I just took a test on October 8th. Capital One OA, I passed all four questions in one go! This time, the question bank is almost identical to the codesignal questions of TikTok and Uber, with moderate difficulty and clear logic, and you can get all the ACs in about half an hour. the overall experience is very silky, the questions are familiar, and the details have changed a little, but the core idea is the same.
Q1. Bus Missions Between Alpha and Beta
Description.
You have multiple missions. Each mission requires you to travel from Alpha → Beta → Alpha.
There are bus schedules for both directions.
Each time, you must take the earliest bus you can catch based on your current time.
Return the time when all missions are completed.
Idea:
It's just a simulation. One trip back and forth at a time:
- Find out from the current time Alpha → Beta of the earliest buses;
- When you get to Beta, look for Beta → Alpha of the earliest buses;
- Repeat the above steps missions times and finally output the final return time.
Two pointers can be used to sweep two timetables, the detail is to deal with the ">= current time" condition.
Q2. Count Substrings with Exactly Two Vowels
Description.
Given a string s, count how many substrings of length 3 contain Exactly two vowels (a, e, i, o, u).
Idea:
This is a quick question:
- The length of the sliding window is 3;
- Each time, check if the number of vowels is equal to 2;
- If satisfied the count is added one.
Complexity O(n), less than 5 lines to implement, very straightforward.
Q3. Minimum Height Difference Between Peaks
Description.
You are given an array heights and an integer viewingGap.
Find all pairs (a, b) where |a - b| ≥ viewingGap, and return the minimum absolute difference of their heights.
Idea:
Violence can also pass:
- Double loop to enumerate all pairs that satisfy the distance condition;
- Calculate the absolute value of the height difference;
- Updates the minimum value.
If the input is particularly large, you can also consider double pointers or preprocessing, but generally brute force will AC it.
Q4. Placing Figures on a Grid
Description.
You are given an empty grid of size x × y (initially all zeros) and a list figures of five shapes.
You need to place them sequentially on the grid.
For each figure.
- Scan from top to bottom, left to right;
- Find the first position where the figure can fit.
- Fill those cells with the figure's index (starting from 1);
- If it doesn't fit anywhere, skip it.
Idea:
Classic simulation + realization questions. Scan each shape frame by frame to check if it can be put down.
Note the boundary checking, overlap determination, and updating of the grid. the implementation is cumbersome, but the logic is clear.
OA Summary
This Capital One OA can be described as a "select collection of codesignal hot topics".
All four questions favor simulation and logical thinking, and test detailed implementations rather than complex algorithms.
The order of difficulty is roughly:
Q2 (simple) < Q3 (moderate) < Q1 (moderate to high) < Q4 (more details of implementation)
If you've brushed up on TikTok or Uber OA before, this set can be written almost with your eyes closed.
I passed all 27 minutes this time, all test case 100%.
There's a little bit of "black technology" behind the one-time pass.
This time, I was able to get a full AC in half an hour, and to be honest, it wasn't all luck.
For this interview I found Programhelp for "No Trace Online Assists" that can watch code run in real time, synchronize cadence, and voice cue key points, but leave no trace at all.
This is particularly useful for environments like codesignal, hackerrank - the
You just think and write, and the rest of the debugging, boundaries, and test cases can be stabilized for you in the background.
The official test was ridiculously steady minded.
