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LeetCode 737 · Solution & editorial
You are given two string arrays sentence1 and sentence2, each of length n, and an array of pairs similarPairs where each similarPairs[i] = [xi, yi] indicates that the words xi and yi are similar.
Sentence Similarity II is a Graph Traversal Patterns (DFS & BFS) problem, in the Union-Find (Disjoint Set Union - DSU) subpattern. The pattern covers DFS/BFS traversal, topological sort, shortest paths, Union-Find, and MST
Master Union-Find data structure with path compression and union by rank for connectivity problems.
The reference solution runs in O(N + M) time and O(N + M) space.
Sentence Similarity II has been reported in interviews at Amazon.
The full editorial is part of Pro
It explains the core insight, the complexity analysis and the common mistakes, with a worked solution.
Sentence Similarity II is a Graph Traversal Patterns (DFS & BFS) problem, in the Union-Find (Disjoint Set Union - DSU) subpattern. Once the approach above makes sense, write it yourself and then work through the neighbouring problems that reuse it.