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That one wiped me out for a week too, and caused borderline psychological problems.

Ultimately though I realised that if I followed the description word by word, and made no assumptions, then I got the right solution. Still, a nightmare: you could pass all the examples, or even some alternate real sample data, and still get it wrong if you got the ordering slightly incorrect.

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Yeah, it's really frustrating when the text summary is vague and underspecified. It makes it hard to understand exactly the result the author is looking for, which isn't the fun kind of puzzle.

I think the problem was it _felt_ vague and under specified. But when I read it closely enough, it actually was exactly specific.

Yeah. That sounds like work and me begging business side for better requirements.

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