I’m always on the lookout for new sources of quick¹ coding puzzles. This holiday season, Advent of Code scratches precisely that itch.

Advent of Code is a series of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill levels. They are self-contained and are just as appropriate for an expert who wants to stay sharp as they are for a beginner who is just learning to code. Each puzzle calls upon different skills and has two parts that build on a theme. – About - Advent of Code

I’ve been working out each problem thus far in Python (my language of choice; along with Racket). I’m backfilling the first seven posts (along with this one), but I’ll try to do the rest daily.

If you’d like to see all of the solutions, here’s a list:

As with my Project Euler posts², I generally feel that these problems are more interesting if you take a crack at solving them yourself first. If you feel the same way, stop reading. This post will still be here when you’re done, I promise³.

For each post, I suggest you click through on the title to read the entire descriptions. They’re amusing. I’ll summarize the core of the problem here though.

If you’d like to see all of my solutions (generally even before I’ve posted about them), they’re on GitHub: jpverkamp/advent-of-code

If you’ve solved the puzzles as well and posted your solutions, post a link below. I’d love to see how others approach the problems.