Order the jobs on one server so the worst lateness is as small as possible.

Jobs run back-to-back from time 0 in the order you tap. A job's lateness is how far past its due date it finishes (0 if on time). Minimize the largest lateness across all jobs.

Practice — no rating pressure. Get as close to the optimum as you can; each play teaches the pattern.

Worst lateness so far

The Slack — practice the decision, scored against the optimum

What does the The Slack puzzle teach?

Run jobs in Earliest-Due-Date order to minimize the worst lateness on one server — shortest-job-first feels busy but lets a tight deadline blow up.

Why do interviews ask about this?

This is the classic single-machine minimize-maximum-lateness problem (1||Lmax), whose Earliest-Due-Date optimality you justify with an adjacent-pairwise exchange argument — a staple greedy-proof interview question.

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.

← Arena

Practice0:00

The Slack · D5

Order the jobs on one server so the worst lateness is as small as possible.

Jobs run back-to-back from time 0 in the order you tap. A job's lateness is how far past its due date it finishes (0 if on time). Minimize the largest lateness across all jobs.

Practice — no rating pressure. Get as close to the optimum as you can; each play teaches the pattern.

Worst lateness so far