You're combining grid traversal with backtracking. Google, Meta, and Amazon ask it frequently. Here's the pattern: for grid problems with path constraints, use DFS with backtracking. Mark cells as visited during exploration, unmark when backtracking. Follow-up: Word Search II finds multiple words efficiently using a Trie.
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$ curl repovive.com/roadmaps/maang-interview-prep/backtracking/word-search-why-this-problem
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