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14 August 2026

Best Prize Pair

Hard Lists

Pick two different prizes without going over budget, then make the total count.

You are given a list of positive prize prices and a budget. Choose two different prizes whose total price is at most the budget. Return the largest total you can afford. Return -1 if no pair of different prizes fits the budget.

Constraints

  • Each price is a positive integer.
  • 0 <= len(prices) <= 200.
  • The budget is a positive integer.

Function signature

def best_pair_total(prices: list[int], budget: int) -> int:

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