Canadian Computing Competition: 1999 Stage 2, Day 1, Problem 2
Given a sequence of 
~m~ words from a newspaper article and an integer 
~k~, find the 
~k^\text{th}~ most common word(s).
Input Specification
Input will consist of an integer 
~n~ followed by ~n~ data sets. Each data set begins with a line containing ~m~ and ~k~, followed by ~m~ lines, each containing a word of up to 
~20~ lowercase letters. There will be no more than 
~1\,000~ words per data set.
Output Specification
For each input data set, determine the ~k^\text{th}~ most common word(s). To be precise, a word 
~w~ is the ~k^\text{th}~ most common if exactly 
~k-1~ distinct words occur more frequently than ~w~ in the data set. Note that ~w~ might be multiply defined (i.e. there is a tie for the ~k^\text{th}~ most common word) or ~w~ might not exist (i.e. there is no ~k^\text{th}~ most common word). For each data set, print a title line indicating ~k~ using normal ordinal notation (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, …) followed by a number of lines giving all the possible values for the ~k^\text{th}~ most common word. A blank line should follow the last word for each data set.
Sample Input
3
7 2
the
brown
the
fox
red
the
red
1 3
the
2 1
the
wash
Sample Output
2nd most common word(s):
red
3rd most common word(s):
1st most common word(s):
the
wash
Comments
What if
I WA'd 15 times before I realized that I read the question wrong
Output Specification
To be precise, a word
is the 
most common if exactly 
distinct words occur more frequently than 
in the data set.
What happens if, for example, there is an
value of 
and a 
value of 
? If there is more than one 'most common word(s)' (e.g. both the words 'hi' and 'hello' appear 3 times), would the third most common word be 'hey', appearing 2 times, due to the fact that there are 2 distinct words appearing as 'most common', or would 'hey' be the second most common? If the former, what would you do in a scenario when there are more words tied for 'most common word(s)' than the value of 
? Would you just output all the 'most common word(s)'?
EDIT I suppose my question is, if you have 2 words tied for the same place, do they register as both of those places, or just at the first one? (i.e. does searching for 'most common' and '2nd most common' output the same if there are 2 'most common' words)
Now for
. This time, there are two words to output, storm and brook,
because they both have the same number of occurrences. Each of these
words has exactly two words with more occurrences. This shows that we
sometimes need to output more than one word.
Expand on "normal ordinal notation" 11th or 11st
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, ...