- Difficulty: Medium
- Tags: LeetCode, Medium, Greedy, Math, Heap (Priority Queue), leetcode-1753, O(1)
Problem
You are playing a solitaire game with three piles of stones of sizes a
, b
, and c
respectively. Each turn you choose two different non-empty piles, take one stone from each, and add 1
point to your score. The game stops when there are fewer than two non-empty piles (meaning there are no more available moves).
Given three integers a
, b
, and c
, return the maximum score you can get.
Example 1:
Input: a = 2, b = 4, c = 6 Output: 6 Explanation: The starting state is (2, 4, 6). One optimal set of moves is: - Take from 1st and 3rd piles, state is now (1, 4, 5) - Take from 1st and 3rd piles, state is now (0, 4, 4) - Take from 2nd and 3rd piles, state is now (0, 3, 3) - Take from 2nd and 3rd piles, state is now (0, 2, 2) - Take from 2nd and 3rd piles, state is now (0, 1, 1) - Take from 2nd and 3rd piles, state is now (0, 0, 0) There are fewer than two non-empty piles, so the game ends. Total: 6 points.
Example 2:
Input: a = 4, b = 4, c = 6 Output: 7 Explanation: The starting state is (4, 4, 6). One optimal set of moves is: - Take from 1st and 2nd piles, state is now (3, 3, 6) - Take from 1st and 3rd piles, state is now (2, 3, 5) - Take from 1st and 3rd piles, state is now (1, 3, 4) - Take from 1st and 3rd piles, state is now (0, 3, 3) - Take from 2nd and 3rd piles, state is now (0, 2, 2) - Take from 2nd and 3rd piles, state is now (0, 1, 1) - Take from 2nd and 3rd piles, state is now (0, 0, 0) There are fewer than two non-empty piles, so the game ends. Total: 7 points.
Example 3:
Input: a = 1, b = 8, c = 8 Output: 8 Explanation: One optimal set of moves is to take from the 2nd and 3rd piles for 8 turns until they are empty. After that, there are fewer than two non-empty piles, so the game ends.
Constraints:
1 <= a, b, c <= 105