Advent of Code 2024 Day 4 (BaseA Style)

AlteryxCommunityTeam

Discussion thread for day 4 of the Advent of Code - https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/4

Advent of Code

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Ccraig6

Most fun and head scratching one yet!

Spoiler

Medha31

Never expected a use case like this in Alteryx. Tricky one to solve the word search diagonally. Had to take a hint for that bit.

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AOC Day4.yxmd

peter_gb

Actually really enjoyed this one, I wasted a whole hour trouble shooting unnecessarily, I think my second answer to part 2 was mistyped into the website the first time I got it... As after a thorough troubleshoot I still couldn't find anything wrong with my solution, tried the same value I was getting consistently and voila....

Always fun to see what your actual input/solutions look like with these ones! (after the stars have been secured of course...)

Spoiler

Went with generating the row/col of each target letter, for each direction, for each possible starting letter to find the XMASs, then for each A as midpoint, what are the 4 corners, are they M or S, and then finally, are my matches conforming to the MAS diagonals logic.

Change the extension of my xml file to .twb to take a gander at the tableau output. Not insightful, but cool to see.

AoC_4.xml

Spoiler

Well this one kicked my butt 😥 but I learned a lot! I was good up until the diagonal matches. I remember a puzzle with diagonal patterns from last year's AoC and I never got through it. Thankfully, everyone here is way smarter than me and posted solutions that were easy to follow so I could learn some new tricks with diagonal patterns 😉.

And a huge thank you to @CoG for having a solution that was so easy to follow that I was able to essentially repeat it (and understand why it worked) and live to see another day of AoC!

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Day 4.yxmd

DataNath

In a true act of self-hatred, I saw a couple of people mention RegEx in the WhatsApp discussion group and it made me think... surely this could be done in a single Formula expression? A bit of trial and error later and I present to you one of the most disgusting things created by mankind. 1473 & 765 characters respectively.

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Part 1:

REGEX_CountMatches([DownloadData], '(?=XMAS|SAMX)')
+
REGEX_CountMatches([DownloadData], '(?=X.{'+ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
'))+'}M.{'+ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
'))+'}A.{'+ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
'))+'}S)')
+
REGEX_CountMatches([DownloadData], '(?=S.{'+ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
'))+'}A.{'+ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
'))+'}M.{'+ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
'))+'}X)')
+
REGEX_CountMatches([DownloadData], '(?=X.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))+1)+'}M.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))+1)+'}A.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))+1)+'}S)')
+
REGEX_CountMatches([DownloadData], '(?=S.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))+1)+'}A.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))+1)+'}M.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))+1)+'}X)')
+
REGEX_CountMatches([DownloadData], '(?=X.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}M.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}A.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}S)')
+
REGEX_CountMatches([DownloadData], '(?=S.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}A.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}M.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}X)')&#8203;

Part 2:

REGEX_CountMatches([DownloadData], '(?=M.M.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}A.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}S.S)')
+
REGEX_CountMatches([DownloadData], '(?=M.S.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}A.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}M.S)')
+
REGEX_CountMatches([DownloadData], '(?=S.M.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}A.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}S.M)')
+
REGEX_CountMatches([DownloadData], '(?=S.S.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}A.{'+ToString(ToNumber(ToString(FindString([DownloadData], '
')))-1)+'}M.M)')&#8203;

AdamR

Heavy use of regex again today for my 8/9 tool solution

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Day4.yxzp

Kenda

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AoC 2024 D4.yxmd

Qiu

@DataNath
You are amazing..👍

binu_acs

Spoiler

2024_AoC_binuacs_Day_04.yxmd

matthewblandford

Surprisingly straightforward today - a fun little puzzle this time around.

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X Y cartesian no macros

part 1

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part 2

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Marcus Alvim

2024_AoC_Malvim_Day_04.yxzp

SeanAdams

I liked this one - took a little time to carve out a spot to work on it, but it was enjoyable (a little geometric thinking)

Spoiler

Approach:
create a rowID; a column ID; a diagnal 1 & 2 ID (for the two diagonal directions). this way you can group them into strings
- To create the diags - it's worth knowing that on the one diag, x+y =c; and on the other x-y = c
Then you just take these groups and look for the relevant strings

For part 2 - if you know which letter in the string is the A, you can do a simple join to find X shapes - and then just count.

Python solution to follow.

Code is stored here: SeanAdams10/AdventOfCodePython: Advent of code challenges in Python - across multiple years

Day04_v2.yxzp

Tokimatsu

Very slow. I may brash up this.

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AoC2024_Day04.yxzp

Bobbyt23

Finally managed to get through Day 4!

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IgorL

Took me way too long to realize I was counting diagonals in only one direction 😅

Spoiler

Record ID and Tile can be used to get the coordinates for each letter, simple formula to group letters into diagonals. Concatenate base on each coordinate to get all possible strings and parse for results.

For part 2, parse each set of diagonals for MAS/SAM then join based on coordinates to find overlaps.

AoCDay4.yxmd

JoshuaB

I'm still standing! Struggled on 'seeing' the diagonal part but once I did I got the rest!

Spoiler

2024_AoC_joshuaburkhow_Day_04.yxmd

lwolfie

Definitely needed help on this one. Probably due to the later hour for me.

Day4.yxmd

Blake_E

When the RegEx tool and RegEx functions come up with different answers 🤔

Day4.yxzp

Laurap1228

Spoiler

Day4 Laura.yxmd

ccanterman

Solved!

I built a solution for Part 1 that worked where I used non-macro Tools to check the rows & columns. Then I built a macro for the diagonals. Then I re-did part 1 and the macro so it could handle all 9 directions (counting not moving as a direction.... I guess I should've excluded those. Drat!)

Then Part 2 didn't need any tweaks to the macro (woohoo!) and involved an extra filter at the end.

I used a Text Input file for the values I was trying to get - e.g. "X", then "XM", then "XMA", etc. I feel like I could've done that differently but it also worked beautifully for Part 2 without any macro tweaks, so I think I'm calling that a win.

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Day 4.yxzp

estherb47

In past years, I've always solved problems like these with spatial tools. Wanted to try something different

Spoiler

For part 1, built 4 letter words going horizontally, vertically, diagonally (both directions), and then found matches to XMAS on reversed words as well

For part 2, built 3x3 blocks of letters, building 3-letter blocks horizontally, and then matching three consecutive rows before concatenating them. Used RegexCountMatches as a bit of a brute force way to find the matching patterns.

SeanAdams

and here is the accompanying python - part 1 is pretty awful, part 2 is sweet.

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all code at SeanAdams10/AdventOfCodePython: Advent of code challenges in Python - across multiple years

afv2688

This was an interesting one!

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AoC_2024_4.yxmd

BS_THE_ANALYST

Nice! Love the grid style ones (may saying regret this) 😂

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bs-solution_day4.yxmd

CailinS

Today was pretty fun...diagonal considerations through Alteryx aren't exactly straightforward but I bet they are harder with other tools!

The iterative macro is a wonderful thing! And for me, today was the first time Part 2 was way easier for me than Part 1! Once again....and I don't think this is a spoiler but when using Regex....

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Tokenize!

Also, here are my screenshots

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Day 4.yxzp

mkeiffer

Here is my Day 4 solution. Pretty big workflow so not posting a spoiler picture. Again, better late than never!

2024_AoC_michael_keiffer_Day_04.yxzp

Dhrish

Solution

AOC_D4_2024.yxmd