Brute Force Approach

Algorithm

To merge `k sorted linked lists, the most basic thing we can do is just collect all the node values from every list, store them into one big container, sort it, and then rebuild a single sorted linked list out of those sorted values. This approach doesn’t leverage the fact that the input lists are already sorted so it’s inefficient but it’s a good starting point to understand the flow of the problem.

It’s like gathering all the exam papers, sorting by marks again manually, and then preparing the final rank list. No merging, just raw sorting. This helps build clarity before jumping into optimized approach.

Initialize an empty array to store all node values from every list.
Iterate through each linked list and push every node’s value into the array.
Sort the array of values.
Create a new dummy head for the final linked list.
Iterate over the sorted array and create a new node for each value, appending it to the final list.
Return the node next to the dummy head as the actual head of the merged list.