FiveStarPatterns | Topcoder Archive

Problem Statement

Starting with an empty grid (empty spaces denoted by '.'), you must create the pattern shown in layout by adding lines of 5 '*' characters. Lines may be horizontal or vertical, must stay completely within the grid, and may overlap. Here is an example pattern:


.*....
.*****
.*....
*****.
.*....

This pattern would require 2 horizontal lines and 1 vertical line, for a total of 3 lines. The grid will not be taller than 5 rows or wider than 10 columns. Return the minimum number of lines required to create the pattern shown in layout. If a given pattern cannot be created, return -1.

Definition

Class:: FiveStarPatterns
Method:: leastLines
Parameters:: String[]
Returns:: int
Method signature:: int leastLines(String[] layout)
(be sure your method is public)

Constraints

layout will contain between 1 and 5 elements, inclusive.
Each element of layout will contain between 1 and 10 characters, inclusive.
Each element of layout will contain the same number of characters.
Each element of layout will contain only '.' and '*' characters.

Examples

{
".*....",
".*****",
".*....",
"*****.",
".*...."
}

Returns: 3

The example from the problem statement.

```
{
"...*****..",
"..*******.",
".*********"
}
```
```
Returns: 5
```
Note that the lines can overlap. The above example is all horizontal lines: 1 for the first row, 2 for the second row, and 2 more for the third.
```
{
"......",
".****.",
".****.",
".****.",
".****."
}
```
```
Returns: -1
```
You can't draw lines shorter than 5 '*'s, so there's no way to make this pattern.

{
"**********",
"**********",
"**********",
"**********",
"*********."
}

Returns: 10

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