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The Rate Limiter · D5

Spend the budget on rate vs capacity to drop the fewest requests.

A token bucket over a bursty trace. Refill rate handles the steady flow; bucket capacity absorbs spikes. Pouring it all into rate still drops the bursts.
Practice — no rating pressure. Get as close to the optimum as you can; each play teaches the pattern.
Dropped
55
Spend
30 / 62
arrivals per tick (orange = bursts)
Refill rate
6
Bucket capacity
0
About this puzzle

The Rate Limiter — practice the decision, scored against the optimum

What does the The Rate Limiter puzzle teach?

Bursts need bucket capacity, not just refill rate — pouring the whole budget into rate still drops spikes.

Why do interviews ask about this?

Token-bucket sizing is the rate-limiting interview: pick a rate and burst that protect the service without throttling real traffic.

How is it scored?

The engine computes the provably-optimal answer for the exact instance you played (dynamic programming, shortest-path, or exhaustive search — never a heuristic) and scores your attempt as a percentage of it. No login needed to see your score.