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Problem: Word Ladder II

Medium
30 min
Explore how to use backtracking to find all shortest transformation sequences between a start and end word by changing one letter at a time. This lesson helps you understand problem constraints, implement solutions, and apply this pattern to complex string transformation problems.

Statement

You are given two words, beginWord and endWord, and a dictionary of words called wordList. Your task is to find all the shortest transformation sequences from beginWord to endWord, such that:

  1. Only one letter can be changed at a time.

  2. Each transformed word must exist in the given wordList.

  3. The transformation sequence must begin with beginWord and end with endWord.

Return all the shortest transformation sequences as a list of lists. If no valid transformation exists, return an empty list.

Constraints:

  • 11 \leq beginWord.length 5\leq 5

  • endWord.length == beginWord.length

  • 11 \leq wordList.length 500\leq 500

  • wordList[i].length == beginWord.length

  • beginWordendWord, and wordList[i] consist of lowercase English letters.

  • beginWord != endWord

  • All the words in wordList are unique.

  • The sum of all shortest transformation sequences does not exceed 10510^5.

Problem
Ask
Submissions

Problem: Word Ladder II

Medium
30 min
Explore how to use backtracking to find all shortest transformation sequences between a start and end word by changing one letter at a time. This lesson helps you understand problem constraints, implement solutions, and apply this pattern to complex string transformation problems.

Statement

You are given two words, beginWord and endWord, and a dictionary of words called wordList. Your task is to find all the shortest transformation sequences from beginWord to endWord, such that:

  1. Only one letter can be changed at a time.

  2. Each transformed word must exist in the given wordList.

  3. The transformation sequence must begin with beginWord and end with endWord.

Return all the shortest transformation sequences as a list of lists. If no valid transformation exists, return an empty list.

Constraints:

  • 11 \leq beginWord.length 5\leq 5

  • endWord.length == beginWord.length

  • 11 \leq wordList.length 500\leq 500

  • wordList[i].length == beginWord.length

  • beginWordendWord, and wordList[i] consist of lowercase English letters.

  • beginWord != endWord

  • All the words in wordList are unique.

  • The sum of all shortest transformation sequences does not exceed 10510^5.