Word ladder

Problem:

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.

Input and output examples

Example 1:
Input: beginWord = “hit”, endWord = “cog”, wordList = [“hot”,”dot”,”dog”,”lot”,”log”,”cog”]
Output: 5
Explanation: 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
Explanation: 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.

Solution

import collections
class Solution(object):
    def ladderLength(self, beginWord, endWord, wordList):
        """
        :type beginWord: str
        :type endWord: str
        :type wordList: List[str]
        :rtype: int
        """
        if endWord not in wordList:
            return 0
        wordList = set(wordList)
        queue = collections.deque([(beginWord, 1)])
        while queue:
            word, length = queue.popleft()
            if word == endWord:
                return length
            for i in range(len(word)):
                for c in 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz':
                    next_word = word[:i] + c + word[i+1:]
                    if next_word in wordList:
                        wordList.remove(next_word)
                        queue.append((next_word, length + 1))
        return 0

Test the the solution:

beginWord = "hit"
endWord = "cog"
wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log","cog"]
solution = Solution()
print(solution.ladderLength(beginWord, endWord, wordList))

More interview questions can be found here:
Algorithm