Minimize Trie Nodes | Dataford Interview Questions

Given N (<=16) strings, you may permute each string's characters before inserting into a trie; find the minimum total number of trie nodes (including root).

Asked in the online_assessment stage.

Contract

Implement min_trie_nodes(strings). strings is a list of lowercase strings. Return an integer representing the minimum possible number of trie nodes, including the root. Each string must be used exactly once, and its characters may be reordered independently.

Constraints

1 <= len(strings) <= 16
0 <= len(strings[i]) <= 8
strings[i] contains only lowercase English letters
Each string is permuted independently before insertion
The root is included in the result

Function Signature

def min_trie_nodes(strings):

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Problem