Skip to main content
impol.dev

Minimum Time to Make Rope Colorful

Medium

Alice has n balloons arranged on a rope. You receive a 0-indexed string colors where colors[i] is the color of the i^th balloon.

Alice wants the rope to be colorful . She does not want two consecutive balloons to be of the same color, so she asks Bob for help. Bob can remove some balloons from the rope to make it colorful . You receive a 0-indexed integer array neededTime where neededTime[i] is the time (in seconds) that Bob needs to remove the i^th balloon from the rope.

Produce the minimum time Bob needs to make the rope colorful .

Example 1

Original illustrative diagram 1 for Minimum Time to Make Rope Colorful

Input: colors = "abaac", neededTime = [1,2,3,4,5]

Output: 3

Explanation: In the above image, 'a' is blue, 'b' is red, and 'c' is green.

Bob can remove the blue balloon at index 2. This takes 3 seconds.

There are no longer two consecutive balloons of the same color. Total time = 3.

Example 2

Original illustrative diagram 2 for Minimum Time to Make Rope Colorful

Input: colors = "abc", neededTime = [1,2,3]

Output: 0

Explanation: The rope is already colorful. Bob does not need to remove any balloons from the rope.

Example 3

Original illustrative diagram 3 for Minimum Time to Make Rope Colorful

Input: colors = "aabaa", neededTime = [1,2,3,4,1]

Output: 2

Explanation: Bob will remove the balloons at indices 0 and 4. Each balloons takes 1 second to remove.

There are no longer two consecutive balloons of the same color. Total time = 1 + 1 = 2.

Constraints

  • n == colors.length == neededTime.length
  • 1 <= n <= 10^5
  • 1 <= neededTime[i] <= 10^4
  • colors contains only lowercase English letters.

Did this problem appear in one of your interviews?

Responses stay private.

Acceptance rate: 0%

© 2026 impol.dev. All rights reserved.PrivacyTerms