Spotting the Pattern in 10 Seconds

Concepts: pyTwoPointers, pyPatternRecognition

Let me tell you what separates the candidates who ace this from the ones who do not. It is not coding ability. It is the first 30 seconds. The candidate who reads 'given a sorted array, find two numbers that sum to target' and immediately says 'since the input is sorted, I can use two pointers from opposite ends to find the pair in O(n) time and O(1) space' has already earned a strong signal on the pattern recognition rubric item. The candidate who starts writing a nested loop has already lost ground they will spend the rest of the interview trying to recover. The reason two pointers works is logical elimination. When you have two pointers at opposite ends of a sorted array and their sum is too large, you know that every pair involving the right element and any left element further right i