Mastodawn

Hello, friends! After 10(!) years of #AdventOfCode, I've made some changes to preserve my sanity: there will be 12 days of puzzles each December (still starting Dec 1) and there is no longer a global leaderboard. Read more:
https://adventofcode.com/2025/about#faq_num_days
https://adventofcode.com/2025/about#faq_leaderboard

About - Advent of Code 2025

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tjhowse Oct 22

@ericwastl A perfectly reasonable decision. I appreciate the work you put into AoC.

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Simon Oct 22

@ericwastl completely understandable! Does this mean one new puzzle every second day or 12 consecutive days of daily puzzles?

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Eric Wastl Oct 22

@smrqdt Puzzles on Dec 1 - Dec 12.

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Taylor Oct 22

@ericwastl Very understandable. Honestly, 25 days of puzzles can get pretty overwhelming for people solving them too. I look forward to continuing with the new format this year. Thanks for doing this every year; it's been a bright part of my year every year, and I don't see these changes diminishing it at all for me.

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Greg Titus Oct 22

@ericwastl I think dropping the global leaderboard and not having the puzzles lead all the way to Christmas Eve will probably help a lot of participants' sanity as well as your own. 😀

(Certainly, as someone who only very rarely got any global score but has some over-competitive tendencies, this feels like a change for my own good.)

Thank you for all you've done and continue to do!

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LittleFrank Oct 22

@ericwastl I'm amazed at your achievements over the years, so this is still more than satisfactory. Good decision!

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gabriele renzi Oct 22

@ericwastl sounds reasonable, you shouldn't get burned out by this.

Also, maybe this will be the year I manage to actually finish all days :)

Although I feel a puzzle every 2 days might be better from the solver point of view, but that's just me.

Thanks for the AoC!

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Juhis Oct 22

@riffraff @ericwastl The nice thing with Advent of Code is that one can solve the puzzles at their own pace so even if they are released daily, you can still solve them every other day.

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gabriele renzi Oct 22

@hamatti @ericwastl true, but my experience is that if I don't do it on the day then I never do it again, cause my focus has shifted.
I still have "complete Intcode" somewhere in my to-do list 😅
That's just me tho, I'm aware everyone tackles AoC differently

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ednl 🇪🇺Oct 22

@riffraff @hamatti @ericwastl That's one aspect I can relate to. Something else is: to me half the fun is the daily posts and banter at /r/adventofcode. That wouldn't work well with a self-imposed delay.

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aoanla Oct 22

@riffraff @hamatti @ericwastl It's also a problem for me too - I know Eric explicitly says "solve at own pace", but "1 new one every day" does shift focus [and build up a backlog fear!] which is not his *fault*...

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Jari Komppa 🇫🇮Oct 22

@ericwastl I'm in no way affiliated with AOC and I approve this message.

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Vincent Cantin Oct 22

@ericwastl I've read your post and I like your change. Welcome back to sanity and fun & relaxing time.

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olligobber Oct 22

@ericwastl Thank you so much for all the hard work you put in.

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Joey Rees-Hill Oct 22

@ericwastl I'm glad to hear you're making decisions to yak care of yourself! Thanks for all your hard work on AoC!

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marie destandau - ototoï Oct 22

@ericwastl Wise decision. Take care! Thank you for your work, AOC is so much fun 💜

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Mike Pirnat Oct 22

@ericwastl I think these are wise choices. When I was doing AoC early on I got into unhealthy patterns and by the end of 25 days wasn’t much fun for my family. After two or theee years I burned out and stopped participating.

I hope the changes are good to you too!

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LittleFrank Oct 22

@mpirnat @ericwastl Absolutely. I have tended to start strong, get up early, but as Christmas approaches it takes longer and family suffers from my mental absence. This is better, even though the difficulty will probably ramp more quickly.

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Juhis Oct 22

@ericwastl I like these changes! Looking forward to this year's calendar

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Merovius Oct 22

@ericwastl Honestly, good changes, in my opinion. I thought the global leaderboard should've gone a few years ago anyways, when LLMs started being a thing.
And I did end up conflicted because doing AoC always took too much time towards the end, but I also didn't want to stop halfway.

So really, I welcome both of these changes.

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Claudius Oct 22

@Merovius even before that, they were a weird trade off with a lot of dopamine for a very small amount of people (mayyyybe the top100?) and a lot of dread for everyone else.

I'm glad global leaderboard will not be a thing going forward.

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Claudius Oct 22

@ericwastl excellent changes, both of them.

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🏴‍☠️ MC Pablo ∴Oct 22

@ericwastl Very good decisions. Thanks again for all this work :).

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Poolitzer Oct 22

@ericwastl out of curiosity, why did you decide to run it for 12 days from 1-12.12, and not run it for 24 days and release a puzzle every second day?

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ednl 🇪🇺Oct 22

@poolitzer @ericwastl That's 23 days, the last puzzle would come on 23 Dec. But yes, that's what I hoped for, too. I think it would add to the original intention "just for fun and learning". Of course, I CAN simply choose my own delayed schedule! But that would mean losing out on half the fun: the community banter at /r/adventofcode

@ericwastl thank you

@ericwastl I really appreciate the immense amount of work you've put into AoC over the years. I've only been participating for the past three years or so, but I've really enjoyed it each time.

I guess I'll be somewhat nostalgic about the longer 25-day contests, but your reasons for the change make perfect sense, and I have to admit that the 25 day run was pretty tiring by the end.

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sotolf Oct 22

@ericwastl Very sensible changes :) You deserve some rest, I never really managed to solve all of them in december anyway, and still have a backlog of unsolved ones :) Also the global leaderboard change just makes sense, I'd say anything that would let you keep on making our advent time a really fun time is good :)

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Michael Simons Oct 22

@ericwastl good call. Reducing your stress and helping others.

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Paul Wilde

Oct 22

@ericwastl sounds sensible to me!
And thanks for the enjoyment you continue to bring to people each year!

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Dr Lee A. Christie Oct 22

@ericwastl TBH, I disliked the global leaderboards. And I think having only private leaderboards solves the lingering question of generative AI. Looking forward to another great year. 🎅🧝‍♂️

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Sam Oct 22

@ericwastl I think killing the global leaderboard is the only sensible move at this point. I have a huge amount of respect for the amount of work you've put into AoC over the years and I'm glad you've been able to find a way to keep running it!

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Gafanhoto Oct 22

@ericwastl There will be more time to be with the family :)

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aoanla Oct 22

@ericwastl echoing everyone else here - I think these are great changes, especially as AoC continues to get a lot of "social pressure" (*not* from you!) bound up in it. Especially happy to see the death of the global leaderboard, which did just incentivise maladaptive behaviour, sadly.

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Timothy Wolodzko Oct 22

@ericwastl I like this change. I participated few times and never had time to focus on the tasks closer to end of December because of Christmas, life, & co, so 12 days sounds way more realistic to finish.

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Tony Oct 22

@ericwastl Will day 12 be as hard as the old Day 24?

I support this change, I struggle to get past the first week due to time commitments most years, but love the project!

Well done for preserving your sanity :)

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Romain Delamare Oct 22

@ericwastl that sounds great and perfectly reasonable. I'm looking forward to this year's puzzles. Take care!

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Hannes Güdelhöfer Oct 22

@ericwastl as someone who has started in 2015, and done them ever year since:

Thank you! <3

AoC re-shines the lights on algorithmic problems that I rarely see in my day to day work these days.
I wrote a whole damn compiler and designed (and almost) completed a hardware computer. because if your puzzles!

I will cherrish all puzzles this year!

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Greg Woods Oct 22

@ericwastl Completely understandable! The work you do here is amazing and always appreciated.

Honestly, going down to 12 days makes it seem more appealing to me now too. Life’s too busy for a full month!

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Kata 📎Oct 22

@ericwastl Perfectly understandable. 👍 Removing the global leaderboard is probably the only sane thing to do at this point.

(I guess I’ll still try to stretch this out over 24 days somehow. I just love doing AoC in December, every day until Christmas. It’s just part of the experience for me. 😅)

Thank you for running this event! 🙏

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Alper Çuğun-Gscheidel Oct 22

@ericwastl Lovely! This’ll also do great things for my sanity.

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Jan vom Sesamzoo Oct 22

@ericwastl Thank you for all the effort you put in.

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mirabilos Oct 23

@ericwastl that’s fine, but can you please add login possibilities that don’t require evil platforms?

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Sebastian Hans Oct 23

@ericwastl I love Advent of Code. Thank you so much for preparing so many wonderful puzzles every year! With a wife and two kids, it was a struggle to find the time to just solve the puzzles, especially as Christmas drew near. I'm certain creating them is much more work. So I can totally understand the decision to reduce the volume. As to the global leaderboard, I never looked at it for exactly the reasons you mention in the FAQ.
So, thanks again , and I'm looking forward to this year's edition!

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Alex Oct 23

@ericwastl huge thank you for running this challenge for over 10 years! 🙏

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Aron (Sten S.)Oct 23

@ericwastl

A good and totally reasonable thing to do. Looking forward to the new format and with "only" 12 puzzles I might even be able to finish all of them for once.

Usually there was less time for me during the 2nd half of december because of strange global festivities.

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Tim Oct 23

@ericwastl Hurray for sanity!

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Étienne Lévesque Oct 24

@ericwastl Enjoy the recovered time Eric and thanks for the amazing work. 10 years is a heck of a long time to be doing this!

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Ethan Blanton Oct 24

@ericwastl Thank you for your service, and I look forward to Advent of Code 2025! I teach (among other things) programming at a large state university in the US, and I frequently advocate that students pick old Advent of Code problems to get programming practice. Unlike leetcode or hackerrank or similar, I find that you have done a great job of tailoring them for problem solving, not for memorizing common tricks (although tricks might sometimes help!). You're doing great work.

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brentroady Oct 24

@ericwastl thank you for AoC, one of my favorite things each year. Glad you’re able to keep it going.

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Serge Droz Oct 24

@ericwastl Good for you, thanks for doing aoc.

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LiquorVicar Oct 24

@ericwastl Thank you so much for all the effort you've put in over the years. Fully respect your decision to make these changes. Your sanity is important!

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josyb Oct 24

@ericwastl Is there a possibility to display your web-pages in 'light' mode?

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Eric Wastl Oct 24

@josyb Yes! There's an alternate stylesheet you can enable: https://adventofcode.com/2025/about#faq_highcontrast

About - Advent of Code 2025

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josyb Oct 25

@ericwastl Firefox? I am using Vivaldi :(
High Contrast? I am not blind - yet :)
Just straight light mode AKA non-dark mode please?

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Eric Wastl Oct 25

@josyb The high-contrast stylesheet is the closest I have to a dark-on-light mode. I've never used Vivaldi, but according to https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/appearance-customization/extensions/ , you should be able to use https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/stylish-custom-themes-for/fjnbnpbmkenffdnngjfgmeleoegfcffe?hl=en , which would let you apply a style like:

html,img{filter:invert(1) hue-rotate(180deg);}

...which isn't perfect, but would get you pretty close.

Using Extensions in Vivaldi | Vivaldi Browser Help

Vivaldi is compatible with most extensions available in the Chrome Web Store. Find out how to add and manage Extensions in Vivaldi.

Vivaldi Browser Help

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josyb Oct 26

@ericwastl Yes, that may work BUT only if you give them all your
data.

Can't you (just) add a dark/light setting to your web-source?

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josyb Oct 26

@ericwastl I found the `Reader View` button in Vivaldi:
and it applies your alternate high-contrast css indeed, But only the `About` page shows that reader icon. And the 'menu' gets lost.

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dasdom Oct 24

@ericwastl Thank you for your work! Those are great changes. I never got the leaderboard.

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samir, a terminally deprecated method Oct 24

@ericwastl Thank you for keeping it going! Your sanity and health comes first, and I’m glad you’re changing things to make it easier for you.