Advent

What is probably the first puzzle in the theme for the rest of Advent of Code started today… with the easiest puzzle so far.

I did this puzzle last night while writing the post about Day 2. This time I’m not in quite so much of a rush. Weekends. The puzzle description is best read on the AoC site – they’re always fun to read :-) Advent of Code always starts out slowly, getting people used to how things go before they start pouring on the hard stuff. You can see some concepts come up that will undoubtedly become key in later puzzles. Yesterday was modulo arithmetic. Today was sets. Naturally, people did it their own ways, but typically the fast solvers will immediately focus in on the concept being introduced and doing their thing in seconds. ...

So I made it to day 2 of Advent of Code! Not entirely awake. I stayed up past midnight to solve it. I messed up my first approach, so I went to a more brute force approach that worked. I got my solution logged in in about twelve minutes or so? But I was still 8,000 positions from the leaderboard, so… yeah, I don’t really think I need to be staying up late to get the puzzle the moment it drops. ...