Writing a string in a spiral

Question

I had recently participated in coding competion sponsored by an company and there was this one question which I did not understood, as to what was it asking.

Here i

Answer 1

First you fill a 6x6 matrix with point characters.Then you set direction to 1.Then you change direction each time the next character in the direction is not a point character.

public class Spiral {
static String phrase="paypalisthefastersaferwaytosendmoney";
static int deltax,deltay,direction;

public static void setDelta(){
if(direction==1){
    deltax=1;
    deltay=0;
}else if(direction==2){
    deltax=0;
    deltay=1;
}else if(direction==3){
    deltax=-1;
    deltay=0;
}else if(direction==4){
    deltax=0;
    deltay=-1;
}
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
int index=0,x,y,N=6;
char[][] MATRIX=new char[N][N];
for(y=0;y=0 && y=0){
            MATRIX[y][x]=phrase.charAt(index);
            System.out.print(MATRIX[y][x]);
            index++;

                if(direction==1 && MATRIX[y][x+1]!='.' || x+1==N-1) break;
                if(direction==2 && MATRIX[y+1][x]!='.' && y=0) break;

            x+=deltax;
            y+=deltay;
        }
        if(direction==4) direction=1;
        else direction++;
        setDelta();

        x+=deltax;
        y+=deltay;
    }   
}

}