I was asked to do a phone interview, and then I received an email saying, "We'd like to proceed with next steps." The next steps were a one-hour coding test. It was the same "Rabbit problem" that was shared here.

To be honest, I noted on the feedback that I had seen this problem before and let the recruiter know I could do another one if they wanted.

I then received a rejection stating that the phone interview went badly. Why give me the test if it went badly?

The recruiter did not respond with feedback on what went wrong with the coding test. I know my answer was correct as I had practiced it.

Do not lie to candidates. My advice is to keep quiet even if you have seen a problem before.

The values of the matrix will represent the number of carrots available to the rabbit in each square of the garden. If the garden does not have an exact center, the rabbit should start in the square closest to the center with the highest carrot count.

On a given turn, the rabbit will eat the carrots available on the square that it is on, and then move up, down, left, or right. It will choose the square that has the most carrots. If there are no carrots left on any of the adjacent squares, the rabbit will go to sleep. You may assume that the rabbit will never have to choose between two squares with the same number of carrots.

Write a function which takes a garden matrix and returns the number of carrots the rabbit eats. You may assume the matrix is rectangular with at least 1 row and 1 column, and that it is populated with non-negative integers. For example:

[[5, 7, 8, 6, 3], [0, 0, 7, 0, 4], [4, 6, 3, 4, 9], [3, 1, 0, 5, 8]]

Should return

27