Practice/Google/Leetcode 843. Guess the Word

Leetcode 843. Guess the Word

CodingMust

Problem

You are playing a word guessing game where you need to identify a secret word from a given list. All words in the list are exactly 6 characters long and contain only lowercase letters.

You have access to a Master API with a single method:

• guess(word): Takes a word from the wordlist and returns an integer representing how many characters match the secret word in both value and position. For example, if the secret is "acckzz" and you guess "ccbazz", the API returns 3 because positions 2, 4, and 5 match (both have 'c', 'z', 'z' in those positions).

Your task is to implement a function that uses the Master API to discover the secret word within a given number of allowed guesses. The challenge is to design an efficient strategy that narrows down candidates optimally.

Requirements

1. Implement findSecretWord(wordlist, master) that identifies the secret word
2. Use the master.guess(word) API to obtain match information
3. The secret word will always be in the wordlist
4. You can only guess words from the provided wordlist
5. Your solution must work within the allowed number of guesses (typically 10)
6. Design a strategy that minimizes worst-case scenarios

Constraints

• 1 ≤ wordlist.length ≤ 100
• All words in wordlist have exactly 6 characters
• wordlist contains only unique lowercase English letters
• allowedGuesses is typically 10
• Time complexity should be reasonable for the input size

Examples

Example 1:

` Input: wordlist = ["acckzz", "ccbazz", "eiowzz", "abcczz"], secret = "acckzz" Process:

• Guess "acckzz" → returns 6 (all positions match)
• Secret found in 1 guess Output: Successfully found the secret `

Example 2:

` Input: wordlist = ["hamada", "khaled", "mahmud", "samira", "kamran"], secret = "hamada" Process:

• Guess "khaled" → returns 1 (only 'a' at position 4 matches)
• Filter candidates: keep words with exactly 1 match to "khaled"
• Remaining: ["hamada", "samira"]
• Guess "hamada" → returns 6 (all positions match)
• Secret found in 2 guesses Output: Successfully found the secret `

Example 3:

` Input: wordlist = ["aaaaaa", "bbbbbb", "cccccc", "dddddd"], secret = "bbbbbb" Process:

• Guess "aaaaaa" → returns 0
• Filter candidates: keep words with 0 matches to "aaaaaa"
• Remaining: ["bbbbbb", "cccccc", "dddddd"]
• Guess "bbbbbb" → returns 6 (all positions match) Output: Successfully found the secret `