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Problem: Word Ladder

Medium
30 min
Understand how to solve the Word Ladder problem by applying Tree Breadth-First Search. Learn to identify the shortest sequence of word transformations where each step changes only one character, and practice this pattern to improve your approach for coding interviews.

Statement

Given two words, src and dest, and a list, words, return the number of words in the shortest transformation sequence from src to dest. If no such sequence can be formed, return 00.

A transformation sequence is a sequence of words ((src \to word1word_1 \to word2word_2 \to word3word_3 ...... \to wordjword_j )) that has the following properties:

  • wordj=word_j = dest
  • Every pair of consecutive words differs by a single character.
  • All the words in the sequence are present in the words. The src does not need to be present in words.

Constraints:

  • 11 \leq src.length 10\leq 10

  • src.length == dest.length == words[i].length

  • src \neq dest

  • 11 \leq words.length 5000\leq 5000

  • No duplicates in the words

  • src, dest, and words[i] consist of lowercase English characters.

Problem
Ask
Submissions

Problem: Word Ladder

Medium
30 min
Understand how to solve the Word Ladder problem by applying Tree Breadth-First Search. Learn to identify the shortest sequence of word transformations where each step changes only one character, and practice this pattern to improve your approach for coding interviews.

Statement

Given two words, src and dest, and a list, words, return the number of words in the shortest transformation sequence from src to dest. If no such sequence can be formed, return 00.

A transformation sequence is a sequence of words ((src \to word1word_1 \to word2word_2 \to word3word_3 ...... \to wordjword_j )) that has the following properties:

  • wordj=word_j = dest
  • Every pair of consecutive words differs by a single character.
  • All the words in the sequence are present in the words. The src does not need to be present in words.

Constraints:

  • 11 \leq src.length 10\leq 10

  • src.length == dest.length == words[i].length

  • src \neq dest

  • 11 \leq words.length 5000\leq 5000

  • No duplicates in the words

  • src, dest, and words[i] consist of lowercase English characters.