Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by saagarjha 2758 days ago
I’m not OP, but if I were solving this I’d just take the smallest square less than that number, figure out where it is (the top left or bottom right corner), and then “run” the algorithm from there, which should only require one “turn” at the most. You really don’t need to know anything about spirals in particular; just look for a pattern that you can take advantage of to reduce your work.
1 comments
w4tson 2758 days ago
You make it sound so easy. Part 2 was the real gnarly bit.

Anyway I’m sure I won’t ever encounter that spiral as long as I live but if I do, I have code prepped for it :D

link
saagarjha 2758 days ago
Oh, I didn't see that. The Advent of Code website is strangely annoying in that it makes it extremely difficult to find past problems…

Based on what I found online (which is abridged rewordings of the problem, something of a sequence sum?) I'd get lazy at that point and implement something that makes the spiral. Presumably, this shouldn't take to long, as the sequence grows rapidly so they can't give us a number that's too big…

link
kingaillas 2758 days ago
>extremely difficult to find past problems…

Huh? Click [Events], click on the year, click on the day.

link
w4tson 2758 days ago
The second (and sometimes much harder) part of each days problem is only revealed when you complete the first part.
link