@blinry and I are still trying to solve last year's #adventOfCode. We're stuck on day 10, and we're out of ideas – except using linear optimization algorithms, but that feels like overkill... Has anyone of you solved day 10 and has a tip for us – do we really need to implement linear optimization?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_programming#Integer_unknowns

Please use a spoiler for your answers ^^'

#AOC25 #advent_of_code #adventofcode2025 #adventofcode2025day10

Day 10 part 1 done.

Part 1 was a little tricky and fun. Solved it by just testing every combination, and sped that up by turning all the buttons and the goal light configuration into numbers that I could XOR together.

Technically, part 2 is done too, but it will never work on the real input. I threw memoization at this thing knowing that it wasn't going to work, but thought I might get lucky and the input would be constructed in a way that it would be fine. Nope.

I gave up and looked at the solutions thread on Reddit, and it looks like almost everybody is just throwing a solver at it (and the ones that aren't are using things like fraction-free Gaussian Elimination, which I can't hope to understand at this point in the night), and there are only 26 comments after 1.75 hours, so I guess this is a really hard problem this year.

I might come back to it tomorrow, but I doubt I'll find a good solution on my own. I don't want to just throw a solver at it if I don't have to.

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