Advent of Code 2024 Day 11 (BaseA Style)

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Discussion thread for day 11 of the Advent of Code - https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/11

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AncientPandaman

today challenge remind me about 2021 day 6 challenge. It look alike.

Spoiler

part1: easier to do it in string format. substring is quite annoying to use, i use regex_replace instead.
regex_replace([data],"\(d{"+tostring([length]/2)+"})(\d+)","$1|$2")

part2:
tips: group by

Day 11.yxzp

CoG

Absolutely loved this problem. Part 2 took me a few minutes to realize the trick that changes the problem from being unsolvable to being a walk in the park (Glad I got to use some interface tools this time!):

Spoiler

The trick is to realize that the order of the rocks is irrelevant. This means that you don't need to track each rock. Instead, you can group all rocks with the same number after each blink and track how those two numbers change overtime (which decreases the number of records you need to maintain in memory by many orders of magnitude). I felt a sense of exhilaration and pure delight when that insight clicked in my head. I reconfigured my macro with that insight, and was done very shortly after that!

Main Workflow:

Blink (Iterative Macro):

Main.yxzp

Gawa

Need some trick on part2 to finish calculation.

Spoiler

Part1: Nothing special, just follow instruction.
Part2: If there are 2 or more stones having the same number, they shall be grouped into one and sum up their count, and remember that count. As the stones having the same number will transform in the same way at next blink, no need to evaluate them separately. Repeat 'grouping and summing up count' process until 75 times of blink.

2024D11_gawa.yxzp

AkimasaKajitani

Solved!

Today is straightforward, too.

Spoiler

Part 1 macro

Part 2 macro

Part 2 was needed a little minor change.

Day11.yxzp

Qiu

Got hint from here. 😁

Spoiler

AOC2024-Day11.yxzp

peter_gb

Took me longer than I wish to admit to figure out the trick to part two, and also just let it run in the blind hope it would be fine, knowing that it wouldn't be...

Got there in the end!

Spoiler

Spent 10 minutes iterating with the same macro for Part 2, with my computer sounding like it was going to take off before I worked it out! Ran in 1.5 seconds for part 1 and 2.

Spoilers ahead:

Spoiler

Part 1 simple iterative macro increasing record count over 25 iterations:
AoC 2024 Day 11 - Macro Part 1.png

Part 2, added Grouping logic and kept a record of how many times a number exists in the data. This massively reduced processing time as the number of records do not balloon as they do with the first macro.

AoC 2024 Day 11 - Macro Part 2.png

2024_AoC_mark-spain_Day_11.yxzp

ntakeda

My workflow is not good...

Spoiler

My Workflow is complicated and not beautiful.
There are many occurrences of numbers 0-9. for 0-9, the results were combined after 5 blinks.
Results other than 0-9 were blinked 5 times.
This was repeated 15 times (5*15).

So my workflow has macro nesting.

AoC2024-part11_rev1.yxzp

DataNath

Day 11 & another 2 stars down! Despite my defiance in the WhatsApp group, I did indeed end up optimising this in order to save my laptop.

Spoiler

Yoshiro_Fujimori

It tool a while to find an overflow with Int32 in Part2.

As the difference is only the number of blinking, I put it to the parameter in the macro.😉

Spoiler

Workflow

Macro

workflow.yxzp

DaisukeTsuchiya

Day11 is easier.

Spoiler

WF runs in 2.5 sec. I modified macro a bit for P2.
スクリーンショット 2024-12-11 151154.png

DT2024_Day11_Rev2.yxzp

mmontgomery

Day 11. More in spoiler

Spoiler

P1: Built it brute force as the problem explained
P2: It took a while to figure out an approach, and I tried to simplify the brute force approach. I realized that order didn't matter; the key was to group by key numbers and sum up their appearances to speed up the macro.

The same macro works on P1 and P2, just changed the iteration number to output

Run time 2.8 seconds

Day 11_MM.yxzp

BransonJamesFarley

Cool!

leozhang2work

Spoiler

Part 1 macro

Part 2 macro

Workflow

day 11.yxzp

Sebastian_Chaieb2

First part was really quickly, but second.... 🙄 I guess after 7 versions I have something that was working fast 😅

Spoiler

First Iterative macro

Second Iterative macro

Day11_SC.yxzp

Hub119

Applied some quick simple logic for an iterative macro to get solution to part 1... then tried running this for part 2 and memory quickly became an issue after 30+ blinks and slowed WAY down... so I went back to the drawing board and realized the question had fooled me into thinking overall sequence mattered when really it only matters for the individual stone/number splits. Made a quick tweak to group by numbers as they will always be treated the same, and BAM whole thing runs in about a second. 11 down, 14 to go...

Spoiler

AoC 2024 Day 11.yxzp

Blake_E

Spoiler

Workflow

Iterative macro

Day11v2.yxzp

Goddenra

Got my hopes up when I saw the short question for the second star. Should have known! Tricks noted above in terms of realising you need to know the number of scenarios, not perform same task on each row, is key.

Good opportunity for me to brush up on iterative macros as I simply don't use them on a daily basis.

Day11 Macro call.yxzp

binu_acs

Spoiler

LHolmes

Crazy Numbers - made me think of the Franck Muller Crazy Numbers timepieces - paid as tribute in the macro icon.

Spoiler

2024 Day 11 Part 1 & 2

2024 Day 11 Iterative Macro

2024 Advent of Code Day 11_ Solution LMH.yxzp

niklas_greilinger

Fun challenge Tried to run part 2 without grouping at first but it almost killed my laptop

Spoiler

Spoiler

Solved!

I knew there was a trick in Pt 2 but I had to look at @CoG 's for the hint/answer - thank you!

Spoiler

My Pt 1 macro carefully keeps track of the order. I figured that Pt 2 would ask for the middle rock or something - nope For the Pt 2 macro, I removed all the RecordID stuff in addition to adding the Group By. I could also use this to replace the Pt 1 macro, but it was already built so I left it

Pt 1:

Pt 2:

Day 11.yxzp

Tokimatsu

I just looked and found a misspelling of the field name.

Spoiler

AoC2024_Day11.yxzp

Shifty

11!

Spoiler

Image upload failed. Try uploading a different image or from some other source.
Image upload failed. Try uploading a different image or from some other source.
Image upload failed. Try uploading a different image or from some other source.

2024.11B.yxmd

kelsey_kincaid

I knew brute force was going to burn me in Part 2, and I was right. This reminded me of the lanternfish from a couple of years ago, but it took me awhile to remember how I solved that one and apply it here.

Spoiler

I spent a lot of time in spreadsheets trying to figure out an equation that could project out how many rocks we'd have after 75 iterations. After taking a couple of weeks away from this one, I came back fresh and realized that grouping is key!

2024_Day11_KelseyKincaid.yxzp

estherb47

Having a very strange experience with 3 separate challenges correct on first answer for each parts 1 & 2

Spoiler

Weird though. Initially I had a single formula tool to figure things out, all text based (and all enough space for said text), with a touch of text to columns. For whatever reason, this worked with the first part, but not with summarizing on the second.

Once I switched to processing as integers, part 2 worked. So guessing something was wonky with multiplying by 2024.

Anyways, flow is attached.