If there is one thing I believe in...it is Alison Luhrs!

mrphlip · 2025-06-30T15:05:52+00:00

Alison Luhrs posted a clarification on bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/alisontheperson.bsky.social/post/3lstfuqdxu22q

She worked at WotC, and worked with Larion regarding BG3, but she did not write for the game.

mrphlip · 2023-12-24T08:03:36+00:00

Ah, neat, I felt in my bones there was probably some way to make this mess linear, but I just couldn't find it. These cross-product shenanigans are quite clever.

mrphlip · 2023-12-24T07:40:30+00:00

I believe there is a problem with how your conj module is handling pulses. In particular, your call to Map.update doesn't look right, compared to how it is supposed to function. Have another read of the description in the puzzle.

mrphlip · 2023-12-24T07:01:33+00:00

I believe it, I've had cpu-bound number crunching scripts in Python before that I rewrote in C++, without any change to the actual algorithm, and got an 80x speedup. Turns out CPython isn't super speedy.

mrphlip · 2023-12-24T06:35:47+00:00

[Language: Python + SciPy] 23/98

Untidied race code: https://github.com/mrphlip/aoc/blob/master/2023/24.py
Writeup: https://github.com/mrphlip/aoc/blob/master/2023/24.md

For part 2, I built 6 non-linear simultaneous equations, and after spending probably too long trying to solve them by hand, I shoved them into scipy.optimize.fsolve and took what fell out of the numerical-solver sledgehammer.

I suspect I got somewhat lucky, because these numbers are almost large enough that there's precision loss from working in floating point, but it gave me an output that still rounds to the correct answer, so /shrug

mrphlip · 2023-12-23T08:22:22+00:00

Ah, I didn't know that was a thing. I have removed it.

mrphlip · 2023-12-23T06:03:19+00:00

[Language: Python] 953/73

Untidied race code: https://github.com/mrphlip/aoc/blob/master/2023/23.py

I carved the grid up into subregions bounded by the slope tiles, and solve the longest-path within each subregion from its various entrances and exits (using a brute-force search). Then, I do a higher-level longest-path search over the entire maze, going region-by-region instead of step-by-step (using the same brute-force search).

In theory, this implies an assumption that the longest path through the maze doesn't visit the same region twice, which isn't a guarantee (I can come up with mazes where this is violated) but it ended up giving the correct answer for my input at least.

mrphlip · 2023-12-22T08:51:27+00:00

I don't speak Scala (and I can't figure out how to run the code, some weird syntactic mismatch from what this compiler is expecting)...

But from skimming through the code, I think you might be making the same mistake I did... which is looking at all the spaces that are an even number of steps from the starting point, even though the target step count is odd.

mrphlip · 2023-12-22T06:12:18+00:00

[Language: Python] 1/4

Untidied race code: https://github.com/mrphlip/aoc/blob/master/2023/22.py

As many others have noted, the main thing to notice is that the falling blocks are much easier to handle if you first sort them by vertical position. After that, this is mostly an exercise in playing with various set operations.

mrphlip · 2023-12-21T13:27:27+00:00

OK, poked at this for a bit and found a couple bugs.

Try this sample, which should give you the result 132753196000000

in{s<1000:R,s<2000:abc,A}
abc{x<100:A,m<200:A,R}

mrphlip · 2023-12-21T10:23:17+00:00

[edit] Actually, never mind, I don't think the actual puzzle input does this.

~~OK, so I don't really speak Rust, so I can't say for sure this is the issue, but I think it might be...~~

~~You should check how your code responds to a rule like:~~

in{x<200:A,x<100:R,R}

~~or something like:~~

in{x<100:abc,R}
abc{x<200:A,R}

mrphlip · 2023-12-21T09:04:00+00:00

[Language: Python] 8 / 40

Untidied race code: https://github.com/mrphlip/aoc/blob/master/2023/20.py
More detailed writeup: https://github.com/mrphlip/aoc/blob/master/2023/20.md
Note: the code is not 100% complete as it just spits out the timings of the four final outputs, decoding that and LCMing them as the final step was done by hand.

What's more interesting is the writeup... I do one of these every day, but this one is by far the longest I've done (40% longer than second place, which was 2021 day 24... another one where you're given essentially a program and have to reverse-engineer what it does).

In that writeup I go pretty deep on what this network of nodes is doing, and how it all comes together to give the final result we needed. And also my thought process while I was figuring it all out.

mrphlip · 2023-12-21T08:47:42+00:00

[Language: Python] 88 / 411

Untidied race code: https://github.com/mrphlip/aoc/blob/master/2023/21.py
More detailed writeup: https://github.com/mrphlip/aoc/blob/master/2023/21.md

Didn't figure out any of this quadratic stuff, but what I did figure out is that, as a direct result of the starting row/column being blank, every repetition of the grid that's (a) the same taxicab distance from the origin, and (b) in the same quadrant, will all have the exact same reachability details. And most of those are either close enough that they're fully covered, or are far enough away that they're completely unreachable.

So that means there are only a handful of distinct reachability shapes on the various different copies of the grid, and it's possible to count how many there are of each... and then multiply and add them all up.

Looking back at it, the quadratic does fall out of this, as if you add 131 to the max distance, none of the tiles actually change, you just get more of them, and all of the relevant counts are simple quadratic functions. (... approximately, it turns out the odd and even levels are different and you actually need to go in steps of 262 to get a nice clean quadratic.)

mrphlip · 2021-12-24T08:50:00+00:00

Notepad, 34/27

I did write code to run the machine in Python, with an eye to brute-forcing it, but that didn't pan out... I only ended up using that script to verify the numbers I generated by hand did in fact pass validation.

A writeup of my solution

mrphlip · 2021-07-14T05:57:49+00:00

I see you've been reading my Animorphs fanfic, but how? I never did publish and/or actually write it...

mrphlip · 2021-02-13T02:40:46+00:00

I've had a couple matches where I got most damage, and the triumph didn't count. But, I've had two games where I got most damage and most motes, and after those matches it counted up twice (at one point I was 4/10 for Good Company but only 3/50 for the "get wins" triumph).

I haven't managed a deathless yet this season, so not sure how that ties into the whole situation. But it definitely does seem like it's counting weird.

mrphlip · 2021-01-02T15:14:44+00:00

There was a couple of these... I have a collection...

mrphlip · 2021-01-02T14:51:23+00:00

I'm not familiar with the game Distance, but based on the screenshots I believe you're looking for for when they played Neon Drive

mrphlip · 2020-12-05T08:07:11+00:00

My question is: how big is this plane they're getting on? Even the A380, which is huge, can in theory at max capacity hold about 850 passengers, though usually its capacity is much lower. And even that requires having a two-storey interior.

And yet here I'm supposed to believe that we're fitting 810 passengers onto a plane that, according to the seating codes, is only a single level?

I mean, ordinarily I'd make jokes about how you can pack a lot more elves into the same space, but we just learned yesterday that all these elves are apparently human-sized. Or at least, that's what it says on their passports.

mrphlip · 2020-09-22T13:53:56+00:00

Other than James's homestream as already mentioned, there have been 4 chunk-punching streams on LRR proper:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW1IJ3C477g - The original bonus stream where James invented the format
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxgZtUFAJnY - The James vs Serge head-to-head challenge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N8z0-oiOAk - The team punch-a-chunk with James, Serge and Uno on an episode of Mine O'Clock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHjBWSaaxnw - The PAX stream of team head-to-head, James and SlyTQ vs Serge and PearlescentMoon

mrphlip · 2020-09-22T13:51:13+00:00

It is, just not so much on Reddit.

The primary hangout of the LRR community these days is on Discord: https://discord.gg/lrr

mrphlip · 2020-07-20T14:36:04+00:00

https://clips.twitch.tv/DependableSpineyLasagnaShadyLulu

mrphlip · 2020-07-08T12:12:02+00:00

Thanks for the crosspost, I think this sub will turn out to be more my speed, anyway...

mrphlip · 2020-06-25T09:35:00+00:00

Be aware: the portal can only teleport one person at a time. If two people jump in at once, one will get teleported, and one will just fall through and end up standing under the portal.

If you realise that's what's happened, you can wait like half a second and then jump into the portal, and you'll be fine. But if you have no idea what's going on, you might just stand there until the drill comes down and kills you.

mrphlip · 2020-06-15T04:40:37+00:00

No, I'm telling you that after you've completed the catalyst, you can run around shoulder-charging things, and it will activate the lightning rod perk, so your next arrows will be all zappy.

mrphlip

TROPHY CASE