5 days in and still no macros used for me!
I had a nice realisation about the logic which helped massively for part 2, not sure if it's a totally sustainable solution, as I feel like the iterative approach properly solves the problem, but my idea with the logic worked for my input...!
Very happy with my brain today in solving this one. Zero MACROS. This is the day where I feel like I can do Advent of Code. Best buy tissues for tomorrow.
A few little tricks to this one, but not too bad!
The second part was a little trickier, there were a few details in the rules that helped. Glancing over the rules showed that some rules contradicted each other or formed a closed loop, meaning it wasn't possible to create a master order for the 49 values. However, the fact that each value had the same number of rules as the others (and, specifically, half as many rules as there were other values - 24 rules, 48 other values) gave credence to the idea that each value in a manual's list would have a unique number of rules that could be applied to that manual - and that by counting how many rules could be applied to each value in the page list, you could come up with the new page order.
(Since the connections were a little more tangled today compared to previous days, it was a good excuse to try the new connection color options in 2024.2!)
My solution.
as I copied the logic to the Macro for Part 2. But it's time to go to bed...
Main workflow
Macro
Not perfect ordering bubble sort, a bit of random applied order
Went too greedy at the first try, wanted to create the master ordered list, too many layers of macro.
Luckily cleared my ahead for a different direction, turns out much easier way.
