AlgoLounge

Word Ladder

hard

A transformation sequence from word beginWord to word endWord using a dictionary wordList is a sequence of words beginWord -> s₁ -> s₂ -> ... -> sₖ such that:

  • Every adjacent pair of words differs by a single letter.
  • Every sᵢ for 1 <= i <= k is in wordList. Note that beginWord does not need to be in wordList.
  • sₖ == endWord

Given two words, beginWord and endWord, and a dictionary wordList, return the number of words in the shortest transformation sequence from beginWord to endWord, or 0 if no such sequence exists.

Examples

Example 1

Input:  beginWord = "hit", endWord = "cog", wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log","cog"]
Output: 5

One shortest transformation sequence is "hit" -> "hot" -> "dot" -> "dog" -> cog", which is 5 words long.

Example 2

Input:  beginWord = "hit", endWord = "cog", wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log"]
Output: 0

The endWord "cog" is not in wordList, therefore there is no valid transformation sequence.

Constraints

  • 1 <= beginWord.length <= 10
  • endWord.length == beginWord.length
  • 1 <= wordList.length <= 5000
  • wordList[i].length == beginWord.length
  • beginWord, endWord, and wordList[i] consist of lowercase English letters.
  • beginWord != endWord
  • All the words in wordList are unique.
TypeScript
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List of test cases (10)
Case 1
beginWord = "cat"
endWord = "sag"
wordList = ["bat","bag","sag","dag","dot"]
Case 2
beginWord = "cat"
endWord = "sag"
wordList = ["bat","bag","sat","dag","dot"]
Case 3
beginWord = "hit"
endWord = "cog"
wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log","cog"]
Case 4
beginWord = "hit"
endWord = "cog"
wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log"]
Case 5
beginWord = "a"
endWord = "c"
wordList = ["a","b","c"]
Case 6
beginWord = "hit"
endWord = "hot"
wordList = ["hot"]
Case 7
beginWord = "lost"
endWord = "cost"
wordList = ["most","fist","lost","cost","fish"]
Case 8
beginWord = "red"
endWord = "tax"
wordList = ["ted","tex","red","tax","tad","den","rex","pee"]
Case 9
beginWord = "abc"
endWord = "xyz"
wordList = ["abx","axx","xyz"]
Case 10
beginWord = "cold"
endWord = "warm"
wordList = ["cord","card","ward","warm","sold","told"]