The interview process was comprehensive.

First came the usual gauntlet: multiple rounds with different team members, each one upping the difficulty. I breezed through behavioral questions and tackled a couple of live coding problems — the kind where you feel like you’re solving a riddle while someone watches you type.

Then came peer coding, which was like a collaborative jam session but with algorithms instead of guitars. We debugged each other’s ideas in real time, traded code snippets, and silently judged one another’s variable names.

Finally — the pièce de résistance — the “creative problem-solving” round. They shrunk me down to action-figure size, tossed me into a blender, and said, “Okay, you have 30 seconds to escape before we hit purée. Go.” It was less about JavaScript and more about pure survival instincts. I like to think my solution was elegant: I rewired the blender’s base using its own safety interlock, climbed the cord, and exited with dignity intact… mostly.

You’ve been reduced to 3 inches tall and placed inside a running blender. You have 60 seconds before the blades start spinning.

How would you design an escape plan using only the physical materials immediately around you?

Please explain your approach in Big-O notation.