[mayank]

> On the other hand, there's rarely a DP problem (that comes up in interviews) that relies on a problem-specific trick.

That's a pretty big parenthetical. DP problems as a class are full of clever tricks for elegant solutions that took decades of research. Any practical use of DP is almost certainly going to use problem-specific tricks as well. Which makes DP tricky, especially in interviews.

[chillee]

Yes, there's a ton of DP problems that require clever tricks. I've had to show these tricks to friends who believed that DP problems were too formulaic.

Could you give an example of DP problems that show up in interviews that require problem-specific tricks? I'm contrasting DP problems with other interview questions like: Find whether a linked list has a cycle in O(1) memory or implement a queue with 2 stacks.