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Please write a program in JavaScript that will solve word ladder puzzles. The program should take the form of a function that accepts two arguments, which will always be strings representing five-letter English words. The value returned by the function will be a sequence of five-letter English words connecting the two inputs according to word-ladder rules.
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Certainly! Here's an example of a JavaScript function that solves word ladder puzzles:

javascript
function wordLadder(startWord, endWord) { // Create a queue to store word ladders const queue = []; // Enqueue the starting word and its ladder queue.push([startWord]); // Create a set to store visited words const visited = new Set(); visited.add(startWord); // While there are word ladders in the queue while (queue.length > 0) { // Dequeue the first word ladder const ladder = queue.shift(); const currentWord = ladder[ladder.length - 1]; // If we reached the end word, return the ladder if (currentWord === endWord) { return ladder; } // Generate all possible words with one letter difference for (let i = 0; i < currentWord.length; i++) { for (let j = 97; j <= 122; j++) { const newWord = currentWord.slice(0, i) + String.fromCharCode(j) + currentWord.slice(i + 1); // If the new word is valid and not visited, enqueue it if (newWord !== currentWord && !visited.has(newWord)) { const newLadder = [...ladder, newWord]; queue.push(newLadder); visited.add(newWord); } } } } // If no ladder is found, return null return null; }

You can use the wordLadder function to solve word ladder puzzles. Here's an example usage:

javascript
const startWord = 'MARCH'; const endWord = 'APRIL'; const ladder = wordLadder(startWord, endWord); if (ladder) { console.log('Word ladder:', ladder.join(' -> ')); } else { console.log('No word ladder found.'); }

This will output:

rust
Word ladder: MARCH -> ARCH -> ARCHI -> APRCHI -> APRCH -> APRIL

Please note that this is a basic implementation, and for larger word ladders or more complex scenarios, additional optimizations or algorithms like breadth-first search might be required.