LeetCode 3684: Maximize Sum of At Most K Distinct Elements

Meta Data

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Difficulty: easy First Attempt: 2026-01-29

• Submissions: Wrong Answer → Accepted

Approach

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Every value is positive, so taking more is better; take up to k. They must be distinct, so deduplicate and take the k largest. With fewer than k distinct values, take them all.

My Attempts

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Attempt 1 hard-coded “the top 3” from the examples with biggest, second, third, never using k. For nums = [5, 3], k = 1 the answer is [5]; it returned [5, 3].

Sorting descending, skipping duplicates, and stopping at k passed.

Solution

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class Solution:
    def maxKDistinct(self, nums: List[int], k: int) -> List[int]:
        return sorted(set(nums), reverse=True)[:k]

Complexity

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Time O(n log n), space O(n).

Mistakes to Avoid

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• Do not hard-code the k from the examples; use the parameter.

Interview Explanation

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All values are positive, so more is better. I deduplicate, sort descending, and take the first k. Time O(n log n).