Fastest way to find common items across multiple lists in C#

Question

Given the following:

List> optionLists;

what would be a quick way to determine the subset of Option objects that a

Answer 1

/// 

    /// The method FindCommonItems, returns a list of all the COMMON ITEMS in the lists contained in the listOfLists.
    /// The method expects lists containing NO DUPLICATE ITEMS.
    /// 
    /// 
    /// 
    /// 
    public static List FindCommonItems(IEnumerable> allSets)
    {
        Dictionary map = new Dictionary();
        int listCount = 0; // Number of lists.
        foreach (IEnumerable currentSet in allSets)
        {
            int itemsCount = currentSet.ToList().Count;
            HashSet uniqueItems = new HashSet();
            bool duplicateItemEncountered = false;
            listCount++;
            foreach (T item in currentSet)
            {
                if (!uniqueItems.Add(item))
                {
                    duplicateItemEncountered = true;
                }                        
                if (map.ContainsKey(item))
                {
                    map[item]++;
                } 
                else
                {
                    map.Add(item, 1);
                }
            }
            if (duplicateItemEncountered)
            {
                uniqueItems.Clear();
                List duplicateItems = new List();
                StringBuilder currentSetItems = new StringBuilder();
                List currentSetAsList = new List(currentSet);
                for (int i = 0; i < itemsCount; i++)
                {
                    T currentItem = currentSetAsList[i];
                    if (!uniqueItems.Add(currentItem))
                    {
                        duplicateItems.Add(currentItem);
                    }
                    currentSetItems.Append(currentItem);
                    if (i < itemsCount - 1)
                    {
                        currentSetItems.Append(", ");
                    }
                }
                StringBuilder duplicateItemsNamesEnumeration = new StringBuilder();
                int j = 0;
                foreach (T item in duplicateItems)
                {
                    duplicateItemsNamesEnumeration.Append(item.ToString());
                    if (j < uniqueItems.Count - 1)
                    {
                        duplicateItemsNamesEnumeration.Append(", ");
                    }
                }
                throw new Exception("The list " + currentSetItems.ToString() + " contains the following duplicate items: " + duplicateItemsNamesEnumeration.ToString());
            }
        }
        List result= new List();
        foreach (KeyValuePair itemAndItsCount in map)
        {
            if (itemAndItsCount.Value == listCount) // Items whose occurrence count is equal to the number of lists are common to all the lists.
            {
                result.Add(itemAndItsCount.Key);
            }
        }

        return result;
    }