1p3a Experience · Mar 2026

Word Search II

Interview Experience

Word Search II Given a 2-D grid of characters board and a list of strings words,

return all words that are present in the grid. For a word to be present it must be possible to form the word with

Full Details

Word Search II Given a 2-D grid of characters board and a list of strings words,

return all words that are present in the grid. For a word to be present it must be possible to form the word with a path in the board with horizontally or vertically neighboring cells. The same cell may not be used more than once in a word. ## Examples Example 1:

Input: board = [["a","b","c","d"], ["s","a","a","t"], ["a","c","k","e"], ["a","c","d","n"]], words = ["bat","cat","back","backend","stack"]

Output: ["cat","back","backend"]

Example 2:

Input: board = [["x","o"], ["x","o"]], words = ["xoxo"]

Output: []

Constraints * 1 <= board.length, board[i].length <= 12 * board[i] consists only of lowercase English letters. * 1 <= words.length <= 30,000 * 1 <= words[i].length <= 10 * words[i] consists only of lowercase English letters. * All strings within words are distinct.

About This Question

This is a candidate experience report from a reddit interview for a swe role reported in 2025.

It covers the following topics: Matrix, Backtracking, Strings, Stack .