1908. Game of Nim

https://leetcode.com/problems/game-of-nim

Description

Alice and Bob take turns playing a game with Alice starting first.

In this game, there are n piles of stones. On each player's turn, the player should remove any positive number of stones from a non-empty pile of his or her choice. The first player who cannot make a move loses, and the other player wins.

Given an integer array piles, where piles[i] is the number of stones in the ith pile, return true if Alice wins, or false if Bob wins.

Both Alice and Bob play optimally.

Example 1:

**Input:** piles = [1]
**Output:** true
**Explanation:** There is only one possible scenario:
- On the first turn, Alice removes one stone from the first pile. piles = [0].
- On the second turn, there are no stones left for Bob to remove. Alice wins.

Example 2:

**Input:** piles = [1,1]
**Output:** false
**Explanation:** It can be proven that Bob will always win. One possible scenario is:
- On the first turn, Alice removes one stone from the first pile. piles = [0,1].
- On the second turn, Bob removes one stone from the second pile. piles = [0,0].
- On the third turn, there are no stones left for Alice to remove. Bob wins.

Example 3:

**Input:** piles = [1,2,3]
**Output:** false
**Explanation:** It can be proven that Bob will always win. One possible scenario is:
- On the first turn, Alice removes three stones from the third pile. piles = [1,2,0].
- On the second turn, Bob removes one stone from the second pile. piles = [1,1,0].
- On the third turn, Alice removes one stone from the first pile. piles = [0,1,0].
- On the fourth turn, Bob removes one stone from the second pile. piles = [0,0,0].
- On the fifth turn, there are no stones left for Alice to remove. Bob wins.

Constraints:

  • n == piles.length

  • 1 <= n <= 7

  • 1 <= piles[i] <= 7

Follow-up: Could you find a linear time solution? Although the linear time solution may be beyond the scope of an interview, it could be interesting to know.

ac

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