LeetCode 757, Hard. Topics: Array, Greedy, Sorting. View on LeetCode.
Generate this problem as a practice environment: tested reference solution, 18 parametrized pytest cases, and a playground notebook:
Problem
You are given a 2D integer array intervals where intervals[i] = [starti, endi] represents all the integers from starti to endi inclusively.
A containing set is an array nums where each interval from intervals has at least two integers in nums.
For example, if intervals = [[1,3], [3,7], [8,9]], then [1,2,4,7,8,9] and [2,3,4,8,9] are containing sets.
Return the minimum possible size of a containing set.
Examples
Explanation: let nums = [2, 3, 4, 8, 9]. It can be shown that there cannot be any containing array of size 4.
Explanation: let nums = [2, 3, 4]. It can be shown that there cannot be any containing array of size 2.
Explanation: let nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It can be shown that there cannot be any containing array of size 4.
Constraints
1 <= intervals.length <= 3000
intervals[i].length == 2
0 <= starti < endi <= 10^8
Solution
Reference implementation from solution.py on GitHub, full suite in test_solution.py:
Complexity
Last modified on September 7, 2026