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The problem states:

A sentence is a list of words that are separated by a single space with no leading or trailing spaces.

You are given an array of strings sentences, where each sentences[i] represents a single sentence.

Return the maximum number of words that appear in a single sentence.

Example:

Input: sentences = ["alice and bob love leetcode", "i think so too", "this is great thanks very much"]
Output: 6
Explanation: 
- The first sentence, "alice and bob love leetcode", has 5 words in total.
- The second sentence, "i think so too", has 4 words in total.
- The third sentence, "this is great thanks very much", has 6 words in total.
Thus, the maximum number of words in a single sentence comes from the third sentence, with a total of 6 words.

Clarifying Questions

1. Input Size: Is there a constraint on the number of sentences or the length of each sentence?
2. Characters: Can sentences contain only alphabetic characters and spaces, or might there be other characters?
3. Edge Cases: Should we handle cases with an empty list or sentences with only spaces?

If I were in a real interview, I’d ask these clarifying questions. For now, I’ll assume:

• Sentences are non-empty and contain only alphabetic characters and single spaces.
• The input list sentences could be of any length.

Strategy

1. Splitting Sentences: For each sentence, split it by spaces to get the number of words.
2. Counting Words: Determine the number of words in each sentence.
3. Tracking Maximum: Keep track of the maximum number of words found in any single sentence.
4. Returning Result: Return the maximum count.

Code

Here’s how we can implement this strategy in Python:

def mostWordsFound(sentences):
    max_count = 0
    for sentence in sentences:
        word_count = len(sentence.split())
        if word_count > max_count:
            max_count = word_count
    return max_count

# Example usage:
sentences = [
    "alice and bob love leetcode", 
    "i think so too", 
    "this is great thanks very much"
]
print(mostWordsFound(sentences))  # Output: 6

Time Complexity

The time complexity of this solution is O(n), where n is the number of characters in the input list sentences. This is because:

• Splitting each sentence into words takes linear time relative to the length of that sentence.
• We iterate through each sentence to perform the split and word count operations.

Overall, the solution is efficient for large inputs and should perform well within the typical problem constraints.

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