Word Ladder

1. Clarify constraints: Confirm if wordList contains duplicates, case sensitivity rules, and if beginWord is guaranteed to be in the list. This mirrors Salesforce's emphasis on edge-case handling in production code. 2. Model the problem: Explicitly state that this is an unweighted graph traversal where each node is a word and edges connect words differing by one character. 3. Select the algorithm: Propose BFS as the standard approach for finding the shortest path in unweighted graphs. Mention Bidirectional BFS as an optimization strategy to reduce the search space significantly. 4. Discuss implementation details: Explain how to generate neighbors efficiently without checking every dictionary word against every other word, perhaps by using a hash set for O(1) lookups or a Trie structure. 5. Analyze complexity: Clearly articulate time and space complexity, noting that generating all possible variations of a word takes O(L * 26) where L is word length. 6. Walk through an example: Trace the logic with a small input like 'hit' to 'cog' to demonstrate your thought process before writing code.