I use two different algorithms, depending on what the amount of strings is. The TLE only happened on big n, which corresponds to this code Part:

    // check widthwise
    sort(strs.begin(), strs.end());
    for(string const& str : strs)
    {
        for(int i = 0; i < ssize; i++)
        {
            for(int j = i + 1; j < ssize; j++)
            {
                string temp = str;
                sort(temp.begin() + i, temp.begin() + j + 1);
                if(temp[i] != str[i])
                {
                    if(temp[j] != str[j])
                    {
                        if(binary_search(strs.begin(), strs.end(), temp))
                        {
                            ansWidthwisePairs -= 2;
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }