Apna College Recursion & Backtracking: study plan and how long it takes
The Apna College playlist is 13 videos and 6.5 hours long. Here's how long it takes at different paces, a week-by-week schedule built from the real videos, and a planner that turns it into your own daily plan.
13 videos · 6.5 hours · Apna College
A short series from Apna College's C++ DSA course on recursion and backtracking: recursion basics, Fibonacci and binary search, permutations, N-Queens, Sudoku, rat in a maze, combination sum, palindrome partitioning, merge sort, quick sort, count inversions and the knight's tour.
At about six hours it's one of the quickest ways to get comfortable with backtracking before DP.
Who it's for: C++ learners who find recursion hard and want a focused, Hindi-language refresher.
How long does it take?
The full playlist is 6.5 hours across 13 videos. Here's roughly how many days that is at different daily watch times and speeds, counting video time only:
| Daily time | At 1x | At 1.5x | At 2x |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 min a day | 13 days | 9 days | 7 days |
| 1 h a day | 7 days | 5 days | 4 days |
| 2 h a day | 4 days | 3 days | 2 days |
Make your own schedule
The playlist link is already filled in. Press Plan, set how much time you have each day and your speed, and you'll get a day-by-day schedule with a finish date and a calendar file. It reads the live playlist, so new videos are included.
Week-by-week schedule
A sample plan at 30 minutes a day and normal speed, using whole videos so none is split across days. That's 2 weeks in total. For a different pace, start date or speed, use the planner above.
Week 1Videos 1–7 · 3h 57m
Day 1 · 46m
- 1Recursion Tutorial - Basics to Advanced | Part 146m
Day 2 · 42m
- 2Recursion Part 2 : Fibonacci numbers problem, Binary search problem, Find if array sorted problem42m
Day 3 · 42m
- 3Recursion Part 3 : Backtracking in Detail | Print all Subsets | Subsets II42m
Day 4 · 23m
- 4Permutations of an Array/String | Recursion & Backtracking23m
Day 5 · 24m
- 5N-Queens Problem | using Backtracking | Leetcode Hard24m
Day 6 · 27m
- 6Sudoku Solver Problem | using Backtracking | Leetcode Hard27m
Day 7 · 33m
- 7Rat in a Maze Problem | Backtracking33m
Week 2Videos 8–13 · 2h 30m
Day 8 · 24m
- 8Combination Sum Problem | Recursion & Backtracking24m
Day 9 · 21m
- 9Palindrome Partitioning Problem | Recursion & Backtracking21m
Day 10 · 32m
- 10Merge Sort Algorithm | Recursion & Backtracking32m
Day 11 · 26m
- 11Quick Sort Algorithm - Lecture 51 of Complete DSA Placement Series26m
Day 12 · 25m
- 12Count Inversions Problem | Brute and Optimal25m
Day 13 · 23m
- 13KNIGHTS TOUR Problem - Backtracking | Leetcode 259623m
Tips for finishing
- These lectures are also part of the Complete C++ DSA Course. If you're doing that course, there's no need to watch them twice.
- Re-solve N-Queens and Sudoku a week later without notes; they're the best test of whether backtracking has clicked.