Shortest Word Distance

CodingPhone ScreenSoftware EngineerReported Mar, 2026

Examples

Example 1:

Input: wordsDict = ["practice","makes","perfect","coding","makes"], word1 = "coding", word2 = "practice"

Output: 3

Example 2:

Input: wordsDict = ["practice","makes","perfect","coding","makes"], word1 = "makes", word2 = "coding"

Output: 1

You are given an array of strings wordsDict and two different strings word1 and word2 that both appear in the array.

Return the minimum distance between any occurrence of word1 and any occurrence of word2 in wordsDict.

1 <= wordsDict.length <= 3 * 10^4

1 <= wordsDict[i].length <= 10

word1 != word2

word1 and word2 both appear in wordsDict.

Reported as LeetCode 243 in a software engineer phone screen.