LeetCode 997, Easy. Topics: Array, Hash Table, Graph Theory. View on LeetCode.
Generate this problem as a practice environment: tested reference solution, 18 parametrized pytest cases, and a playground notebook:
Problem
In a town, there are n people labeled from 1 to n. There is a rumor that one of these people is secretly the town judge.
If the town judge exists, then:
- The town judge trusts nobody.
- Everybody (except for the town judge) trusts the town judge.
- There is exactly one person that satisfies properties 1 and 2.
You are given an array trust where trust[i] = [ai, bi] representing that the person labeled ai trusts the person labeled bi. If a trust relationship does not exist in trust array, then such a trust relationship does not exist.
Return the label of the town judge if the town judge exists and can be identified, or return -1 otherwise.
Examples
Constraints
- 1 <= n <= 1000
- 0 <= trust.length <= 10^4
trust[i].length == 2
- All the pairs of
trust are unique.
ai != bi
- 1 <= ai, bi <= n
Solution
Reference implementation from solution.py on GitHub, full suite in test_solution.py:
Complexity
NeetCode 250, NeetCode All. Last modified on September 7, 2026