Breaking Chocolate Bars — Puzzle for Interview rounds

Question :

You have a bar of chocolate that consists of n x m square blocks.

If you can only break one piece at a time, how many breaks are necessary to break the original n x m piece into n*m 1 x 1 pieces?

How many are sufficient?

Solution :

Since every break creates exactly one new piece, n * m - 1 breaks are both necessary and sufficient to create n * m total pieces.

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