Eric Wastl — Advent of Code: Behind the ScenesWe have three unique puzzles below devised for the Aberdeen Python User Group (APUG) November 2024 event by Dr Lee A. Christie, Research Fellow at Robert Gordon University School of Computing, Engineering and Technology (SoCET).
Each puzzle has an (easy) Part 1 and a (harder) Part 2. If you are a beginner, you may want to skip the second parts.
I have uploaded sample solutions to a Christmas Coding Challenge 2024 Solutions GitHub Repo which lists the numerical answers to each of the 6 parts, along with commented Jupyter Notebooks containing my sample solutions and explanations. Note there are other ways to solve the problem so you may have arrived at the solutions by another equally valid or even more efficient means. These are just solutions in my own Python coding style.
APUG attendees (whether beginners or experts!) are optionally encouraged to share their solutions to the APUG GitHub Repo, let us know if you need help with this. Please add a subdirectory with your name or username.
The format and theme of these puzzles are inspired by Advent of Code, and series of 25 programming puzzles released every December between the 1st Dec and 25th Dec by Eric Wastl.
If you liked my puzzles above, or thought they sucked, AoC puzzles are better. They have a roughly increasing level of difficulty across the 25 days, are highly tested for any bugs or ambiguity in wording, each Part 2 is unlocked only after you complete Part 1, every user gets a unique input file for the puzzle, and the website verifies your answer and gives you a star for each solved puzzle.
Some videos to watch when preparing for this year's Advent of Code.
Eric Wastl — Advent of Code: Behind the Scenes
Theo Browne — Why You Should Do Advent of Code
Andrew Burgess — How To Get the Most Out of Advent of Code