Advent of Code 2024 - Day 16 - Reindeer Maze

[@st8113]

I solved part 1 easily enough but it took me a very long time to figure out a part 2 solution that built off my part 1. Ultimately for part 2 I kept a set of 'optimal parents' for each x,y,d then worked backward from the finish - not ultimately TOO complicated, but for some reason just wasn't intuitive to me. On the whole this felt harder than expected for #16.

[@aaronperl]

I decided to skip this puzzle. I could see generally how to do it, but wasn't motivated enough :) I like your approach, I'm not sure I would have come up with it. I was thinking it would need some kind of scoring calculation to find the best path, along the lines of A*, but I wasn't in the mood to figure it out Hope you and your family feel better soon. My daughter was sick with a stomach bug about three weeks ago and it wasn't fun for anyone.