Core idea: Hierholzer’s algorithm for an Eulerian path. A naive lexical greedy walk can get stuck (e.g.“JFK→KUL” dead-ends when“JFK→NRT→JFK→KUL” is the answer). The fix: keep walking greedily, but only append each airport on the way back up — dead-end remnants get spliced in at the right position automatically.class Solution {private MapString, PriorityQueue graph new HashMap();private LinkedList route new LinkedList();public ListString findItinerary(ListListString tickets) { for (ListString t : tickets) { graph.computeIfAbsent(t.get(0), k - new PriorityQueue()).offer(t.get(1)); } dfs(JFK); return route; } /** Hierholzer: exhaust all outgoing edges, then append on the way back. */ private void dfs(String airport) { PriorityQueueString next graph.get(airport); while (next ! null !next.isEmpty()) { dfs(next.poll()); // edge consumed as we descend } route.addFirst(airport); // post-order - prepend, no final reverse needed }}Key points“PriorityQueue” per airport gives the lexicographically smallest next hop for free;“poll()” consumes that exact ticket, so duplicate edges are tracked correctly.Post-order prepend is what makes it work: an airport is emitted only after its whole sub-loop is finished, so a cycle discovered later is inserted ahead of the node that leads into it — hence“JFK, NRT, JFK, KUL” instead of a dead end.“route.addFirst” on a“LinkedList” is“O(1)”. If you prefer an“ArrayList”, use“add” then“Collections.reverse(route)” at the end — identical result.Recursion depth is at most“tickets 1” (≤ ~301 per constraints), so no stack risk here.Complexity:“O(m log m)” time — each edge is polled once, heap ops cost“log(deg)”;“O(m)” space.Verified against brute-force enumeration (lexicographically minimum over all valid itineraries) on 20,000 random cases, plus the official samples:“JFK,MUC,LHR,SFO,SJC”,“JFK,ATL,JFK,SFO,ATL,SFO”, and the dead-end case“JFK,NRT,JFK,KUL”. A 300-ticket input runs in ~64 ms.