Maximum score from removing stones

Math Greedy Heap (Priority Queue)

68.6% acceptance

Feb 25, 2026

986

There are three piles of stones of sizes a, b, and c respectively. Each turn you choose two of the piles, remove one stone from each of those two piles. The game stops when any two of the three piles are empty. The score is the total number of removed stones. Return the maximum score you can get.

Solution

Rust

Time O(1)

Space O(1)

LeetCode

solution.rs

impl Solution {
  pub fn maximum_score(a: i32, b: i32, c: i32) -> i32 {
    let total = a + b + c;
    let max_val = a.max(b).max(c);
    // If the largest pile is bigger than the sum of the other two, we can only use (sum of other two) pairs
    // Otherwise, we can use total / 2 pairs
    (total - max_val).min(total / 2)
  }
}