ETOOBUSY 🚀 minimal blogging for the impatient
Synacor Challenge Completed
TL;DR
I eventually completed The Synacor Challenge.
Slighly less than two years ago I wrote about The Synacor Challenge, a fun collection of puzzles that require some programming, from the same author (Eric Wastl) of Advent of Code.
I finally solved it!
Some notes have been collected in the wiki. You can safely land on that page without worrying about spoilers; from that page you can then jump to code-specific pages where you will eventually get spoilers!
I eventually opted for restarting from scratch, using Perl instead of Raku. I remembered that my original implementation in Raku was a bit slow and I didn’t want that to get in the way; I might take a second look now, though.
Why so long?
Quoting myself:
It starts at the Synacor Challenge site, where you too can register and download the package for taking part to the challenge.
We are supposed to go on a quest and collect 8 codes […]
… and then put those codes had to be put in the website for checking.
Little I knew at the time that the site would be shut down soon. Soon meaning I was only able to validate up to the fifth code.
At the time I first thought about some transient problem, then it was clear that the site would not come up. So I lost interest in the challenge and left it there; I knew that there might be traps with false codes (in pure Advent of Code spirit, where you might think that the solution is correct when it’s not, so the only way to know for sure is to check it on the web site), so being unable to validate the codes amounted to just be unable to solve the challenge in the first place.
After some time I found out about Aneurysm9’s repository; basically, a gentle soul that had already solved the challenge and validated the codes put their puzzle inputs (specification and binary) in a repo, along with the solution codes (well, not directly the solution codes but their MD5 hashes, which is equivalent for the purpose of solution validation). I don’t remember when I found the repository, but it was probably a period where I could not dedicate too much time to puzzle solving so I left it at that.
One month ago I took the Advent of Code again, managing to solve each puzzle in the day when it came out (second time, yay!), and I remembered about The Synacor Challenge again, so why not?
Want to take it?
If you’re interested into solving the challenge, the material shared in Aneurysm9’s repository is completely self-sufficient. The following Javascript helper aims at easing validation of codes as you find them (whitespaces are automatically removed, don’t put other extra characters though):
If you already have your personalized material, my suggestion is to go with the material above first, just to make sure that you get all solutions in the right way. After that, you can re-apply your solution ideas to your specific input, which might still require some tinkering.
Conclusions
I’m happy that it’s still possible to take the challenge, even tough the original web site has been shut down. If you like Advent of Code I definitely invite you to take The Synacor Challenge in its preserved mode!