advent of code – maxpagani.org

Elf and Guards – Days 5 and 6

Posted on 2024-12-062024-12-07 by max Leave a Comment

It couldn’t last forever—spending consecutive days writing about my progress in the Advent of Code took too much time and the rest of my life knocked on the door. In this post, I will try to update you quickly on days five and six.

On day 5 we had to assist an unfortunate handbook printer to get the updated pages in the correct order. Being magic-elven stuff, the proper order is not the natural increasing order of integers, but a custom order defined by number pairs – e.g. 43|12 means that page 43 has to be followed immediately by page 12. But stuff is not that simple, the order relationship is not linear like a–b–c, but may branch, so to give you an idea, after a may come either b or d and then are both followed by c.

Finding XMAS – Day 4

Posted on 2024-12-042024-12-04 by max Leave a Comment

Day 4 of the Advent of Code presents you with two new puzzles based on the word search puzzle idea. For some reason, you are teleported to the Ceres Elven Station (that made an appearance in AoC 2019), but there’s nothing for you to see here (yet) – not even the chief historian we looking for. So a small elf asks for your help to solve her word search.

Being Xmas elves the word you have to look for is “XMAS”, it can be written straight or reverse and can be written in any direction left, up left, up, up right, right down right, down and down left.

Elves’ Programming Language – Day 3

Posted on 2024-12-032024-12-03 by max Leave a Comment

There are plenty of programming languages and, of course, Xmas elves have their own. Although your main goal is still to find the Chief Historian, we are now in a warehouse, historian minions are wandering around looking for their boss and we are tasked to fix the computer¹.

This puzzle seemed a bit easier than the first two days, but I found it somewhat underspecified. You have to scan a text for patterns like “mul(n,m)” with n and m integers. For each pattern multiply n by m and sum all the products together.

Elves’ Advent Quest – Day 2

Posted on 2024-12-022024-12-02 by max Leave a Comment

After warming up with the first day’s puzzle, here we are with the second day. The bar is still low, but not as low as yesterday. With the coordinates decoded in the last puzzle, everyone runs to the nearest location which happens to be a nuclear plant (for reindeer needs). While we are here the elves running the plant ask for your help to analyze some data looking for anomalies.

Yes, we are in a hurry to look for the chief historian elf, but we also have 25 days to fill with puzzles. So here we go.

Helping Elves One Star at a Time

Posted on 2024-12-012024-12-01 by max Leave a Comment

That period of the year has finally come. That cozy winter feeling of cold outside the window, while busy waiting for the holidays. As a long-standing tradition that started last year, this is the time I help Elves prepare for Xmas in the Advent of Code.

Each day of Advent, the Advent of Code, proposes a couple of puzzles that can be solved by writing some code. There are no constraints on the language or the approach since the result of the puzzle is an integer number. Also, there is no deadline, you can continue working on the puzzles after Xmas. And there is no prize, you just know you did the right thing helping the elves and Santa.

Tag: advent of code