[blacksmith_tb]

A trend in modern English, I'd say - though not necessarily an improvement, e.g. "he gave me a book -> he gifted me a book" and here, like you pointed out, they could easily have said "the fastest way to solve it" instead.

[michaelmior]

I agree that's true. But gift as a verb has apparently been around since the 17th century[0] and doesn't sound as odd to me as using solution as a verb.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/12/gi...

[blacksmith_tb]

It's true that "gifted" (which I still find a bit grating regardless of its history) provides more detail, there's some lost nuance with "gave", since you can say "she gave me a glass of water" and "she gave me a painting for my birthday" but we wouldn't say "she gifted me a glass of water".