Leetcode Word Ladder

Given two words (beginWord and endWord), and a dictionary's word list, find the length of shortest transformation sequence from beginWord to endWord, such that:

1. Only one letter can be changed at a time
2. Each intermediate word must exist in the word list

For example,

Given:
beginWord = "hit"
endWord = "cog"
wordList = ["hot","dot","dog","lot","log"]

As one shortest transformation is "hit" -> "hot" -> "dot" -> "dog" -> "cog",
return its length 5.

Difficulty: Medium

Solution: Use HashSet and queue

public class Solution {
    public String replace(String s, int index, char c) {
        char[] chars = s.toCharArray();
        chars[index] = c;
        return new String(chars);
    }
    public int ladderLength(String beginWord, String endWord, Set<String> wordList) {
        if(endWord.equals(beginWord))
            return 1;
        if(wordList == null)
            return 0;
        int ans = 1;
        Queue<String> q = new LinkedList<String>();
        Set<String> s = new HashSet<String>();
        q.offer(beginWord);
        s.add(beginWord);
        wordList.add(endWord);
        while(!q.isEmpty()){
            ans++;
            int len = q.size();
            for(int k = 0; k < len; k++){
                String word = q.poll();
                for(int i = 0; i < word.length(); i++){
                    for(char j = 'a'; j <= 'z'; j++){
                        String newWord = replace(word, i, j);
                        if(!wordList.contains(newWord))
                            continue;
                        if(newWord.equals(endWord))
                            return ans;
                        if(s.contains(newWord))
                            continue;
                        
                        s.add(newWord);
                        q.offer(newWord);
                        
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return 0;
        
    }
}