Leetcode 893. Groups of Special-Equivalent Strings

class Solution:
    def numSpecialEquivGroups(self, words: List[str]) -> int:
        count = 0
        while words:
            count += 1
            group = []
            candidate = words[0]
            odd = sorted(candidate[::2])
            even = sorted(candidate[1::2])
            for index, word in enumerate(words):
                s1 = sorted(word[::2])
                s2 = sorted(word[1::2])
                if odd == s1 and even == s2:
                    group.append(index)
            for i in group[::-1]:
                words.pop(i)

        return count    

class Solution:
    def numSpecialEquivGroups(self, words: List[str]) -> int:
        result = set()
        for word in words:
            odd_even = ''.join(sorted(word[::2])) + ''.join(sorted(word[1::2]))
            result.add(odd_even)
        return len(result)