Whiteboard coding exercise (trivia from the Jeopardy "Graph category"):
- write code for a 3-letter "word ladder" to find the length of the shortest sequence to get from "hit" to "cog" (if there is a valid sequence) where only one letter in the word can be changed with each step through the words in the "set".
start = "hit"
end = "cog"
set = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log"]
expected path: hit - hot - dot - dog - log - cog

Question

Whiteboard coding exercise (trivia from the Jeopardy "Graph category"):
- write code for a 3-letter "word ladder" to find the length of the shortest sequence to get from "hit" to "cog" (if there is a valid sequence) where only one letter in the word can be changed with each step through the words in the "set".
start = "hit"
end = "cog"
set = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log"]
expected path: hit -> hot -> dot -> dog -> log -> cog

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Zero correlation to the job description and obviously ability to solve this question reasonably is based on a person's experience with graphs - which is literally of zero use for this job.  

Their answer is to construct a graph linking the whole words.  
Find the graph connections by creating permutations of each word: for each letter in a word, cycle through a-z and look for matches.
Perform BFS on the graph and track the possible path lengths.
Sounds easier than it is, unless you're familiar with graphs.

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