> Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has nothing to do with it.
It's the Advent of Code. Not "Random late year event with no religious / commercial tradition connotations whatsoever" of Code. The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).
Advent is not the time from December 1st until Christmas, it starts on whatever days the fourth Sunday before Christmas happens to fall on that year. This way, there are exactly four Sundays in advent.
If Christmas itself should fall on a Sunday one year, it doubles as the fourth Sunday of Advent, i.e., then the first of Advent will be only three weeks earlier.
(I never could wrap my head around all this. I had enough problems with Easter events, where the math makes a detour through a Lunar calendar.)
EDIT: And my memory of the Tradition is wrong too, it's supposed to be 24 - as confirmed by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710618, and corroborated the two "Paw Patrol" themed Advent Calendars I just found still stashed in my home office.
j/k ;-)
> (first day of spring)
It's actually the March equinox. "Spring" is true only in the northern hemisphere. What's more it's the ecclesiastical equinox, not the astronomical equinox, whose date actually varies depending on the year.
Never mind that all this is descriptive of dating in countries that grew up with Western Christianity. Countries where Eastern traditions dominate often date it differently.
All good will to you both = )
There is no time for actual advent or winter calmness in general.
We can only hope. The Christmas song containment fields are weakening as we speak.
In Eastern Christianity, the Nativity Fast starts on a fixed day: November 15.
You're overly attached to the meaning of Advent, but you aren't even aware of the meaning. It doesn't mean exactly 25. This year Advent Sunday is November 30th.
And the creator of Advent of Code can do whatever they want with it, despite the name. They've put an immense amount of effort into this for so long - if that had been me, I would have been incredibly disheartened to see people saying "the whole point is just 25".
It’s safe to say this ship has sailed.
This largely depends on who you're asking? I don't know anyone who wouldn't consider 24 the course correct number of Advent, simply because that's the common number here (we celebrate Christmas on the 24th). So 12 makes perfectly sense, just do every second day.
There are also many groups who don't start on the 1st of December, but on the first Sunday of Advent. And probably many others.
24 doors on the Lego calendars too
The 50th star is awarded for having the other 49 stars and then basically clicking OK I think. If you've been diligently solving them in order, it means you effectively get two stars for your final 49th puzzle of the year on Christmas Day, which makes sense because then the puzzles are very hard and a "normal" puzzle wouldn't leave much time for other Christmas Day activities. But if you're the sort of person who often gives up on a day and never comes back you may never have seen this because you never got to 49 stars.
You're not quite right that the Christmas Day puzzle is trivial - it's the first half of a maybe week 1 type difficulty puzzle, but there just isn't a second half:
Here's the puzzle text for last year's Xmas Day (if you are logged in you can play, but even without it will explain the puzzle it just won't give you an input to test your solution):
the word you're looking for is pedant
In the spirit of pedantry, I added even more minor detail!
You don’t seem to hate it that much?
I remember there being multiple accounts trying to one-shot AoC and all ended on day 10 or so.
Some thoughts maybe should remain internal :)
A little excerpt from Arlo Guthrie
"I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench, because you want to know if I'm moral enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after being a litterbug."
Imagine that without the "I mean"s in it, and the importance of how they convey his stance on the situation.
Change ChatGPT to 'my drunk uncle' while you're at it.
https://gist.github.com/clairefro/1cf81f5d7125e124975f4aba22...
They have hundreds of challenges that humans can solve in under a minute which LLMs can not. Seems the general trend is figuring out the rules or patterns of the challenge when there are few examples and no instructions.
Really? The name of the event is "Advent of Code". Having 25 puzzles is easily its most strongly-determined aspect.
You could argue for 23-29 puzzles, or perhaps for 5, but at 12 what's the name supposed to refer to?
That would be 24.
https://www.hallmark.com/house-and-home/figurines/precious-m...
Although I don't think anyone really knows what the 12 days of Christmas are anymore.
Shakespeare is still being read, I think.
Advent calendars in their earliest forms were invented approx. 80 years ago.
The four week advent period goes back to the 7th century and was introduced by pope Gregory I..
> Advent calendars in their earliest forms were invented approx. 80 years ago.
Well, Wikipedia starts its "History" section in 1945, which is 80 years ago. But what it says about advent calendars in 1945 is that they were lower-quality reprints of earlier designs. This strongly implies that they weren't a new concept in 1945.
The German wikipedia is more interested in the concept and cites the word Adventskalenders to the novel Buddenbrooks, which features one set in the year 1869 but was published in 1901. Either way, the calendars were clearly an established cultural phenomenon well before 1945.
Looking at the talk page (for the English article), it seems that the history section was provided by a "translation group" from their translation of a matching section of the German article. It's not clear why they began with the post-war period; the German page goes back much further than that, which was also true at the time they provided their translation. But this does explain why the English "history" section begins by referring to prior context that doesn't exist in the English article.
Minimum one, sometimes two.
(Also, Advent doesn't mean four weeks. Christmas might fall on a Monday.)
> Given that part 2 is often a very simple modification of part 1, this could lead to many of the days being total letdowns. I can enjoy a simple puzzle, but I'd be a bit disappointed if one day is a single line change to the previous day.
I'd also add that not having to be worried everyday about something makes a lot of sense. He can have fewer days "on call" in December with.
[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/1ocwh04/chang...
After thinking, "maybe puzzles could be designed by a group instead of an individual and they could share the work," I then thought, "and couldn't an LLM help?"
And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has nothing to do with it.
And aren't we so lucky that it isn't! Aren't we lucky to have had the prior 500+ challenges given as gifts over the years! Aren't we lucky to have a great demonstration of humility and care! Aren't we lucky to have 12 new gifts to look forward to this year!
Thank you!