Source: Day 10: Hoof It

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a heightmap (0 to 9), for each 0 count how many 9 you can reach on paths that only ever increase height by exactly 1 at a time. Sum these values.

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Source: Day 7: Bridge Repair

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a result and a list of numbers, determine if any combination of addition (+) and/or multiplication (*) using all the given numbers in order can return the result. Ignore order of operations.

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You’ve probably seen Neil.fun’s Infinite Craft game somewhere on the internet. If not, in a nutshell:

• You start with 4 blocks: Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind.
• You can combine any two blocks, for example:
  • Earth + Water = Plant
  • Plant + Fire = Smoke
  • Smoke + Smoke = Cloud

That’s… pretty much it, from a gameplay perspective. There’s not really any goal, other than what you set yourself (try to make Cthulhu!). Although if you manage to find something no one has ever made before, you get a neat little note for it!

So wait, what do I mean by ‘something no one has ever seen before’?

Well, if two elements have ever been combined by anyone before, you get a cached response. Barring resets of the game (no idea if / how often this has happened, but I assume it has), if A + B = C for you, A + B = C for everyone.

And here’s the fun part: if you find a combination no one has ever found before: Neil.fun will send the combination out to an LLM to generate the new answer. The specific prompt isn’t public (so far as I know), but essentially what that means is that you have a basically infinite crafting tree¹!

So of course seeing something like this I want to automate it. 😄

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