Pairing Socks
Time limit1sMemory limit512 MB
Given a sequence of 2n socks, find the minimum number of moves to pair all socks using two stacks with three allowed operations, or report impossible.
- Level
Hard8 of 10
- Topics
- Stack, Greedy, Simulation, Implementation
- Solved
- No attempts yet
Problem
Simone's mother often complains that Simone never helps with chores at home. In return, Simone often points out that many of the chores her mother assigns are NP-complete to perform optimally (cleaning the house, seating her little brothers around the dinner table in a conflict-free way, splitting the brothers' Halloween loot fairly, and so on).
Being a computer scientist, her mother finds this a fair objection. Looking over her list of potential chores, she picked one she thinks should be easy to solve: pairing a number of different kinds of socks.
In the beginning, there are socks stacked in a pile. To pair the socks, Simone can repeatedly make one of three moves:
- Move the sock from the top of the original pile to the top of an auxiliary pile (which is originally empty).
- Move the sock from the top of the auxiliary pile to the top of the original pile.
- Pair the top socks from each pile together, if they are of the same type.
Simone only has one auxiliary pile, for a total of two piles. There may be more than two socks of each type. In this case, Simone can pair them up however she wants.
Your task is to help Simone determine the least number of moves she needs to pair the socks, if it is possible at all.
Input
The first line of input contains the integer () as described above.
The next line contains integers ( for each ), where denotes the type of sock number . Initially, sock 1 is at the top of the pile and sock is at the bottom.
Output
If Simone can pair all the socks, output the least number of moves she needs to do this. If it is impossible to do so, output impossible.