Update Dec 25 2024 with 2024 scores. Hade a great time again, thanks Eric and Reddit!
Since 2018 Iβm participating in π Advent of Codeπ and enjoying it a great deal. AoC has been running since 2015, so a sizable amount of data has been generated. Letβs see what we can learn, starting with the amount of stars awarded.
In total there have now been more than 23M stars awarded (+5M compared to last year)! And 2024 is just barely finished, many people will earn stars in the days to come.
Original creator of these plots is Maurits vd Schee.
2024 most difficult puzzles was Keypad Conundrum. Took me 7 hours.
Low completion times can be a result of two factors:
- The puzzles were easier
- The participants where better / more competitive
One way of investigating the difficulty of a year is by analyzing the completion rate: how many people got all the stars compared to the people that got only 1 star of day 25. These people did make it to day 25, thus put a considerable amount of effort in, but couldnβt finish all puzzles.
In the above chart, each rectangle symbolizes the people that solved all puzzles during the year. The height shows the completion rate.
The completion rate was very high in 2016 and 2017 and has dropped in recent years, corresponding with more participants each year. I found it interesting 2024 has a high completion rate.
For 2024 the verdict is still out, right now day 25 has just opened up, so relatively more hardcore participants have finished it, leading to a high completion rate.
Again note that 2024 is very fresh still.
We mostly see that the amount of people that got points on the leaderboard is slowly increasing. Probably this is an indication of more competion.
Another indicator can be the time it took to solve a puzzle.
The fastest completion times add up to < 2 hours, which is amazing. Since nobody ever finished #1 at all puzzles, this is a theoretical minimum.
The completion times of #100 add up to a more βhumanβ amount. These times are still way below the amount of time a βnormalβ participant spends on AoC. For example I consider myself an enthusiast, but my completion times are normally about 2-3x the #100.
Overall, 2024 was very fast.
2023 will move more to the right given time. Iβm not sure anymore if this graph is indicative of anything.
Getting leaderboard points is special. There are people who do it consistently. Letβs give the top 30 some extra recognitionπ
All the people on this top 30 list are amazing, but some awards to hand out:
- πRobert Xiao managed to get the most amount of points and overall most leaderboard placements
- πbetaveros got on average most points & leaderboard entries (ignoring anonymous user here). betaveros also managed to get 50 entries is 2018, which was a one-time event
- πglguy for getting the highest score while getting points in all 10 seasons
Doing AoC once and get LB points is nice, but itβs even nicer to do it twice, thrice, etc.
Most of the people that get points manage to do it only once. The y-axis is logaritmic. Who are having so much grit to get points all 10 seasons?
| user | amount_seasons | total_points | total_lb_placements | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | glguy | 10 | 12758 | 204 |
| 15 | etotheipi1 | 10 | 11146 | 207 |
| 21 | msullivan | 10 | 10124 | 177 |
| 22 | Kevin Yap | 10 | 9400 | 169 |
| 38 | (anonymous user #60233) | 10 | 7631 | 154 |
Well done!
2024 was touch for our legends, I think this is due to LLM competition. Did ananymous user #60233 embrace LLMs ;-)?
All in all an amazing achievement! All in all I think there is a strong case for AoC being more competitive after 2019.
Letβs finally turn to which puzzles were easiest or hardest.
| puzzle | user | time (seconds) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 2024-1-1 | qianxyz | 4 |
| 1 | 2024-19-1 | Romain Bourjot | 6 |
| 2 | 2024-1-2 | qianxyz | 9 |
| 3 | 2024-11-1 | John Cornwell | 9 |
| 4 | 2024-24-1 | RangerMcSexy | 9 |
LLMs completely destroyed this list, all fastest solves are now in 2024
| puzzle | lb full (seconds) | |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 2021-1-1 | 65 |
| 1 | 2022-1-1 | 76 |
| 2 | 2019-1-1 | 84 |
| 3 | 2024-1-1 | 84 |
| 4 | 2024-3-1 | 84 |
This list however is mostly unchanged. The leaderboard capped (the #100 completed the puzzle) after barely a minute in 2021 for the first star!
| puzzle | user | time (minutes) | title | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 499 | 2018-15-2 | Simon Parent | 36 | Beverage Bandits |
| 498 | 2018-17-2 | Raven Black | 33 | Reservoir Research |
| 495 | 2018-24-2 | Simon Parent | 28 | Immune System Simulator 20XX |
| 494 | 2022-22-2 | mrphlip | 25 | Monkey Map |
| 493 | 2020-20-2 | xiaowuc1 | 25 | Jurassic Jigsaw |
| 492 | 2022-19-2 | lukechampine | 24 | Not Enough Minerals |
| 490 | 2021-23-2 | goffrie | 23 | Amphipod |
| 489 | 2024-21-2 | dan-simon | 23 | Keypad Conundrum |
| 488 | 2019-18-2 | glguy | 22 | Many-Worlds Interpretation |
| 487 | 2015-22-2 | Paul Hankin | 21 | Wizard Simulator 20XX |
The longest 3 solve times were all in 2018! Shoutout to Simon Parent for solving 2 out of the top 3. This list mostly has puzzles that just take a long time to code, with Beverage Bandits as perfect example.
For 2024 Keypad Conundrum landed at #8
| puzzle | lb full (minutes) | title | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 499 | 2015-19-2 | 232 | Medicine for Rudolph |
| 498 | 2015-1-2 | 186 | Not Quite Lisp |
| 497 | 2015-22-2 | 183 | Wizard Simulator 20XX |
| 496 | 2016-11-2 | 164 | Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators |
| 493 | 2018-15-2 | 143 | Beverage Bandits |
| 492 | 2019-22-2 | 123 | Slam Shuffle |
| 490 | 2019-18-2 | 117 | Many-Worlds Interpretation |
| 488 | 2018-23-2 | 100 | Experimental Emergency Teleportation |
| 487 | 2016-22-2 | 88 | Grid Computing |
| 486 | 2018-24-2 | 87 | Immune System Simulator 20XX |
If we look at when the leaderboard capped some different puzzles show up. I feel that this list has some more algoritmic challenges (Slam Shuffle for example, but Medicine for Rudolph as well).
2024 does not show up in the top 10!
Overall, I feel 2018 is a strong contender for the most difficult year, although with increased competitiveness itβs getting more difficult to compare it to the recent years.
Hope you enjoyed this analysis and see you back next year! πβπ