Discussion thread for day 3 of the Advent of Code - https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/3
I had to use Appendix Field...I mean brute force attack! (Appreciate AMP engine)
Definitely spun my wheels, spent too much time overthinking, and reworked things too many times, but got there!
Part 1: Spent a fair amount of time figuring out the best way to split out the values in each row to keep adjacent digits together as a single value, but also determine each number's position in the row. To account for that I created way too many IDs - one for the Row, one for the value, one for the column... I'm embarrassed to say those aren't the only ones. I've learned that when I'm not sure what I'm doing I find comfort in creating IDs for some reason 😂. Separated numbers from symbols and did a brute force append to find all possible combinations of numbers & symbols to determine if they were adjacent.
Part 2: Luckily, I was able to use most of my Part 1 solution to figure out Part 2. Just had to isolate possible gears and then determine how many numbers were adjacent to each possible gear.
My solution. The Map style question is too early on Day3.
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Oooof. Same, @phottovy . Same.
Full transparency - I did temporarily output data to Excel so I could conditionally format the data (parts were green, potential gears were red) just so I could wrap my head around what I was looking at... which might have actually led me to my "I wonder if this matters" aha! moment in the spoiler. So... thanks Excel?
I wish there was a more intuitive way to handle grid operations in Alteryx, but it is more fun than it should be to figure out. Looking forward to seeing others' solution strategies.
This was a chewy challenge for Day 3. I enjoyed it without getting too frustrated!
@AkimasaKajitani your generate rows for finding adjacent coordinates is so elegant!