Implementing a simple Trie for efficient Levenshtein Distance calculation - Java

Question

UPDATE 3

Done. Below is the code that finally passed all of my tests. Again, this is modeled after Murilo Vasconcelo\'s modified version of Steve

Answer 1

My intuition tells me that each TrieNode should store the String it represents and also references to letters of the alphabet, not necessarily all letters. Is my intuition correct?

No, a trie doesn't represent a String, it represents a set of strings (and all their prefixes). A trie node maps an input character to another trie node. So it should hold something like an array of characters and a corresponding array of TrieNode references. (Maybe not that exact representation, depending on efficiency in your particular use of it.)