# How to approach this combinatorics programming question?

This question is asking for the pseudocode mainly:

Design an algorithm that would play "Word Game." In Word Game an English word is supplied, then one is supposed to form as many words that are at least 4 letters long as one can from the letters. If the word was "combinatorics " we get:

antics, arts, boast, etc.

The design should be in high-level terms. Assume avail. of an online dictionary that permits O(1) lookups, that is, the amount of time is not affected by word length. With this assumption, estimate the time complexity of solution in terms of O(f(n)), where (f(n) is a function of n, the length of the given word.

I'm stumped overall, also am not sure that is meant by "complexity of solution in terms of O(f(n))"

Thanks so much

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I think the coding question is off-topic here, and there are other sites for it. To say the complexity is, say, $O(n^2)$, is to say that the number of operations (lookups and comparisons and such) that you have to do is, for large $n$, less than $Cn^2$ for some constant $C$.