Advent of Code 2016

In this repo, I will solve Advent-Of-Code problems from 2016 in JavaScript. If possible I will try to come up with a visualization of the solution. These visualizations might be much slower than the original solution (because of animation). Not every Problem lends itself to a nice visual representation.

Day 01: No Time for a Taxicab

• problem: Manhattan Distance
• insight: reading input in JS
• visuals: breadcrumbs and distance

Day 02: Bathroom Security

• problem: moving through a 2D-Grid
• insight: setting up boundaries for non rectangle shapes
• visuals: tried, but was boring

Day 03: Squares With Three Sides

• problem: check valid triangles
• insight: constructing the triangles was more fun
• visuals: visual proof of possible triangles

Day 04: Security Through Obscurity

• problem: checksums on strings and ceasar cypher
• insight: sorting functions!
• visuals: none

Day 05: How About a Nice Game of Chess?

• problem: MD5 checksums
• insight: bruteforce, JavaScript slow
• visuals: none

Day 06: Signals and Noise

• problem: most / least frequent letter in String
• insight: functions as arguments
• visuals: none

Day 07: Internet Protocol Version 7

• problem: finding repeated letters with overlap
• insight: regex and resetting match-index
• visuals: none

Day 08: Two-Factor Authentification

• problem: manipulate 2D-Array
• insight: solution is the visualization
• visuals: pixel display

Day 09: Explosives in Cyberspace

• problem: string manipulation
• insight: don't decompress string, keep track of factors instead

Day 10: Balance Bots

• problem: directed graph and scrambled input
• insight: it's basically bubble sort
• visuals: animated graph showing paths of values

Day 11: Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators

• problem: graph traversal, shortest path
• insight: aggressive pruning is key, solution might not be generally correct
• visuals: WIP

Day 12: Leonardos Monorail

• problem: parse asembly code
• insight: simple is good enough
• visuals: none

Day 13: A Maze of Twisty Little Cubicles

• problem: maze navigation, shortest path
• insight: generative function instead of knowledge of whole maze
• visuals: pathfinder

Day 14: One-Time Pad

• problem: hashing and salting
• insight: precomputing is key
• visuals: none

Day 15: Timing is Everything

• problem: predetermine a certain state
• insight: analytic answer might be possible, but brut force works fast enough
• visuals: the last few seconds, before the solution

Day 16: Dragon Checksum

• problem: recursive generation
• insight: analytic answer might be possible, but brut force works fast enough
• visuals: none

Day 17: Two Steps Forward

• problem: navigating a changing maze
• insight: BFS and DFS, no circles possible
• visuals: WIP

Day 18: Like a Rogue

• problem: enforce simple rules
• insight: again, brute force works
• visuals: in console

Day 19: An Elephant Named Joseph

• problem: determine final state, not trivial
• insight: brute force not working, but Josephus-Problem (thank you, Numberphile!)
• visuals: none