<p>You are stacking blocks to form a pyramid. Each block has a color, which is represented by a single letter. Each row of blocks contains <strong>one less block</strong> than the row beneath it and is centered on top.</p>

<p>To make the pyramid aesthetically pleasing, there are only specific <strong>triangular patterns</strong> that are allowed. A triangular pattern consists of a <strong>single block</strong> stacked on top of <strong>two blocks</strong>. The patterns are given&nbsp;as a list of&nbsp;three-letter strings <code>allowed</code>, where the first two characters of a pattern represent the left and right bottom blocks respectively, and the third character is the top block.</p>

<ul>
	<li>For example, <code>&quot;ABC&quot;</code> represents a triangular pattern with a <code>&#39;C&#39;</code> block stacked on top of an <code>&#39;A&#39;</code> (left) and <code>&#39;B&#39;</code> (right) block. Note that this is different from <code>&quot;BAC&quot;</code> where <code>&#39;B&#39;</code> is on the left bottom and <code>&#39;A&#39;</code> is on the right bottom.</li>
</ul>

<p>You start with a bottom row of blocks <code>bottom</code>, given as a single string, that you <strong>must</strong> use as the base of the pyramid.</p>

<p>Given <code>bottom</code> and <code>allowed</code>, return <code>true</code><em> if you can build the pyramid all the way to the top such that <strong>every triangular pattern</strong> in the pyramid is in </em><code>allowed</code><em>, or </em><code>false</code><em> otherwise</em>.</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong class="example">Example 1:</strong></p>
<img alt="" src="https://assets.leetcode.com/uploads/2021/08/26/pyramid1-grid.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 232px;" />
<pre>
<strong>Input:</strong> bottom = &quot;BCD&quot;, allowed = [&quot;BCC&quot;,&quot;CDE&quot;,&quot;CEA&quot;,&quot;FFF&quot;]
<strong>Output:</strong> true
<strong>Explanation:</strong> The allowed triangular patterns are shown on the right.
Starting from the bottom (level 3), we can build &quot;CE&quot; on level 2 and then build &quot;A&quot; on level 1.
There are three triangular patterns in the pyramid, which are &quot;BCC&quot;, &quot;CDE&quot;, and &quot;CEA&quot;. All are allowed.
</pre>

<p><strong class="example">Example 2:</strong></p>
<img alt="" src="https://assets.leetcode.com/uploads/2021/08/26/pyramid2-grid.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 359px;" />
<pre>
<strong>Input:</strong> bottom = &quot;AAAA&quot;, allowed = [&quot;AAB&quot;,&quot;AAC&quot;,&quot;BCD&quot;,&quot;BBE&quot;,&quot;DEF&quot;]
<strong>Output:</strong> false
<strong>Explanation:</strong> The allowed triangular patterns are shown on the right.
Starting from the bottom (level 4), there are multiple ways to build level 3, but trying all the possibilites, you will get always stuck before building level 1.
</pre>

<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Constraints:</strong></p>

<ul>
	<li><code>2 &lt;= bottom.length &lt;= 6</code></li>
	<li><code>0 &lt;= allowed.length &lt;= 216</code></li>
	<li><code>allowed[i].length == 3</code></li>
	<li>The letters in all input strings are from the set <code>{&#39;A&#39;, &#39;B&#39;, &#39;C&#39;, &#39;D&#39;, &#39;E&#39;, &#39;F&#39;}</code>.</li>
	<li>All the values of <code>allowed</code> are <strong>unique</strong>.</li>
</ul>

class Solution:
    def pyramidTransition(self, bottom: str, allowed: List[str]) -> bool:
        # organize as (base left, base right) => top 
        tracker = {}
        for word in allowed:
            left, right, top = word
            prefix = left + right
            if prefix not in tracker:
                tracker[prefix] = []
            tracker[prefix].append(top)
        memo = {}

        def check_layer(bottom, i, next_layer_buildout):
            
            # base case
            if len(bottom) == 1:
                return True
            
            # this means we have finished incrementally building next_layer, 
            #  and we can check to see if that layer is valid starting from the beginning
            if len(next_layer_buildout) == len(bottom) - 1:
                if next_layer_buildout in memo:
                    next_result = memo[next_layer_buildout]
                else:
                    next_result = check_layer(next_layer_buildout, 1, "")
                    memo[next_layer_buildout] = next_result
                return next_result
            
            #check the letter pair at the current index position
            letter_pair = bottom[i-1]+bottom[i]
            # immediately throw out this possible solution if the pair is invalid
            if letter_pair not in tracker:
                return False
            # find all possible top characters.
            # instantiate a recursive dfs for each possible top character, appending it to 
            # the next_layer_buildout of the current iteration and incrementing i
            for top_char in tracker[letter_pair]:
                if check_layer(bottom, i+1, next_layer_buildout+top_char):
                    return True
            return False

        return check_layer(bottom,1, "")

18900