#1753 - Maximum Score From Removing Stones

Medium • View on LeetCode • View on GitHub

Problem Description

You are playing a solitaire game with three piles of stones of sizes a, b, and c respectively.

Each turn you choose two different non-empty piles, take one stone from each, and add 1 point to your score. The game stops when there are fewer than two non-empty piles (meaning there are no more available moves).

Given three integers a, b, and c return the maximum score you can get.

Solution

/**
 * @param {number} a
 * @param {number} b
 * @param {number} c
 * @return {number}
 */
var maximumScore = function(a, b, c) {
  const piles = [a, b, c].sort((x, y) => y - x);
  let score = 0;

  while (piles[0] > 0 && piles[1] > 0) {
    piles[0]--;
    piles[1]--;
    score++;
    piles.sort((x, y) => y - x);
  }

  return score;
};