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Grokking the Coding Interview Patterns

Solution: Word Search

Explore how to apply backtracking and depth-first search to find a given word in a 2D grid by traversing adjacent cells. Understand base cases, boundary checks, marking visited cells, and recursive exploration to efficiently solve the word search problem while managing complexity.

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Statement

Given an m x n grid of characters, board, and a string word, return TRUE if word exists in the grid.

The word can be formed by connecting letters of sequentially adjacent cells. The cells are considered sequentially adjacent when neighbors are either horizontally or vertically neighbors. Each cell can be used only once while forming the word.

Constraints:

  • m ==== board.length

  • n == board[i].length, where 0≤0 \leq i << m

  • 1≤1 \leq m, n ≤ ...