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Comment by thomascountz | Hacker News Reader

Whenever there's a change like this, my gut reaction is to grieve and try to imagine ways that things could be kept the same.

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!

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I’ve been trying to design a puzzle for a game this year that humans can solve but LLMs can’t. I’ve come up with one, but it was hard work! It’s based around message cracking.

There was one in a previous AoC that I think stumped a lot of AI at the time because it involved something that was similar to poker with the same terminology but different rules. The AI couldn't help but fall into a "this is poker" trap and make a solution that follows the standard rules.

Interesting! Maybe that’s the general way to approach these things

Was that 2023's Day 7 'Camel Cards' [1]?

[1] https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/7

I mean, wasn't pretty much the second half of all AoC exercises beyond LLM capabilities?

I remember there being multiple accounts trying to one-shot AoC and all ended on day 10 or so.

Isn't that easily solved by changing the terminology before giving it to the LLM?

How many <$letter>s are in the word <word with $letters>

The bigger LLMs have generally figured out this specific problem.

Have a look at https://arcprize.org/

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.

Ah, it also needs to be challenging for humans. It's a prize to win something. I just didn't want people to throw the question into Claude Code.

Perhaps coding exercises that require 2d or 3d thinking, or similar. This is where I have seen LLMs struggle a lot. There are probably other areas too.

Just have to incorporate good judgement in some way.

For more examples of such problems check Jane street puzzles of the month

Those will almost certainly be too hard for the target audience

I think the easiest way to have 24/25 of something would be to have the "part 2" for each puzzle get released the next day. It would probably ruin the momentum about as much as having days off would (as another alternative to make the timing fit "advent"), but there could be a fun extra layer of puzzle with a hint of what the part 2 will be so people can try to speculate and modify their code in anticipation.

I am not aware of Eric saying something about that alternative, but this comment on reddit[1] makes a lot of sense to me:

> 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...

Plus, I like doing Part 2 immediately after Part 1, cause then I don't have to remember how my solution worked.

Hate to be the... whoever I'm being right now, but names have meaning. It's the reason to have them in the first place.

> 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 :).

Well, Christmas is cancelled this year I guess :(

Not necessarily. If they insist on there being only 12 puzzles, all they need to Save Christmas is to start the event on Christmas day, and rename it to "12 Puzzles of Christmas" or "Advent of Three Kings of Code", or such -- see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710963.

They could also publish the puzzles only every second day, I guess.

Give a kid half of an advent calendar and tell them to open the window every second day, let's see how long it'll keep their interest (I expect much less than 12 days) :). That's not how Advent Calendars work!

We’re not kids though…

Let your hair down man, it's christmas!

That was my first thought too, and I'd prefer it, cause sometimes I'll get stuck on a problem, or I'm busy, or I forget, and I'd rather have one more day. Bur it's Eric's call in the end.

Or publish the harder version of the puzzle on a different day to the easier version.

For Christian Advent to be exactly 25 days long, that would be a coincidence.

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.

All correct. Which is why I said religious slash commercial tradition - Advent is first and foremost just another sales event, and for convenience of sellers and buyers (and their children) the commercial advent got regularized to 25 days, so the stock of calendars that failed to sell last christmas season can be put up to sale in the coming one.

Agreed, I didn't mean to critique you!

I appreciate you working out the math above! :).

(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.

The Sunday after the first full moon after March 21st (first day of spring) - what could possibly be confusing about that?!

j/k ;-)

I still find it easier to explain it as "14 Nisan *energetic hand wave*!!" :).

Since we're all being exacting here… =p

> (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 = )

+1 from me!

If I were Christmas of code, it would start mid-June and end on Christmas Eve!

You're forgetting about Halloween, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and the most recent Singles Day (11.11); the Commercial Calendar is steadily squeezing the Christmas Season into December and out of the rest of the year!

Commercial Halloween starts during October just after or parallel with October-fest. It ends before end of October because people buy things for an event before it starts. End of Halloween is when Commercial Christmas starts.

There is no time for actual advent or winter calmness in general.

Wouldn't winter calmness be January or February, maybe March? You know coldest time in general on Northern Hemisphere?

I think you are right, that seems to be the case.

I decided to indulge in a Dunkin' pumpkin donut this morning, what with it being late October and the weather actually now fall-like. Apparently they have already discontinued them!

> the Commercial Calendar is steadily squeezing the Christmas Season into December and out of the rest of the year!

We can only hope. The Christmas song containment fields are weakening as we speak.

Right, my local grocery store moved Halloween stuff to where Diwali stuff was near the front of the store, and immediately put Xmas stuff where the Halloween stuff used to be, in a week's time it'll be a whole aisle of Xmas.

Anyway, this is Western Christianity.

In Eastern Christianity, the Nativity Fast starts on a fixed day: November 15.

Which happens to fall on November 28th, yes.

Technically the event needs to go for a certain number of days, but Advent doesn't mean puzzles must come every day. They can do puzzles every 2-3 days if they want to.

> The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).

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".

If, as you claim, the association of 25 to "advent" is primarily commercial, that's much more of a reason to avoid that association. In any case it's very culture-specific. In many countries, including mine, Christmas Eve is the "main" event that people look forward to, and the number of "advent days" in calendars and such is 24. On the other hand, ecclesiastically there are four Advent Sundays, and the number of days is thus variable and also not really pertinent.

There are tons of advent calendars commercially sold that have fewer than 25 slots.

It’s safe to say this ship has sailed.

> The 25 is there in the name.

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.

Advent calendars are used to count down the days. Doing one every other day defeats the purpose.

I thought the purpose was to be a fun thing we used to kill time over the holidays

Christian holidays are not meant to be fun; literally, the whole theme is about sins, suffering and death (or in this case, being born into life of suffering and culminating with death).

I think the majority of people celebrating christmas are not doing so for religious reasons

How so? Advent candles increment once per week, which is even lower frequency.

Advent is the four Sundays leading up to Christmas. 4 is in the name, not 25.

I thought it was meant to be like an Advent Calendar, which is normally 25.

Not in all traditions. E.g. in Germany Christmas Eve is typically the last day so you only get 24.

Yeah, in Sweden too.

Norway, too.

And even in the places where it’s 25 days, there’s plenty of advent calendars that only have 12 doors - though they’re typically budget versions of expensive calendars (eg a dram of whisky behind each door)

Falsehoods programmers believe about time #604: all advent calendars have 25 slots

Winter Solstice is usually (not always) on 21th December.

Sometimes on 23nd?

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/holiday-gifts/advent-calendars

24 doors on the Lego calendars too

Ah interesting. TIL.

Yep, Advent wreaths have 4 candles, so there's wiggle room to reduce the frequency further.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent_wreath

Advent is a liturgical season, not a set of 4 Sundays. Neither 4 nor 25 are "in the name."

Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “arrival” or “coming.” It refers to the coming of Christ. There is no 4 in the name, no 24, 25 or whatever else.

You need to turn in your polish passport for publicly saying that the advent is 25, not 24 days ;P

To be fair in the original Advent of Code the last day is just a freebie and not a real programming problem.

Right, mini-spoiler if you've never reached 50 stars for a year:

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):

https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/25

Right so since each problem has more than one part, we are back to advent of 24 problems.

Really though, for Catholic and protestant churches, Advent starts the fourth Sunday before Christmas, so isn't always the same length. In Orthodox Churches, Advent is 40 days (starting Nov 15) just like Lent.

> Hate to be the... whoever I'm being right now

the word you're looking for is pedant

"pedant who didn't look up their own point or consider other world perspectives before boldly declaring that the way they thought about it first was the only true way"

In the spirit of pedantry, I added even more minor detail!

> Hate to be the…

You don’t seem to hate it that much?

Advent does not mean 25. It just means 'the coming', so 12, 25, 1, 8 are all acceptable lengths. And if you reay need it to be 24 you can calm it 0.5 per day.

It's a reference to a German tradition of Advent Calendar with 24 small doors. Every day from 1st to 24th of December children would open one door and find a candy, a picture, a small toy, a quest etc. depending on calendar's theme

I get it, but Advent calendars are not just German. I am pretty sure they are common all over the western world where Xmas is celebrated. But Advent doesn't in any way mean 25.

They're definitely not German now. They may have been originally, but these days, they're first and foremost a commercial phenomenon, meaning they went global. Chocolate advent calendars. Trinket advent calendars. DIY advent calendars. ${insert your most hated kids toys franchise} advent calendars. And so on.

Geez. Do you really think the number matters? I would be grateful to the creator even if it was 3 days.

> And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles

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?

Well advent calendars traditionally had 24 doors.

This lead me done a rabbit hole on wikipedia:

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..

> This l[e]d me done a rabbit hole on wikipedia:

> 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.

They still do in non-Anglo European countries where the main celebration is held on the evening of the 24th.

IMO "Advent of Code" only determines the timeframe in which it happens, not the amount of puzzles it must contain. It could just as well be four puzzles, one for each sunday of the advent, or any other amount, as long as they are released within those roughly four weeks before christmas.

Eh, the implication has always been that it's a Christmas calendar where you open one door per day until it's Christmas eve - just with code riddles instead of chocolate.

> one door per day until it's Christmas eve

That would be 24.

You also open one on Christmas. Some people consider Christmas more important than Christmas eve.

https://www.hallmark.com/house-and-home/figurines/precious-m...

That really depends on which country you're in.

Twelve nights of Christmas. Would also work better for me, calendar-wise :)

That would "require" a timeline shift for it to start on Christmas run until the Ephinany.

Although I don't think anyone really knows what the 12 days of Christmas are anymore.

We have a thing called "Three Kings" (aka. "three wise men") in Poland, that falls on Jan 6th. If My Math Is Correct™, there's 12 days between the Christmas day (Dec 25th) and Jan 6th, so maybe the song is about this period?

Epiphany (GP had a typo) and Three Kings is the same occasion, in fact. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(holiday)

Yes, and I would be glad to see such a shift.

Shakespeare is still being read, I think.

This referes to the feast of the Epiphany, though, which is 12 nights after Christmas...

That's why I say it would've worked better for me, yes.

No, Advent means that it goes for the four weeks prior to Christmas. It doesn't mean "one thing each day" during that duration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent_calendar

Minimum one, sometimes two.

(Also, Advent doesn't mean four weeks. Christmas might fall on a Monday.)

I assumed it was "twelve days of Christmas"- related

I'm not arguing this point. I conceit, I thought the sentiment was obvious. If it wasn't—and if read literally—I thought that that statement was the weakest and most uninteresting part of what I shared. However, to my surprise, this statement, and its specific interpretation, is what people found compelling!

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