Let's Chain Some Songs Together!

How can we find the longest chain of songs that match the last word of one song with the first word of the next?

Let's dive into the world of music and puzzles with this fun challenge! How can we create a chain of songs that flow seamlessly from one to the next based on their titles?

Solving the Song Chain Challenge:

To tackle this problem, we need to write a function in Java that analyzes a list of songs and constructs the longest chain possible with the given constraints.

Creating the Algorithm:

At the core of this challenge is the task of comparing the last word of each song with the first word of the next to form a continuous chain. To start, we initialize an empty list called `sortedSongs` to store the final chain of songs.

We then add the first song from the input list to `sortedSongs` and extract the last word of this initial song. This sets the stage for the chain-building process.

Next, we iterate through the remaining songs in the input list and check if the last word of a song matches the first word of the previously added song in `sortedSongs`. If a match is found, we add the current song to `sortedSongs`, update the last word variable, and continue the process.

It's crucial to handle situations where multiple chains of equal length exist. In such cases, we prioritize the chain that starts with the alphabetically earliest first differing song title.

By carefully implementing this logic in our function, we can efficiently find and construct the longest chain of songs with matching first and last words in their titles.