> why not just make the grid 1x1 and select a single color?
For two reasons:
1. The initially suggested grid size was 3x3.
2. Filling in a 3x3 grid is sufficient to show that you understood the pattern, but filling in a 1x1 (or even 2x2) grid is insufficient.
Requiring the user fill in a larger grid is a waste of time. The existence of the grid size selector would still make sense in cases where a 2x2 grid would be sufficient to show the solution, so it is not obvious at all that a 6x6 grid should be chosen.
> The grid size is part of the pattern in the same way that the colors are part of the pattern.
To understand a pattern, you have to see at least two valid inputs and corresponding outputs. For the first example, a valid example for the expected output grid size is missing.
I arrived at the "correct" conclusion eventually, but the only indicator was that the reading direction for the UI was absolutely ridiculous ( https://i.imgur.com/CuQ2z2N.png ), suggesting that the authors did not think this through properly, so the solution had to be weird as well.
Honestly I’d disagree. I was a bit confused at first but moment I realized I could resize the grid, the answer strikes me as obvious and clear. Yes, in some theoretic sense you can argue a 3 x 3 grid answer is fine, but shows this to 100 different humans and majority would agree that resizing the grid is the obvious and more natural solution.
For two reasons:
1. The initially suggested grid size was 3x3.
2. Filling in a 3x3 grid is sufficient to show that you understood the pattern, but filling in a 1x1 (or even 2x2) grid is insufficient.
Requiring the user fill in a larger grid is a waste of time. The existence of the grid size selector would still make sense in cases where a 2x2 grid would be sufficient to show the solution, so it is not obvious at all that a 6x6 grid should be chosen.
> The grid size is part of the pattern in the same way that the colors are part of the pattern.
To understand a pattern, you have to see at least two valid inputs and corresponding outputs. For the first example, a valid example for the expected output grid size is missing.
I arrived at the "correct" conclusion eventually, but the only indicator was that the reading direction for the UI was absolutely ridiculous ( https://i.imgur.com/CuQ2z2N.png ), suggesting that the authors did not think this through properly, so the solution had to be weird as well.