Home/ Questions/Q 8245281
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-07T22:07:48+00:00

How would I approach this algorithmic problem? Given two words of equal length that

  • 0

How would I approach this algorithmic problem?

Given two words of equal length that are in a dictionary, write a
method to transform one word into another word by changing only one
letter at a time. The new word you get in each step must be in the
dictionary.

Example:

Input: DAMP, LIKE
Output: DAMP -> LAMP -> LIMP -> LIME -> LIKE
Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Try thinking this problem in terms of graphs: Consider all words in a dictionary as vertices, and insert an edge between each two vertices that differ by only one letter. The output is a well-known object in the graph, and you probably already know an algorithm to solve the problem.

    Spoiler:

    The output is a path in the graph, and the question is solved by finding a path. A breadth-first search (BFS) or Dijkstra’s algorithm solve the problem elegantly.

    • 0