've done the work is like writing exam notes before you've taken the class.

Coding interview format by company size and stage

Not every company uses the same coding interview format. Knowing what to expect saves you from over-preparing for the wrong style.

Two patterns worth noting. First, hard-problem percentage scales with company prestige tier. Series-B startups rarely give Hard problems; FAANGs and quants do. If you're not targeting FAANG or quant, deprioritize the Hard problems on these lists and focus on Medium fluency.

Second, format matters as much as content. A take-home assessment lets you grind without time pressure but tests for production-quality code (tests, README, code style). A live coding round tests speed under observation. Find out which format your target company uses before deciding what to over-rehearse.

Key terms

Blind 75

The 75-problem curated interview prep list compiled by an Amazon engineer in 2020 and posted to the anonymous tech forum Blind. The most-referenced community list in CS interview prep. Covers ~14 pattern categories with one problem per pattern as the minimum coverage path.

NeetCode 150

The 150-problem expansion of Blind 75 curated by YouTube creator NeetCode (former Google engineer). Includes all of Blind 75 plus 75 more problems for deeper pattern coverage. Hosted on NeetCode.io with companion video solutions.

LeetCode 75

LeetCode's official 14-week curated study plan launched in 2022. Free without LeetCode Premium. 75 problems organized by topic across 14 weeks. Less community-referenced than Blind 75 but well-structured.

LeetCode Top Interview 150

A separate LeetCode curated list focused on problems most frequently asked in big-tech interviews. Distinct from LeetCode 75 (which is a study plan) and from NeetCode 150 (which is a third-party curated list).

Algorithmic pattern

A reusable solution shape (e.g., sliding window, two pointers, BFS) that applies to a category of problems. Pattern recognition is the load-bearing skill in coding interviews. The goal of grinding curated lists is to internalize patterns, not memorize specific problems.

Time-boxing

The discipline of setting a fixed time limit per problem attempt (30 minutes Easy, 45 minutes Medium, 60 minutes Hard) and looking at the solution when the limit hits. Prevents the 4-hour solo grind on a single problem, which is a known anti-pattern.

Mock interview

A simulated interview round with a peer or paid service that tests not just problem-solving but verbalization, clarifying questions, and recovery from bugs under live observation. The high-return prep activity after pattern coverage is complete.

Editorial

The official LeetCode-provided solution to a problem, available on the problem's page. The recommended path: attempt cold, time-box, look at editorial when the time-box hits, then redo the problem from scratch the next day.

Pattern recognition window

The first 2-3 minutes of reading a new problem, during which you identify which algorithmic pattern fits the input shape. The single most-trainable interview skill, and the one solo grinding builds best.

Related guides

• Python interview questions: the language-specific concepts that pair with these algorithm patterns for CS new-grad coding screens.
• LeetCode assessments tech interview guide: how the LeetCode platform itself is used in real interview assessments, beyond the curated lists.
• HackerRank tech interview guide: the platform most likely to host the OA where you'll apply these patterns.
• Technical phone screen tactics: the round where this prep gets tested under live observation.
• Mock interview practice: how to drill these patterns under realistic timing once you've done 75 problems.
• System design basics for new grads: the next round after the coding screen at most large employers.
• The 30-day CS interview prep plan: how to fit LeetCode grinding into a structured 30-day timeline with mock interviews and system design.
• The CS interview cheating economy: why some candidates skip grinding entirely and what that costs them.

About the author: Alex Chen is the founder of InterviewChamp.AI, building AI interview prep for the new-grad CS market and writing about the modern interview gauntlet from the inside.