Showing that the language of graphs and nodes on an odd cycle is in NL Let L be the language containing all the pairs (G,v) where G is a directed graph and v is a vertex in G such that G contains a cycle that contains v and the number of different vertices that appear in that cycle is odd. Find the smallest class (NP, P or NL) that contains L.


Clearly L is in NP, I didn't manage to show that it is in P so I tried to show that it's NP-Complete, however the answer in the textbook is NL?
The question is ambiguous. Specifically, it is not clear what "different vertices that appear in that cycle" means. It can mean two things (1) the size of the set of nodes that appear in the path, or (2) the total number of nodes in that path, i.e., the length of that cycle (minus 1).

If the interpretation is (2), then the language is clearly NL:
you perform a random walk (of length $\le n$), counting the number of nodes you see. If you get back to $v$ and the number of nodes is odd, you accept, otherwise you reject.

If the interpretation is (1), I don't see an immediate way to show it is in NL.