Advent of Code F# – Day 15

ps. look out for all my other solutions for Advent of Code challenges here.

 

Day 15

See details of the challenge here.

Today’s challenge is pretty straight forward, and a brute force approach would have suffice – try every t from 0 to inifinity and return the first t that satisfies this equation for all the discs:

        (t + disc.Number – (disc.Positions – disc.Time0Position)) % disc.Positions = 0

That said, there’s a simple optimization we can apply by restricting ourselves to values of t that gets you through the first slot. Give my input for the challenge:

Disc #1 has 13 positions; at time=0, it is at position 11.
Disc #2 has 5 positions; at time=0, it is at position 0.
Disc #3 has 17 positions; at time=0, it is at position 11.
Disc #4 has 3 positions; at time=0, it is at position 0.
Disc #5 has 7 positions; at time=0, it is at position 2.
Disc #6 has 19 positions; at time=0, it is at position 17.

The first t that will get us through disc #1 is t=1 where disc #1 reaches position 0 on t=2 (which is 1s away from t). From there, we only need to check every 13s, ie t=14, t=27, t=40, …

 

Part 2

After getting the first capsule (it contained a star! what great fortune!), the
machine detects your success and begins to rearrange itself.

When it’s done, the discs are back in their original configuration as if it were
time=0 again, but a new disc with 11 positions and starting at position 0 has
appeared exactly one second below the previously-bottom disc.

With this new disc, and counting again starting from time=0 with the
configuration in your puzzle input, what is the first time you can press the
button to get another capsule?

 

Links

• Day 15 challenge description
• Advent of Code 2015
• Solution for Day 14
• All my F# solutions for Advent of Code
• Github repo