In this series, I’ll share my progress with the 2025 version of Advent of Code.

Check the first post for a short intro to this series.

You can also follow my progress on GitHub.

December 7th

The puzzle of day 7 was not that hard. My solution for part one was totally unusable for part two, but it was quite straightforward to come up with a new approach.

My pitfall for this puzzle: Maybe there is a way to solve both parts with the same approach but I did not manage to do that.

Solution here, do not click if you want to solve the puzzle first yourself

#include <cassert>
#include <fstream>
#include <iostream>
#include <set>
#include <map>
#include <sstream>


std::vector<std::string> loadInput(const std::string &filename) {
std::vector<std::string> result;
std::ifstream file(filename);
std::string line;
while (std::getline(file, line)) {
result.push_back(line);
}
return result;
}

void partOne() {
const auto lines = loadInput("/Users/rob/projects/robvanderleek/adventofcode/2025/07/input.txt");
std::set<int> beams;
long result = 0;
for (const auto &line : lines) {
for (int i = 0; i < line.length(); ++i) {
char c = line[i];
if (c == 'S') {
beams.insert(i);
} else if (c == '^' && beams.count(i)) {
result++;
beams.erase(i);
beams.insert(i - 1);
beams.insert(i + 1);
}
}
}
std::cout << result << std::endl;
assert(result == 1507);
}

long trackBeam(std::vector<std::string> lines, int i, int j, std::map<std::pair<int, int>, long> &p) {
if (i == lines.size() - 1) {
return 1;
}
if (lines[i][j] == '^') {
if (p.count({i, j})) {
return p.at({i, j});
}
long traces = trackBeam(lines, i + 1, j - 1, p) + trackBeam(lines, i + 1, j + 1, p);
p[{i, j}] = traces;
return traces;
}
return trackBeam(lines, i + 1, j, p);
}

void partTwo() {
const auto lines = loadInput("/Users/rob/projects/robvanderleek/adventofcode/2025/07/input.txt");
std::map<std::pair<int, int>, long> p;
long result = 0;
for (int j = 0; j < lines[0].length(); ++j) {
char c = lines[0][j];
if (c == 'S') {
result = trackBeam(lines, 0, j, p);
break;
}
}
std::cout << result << std::endl;
assert(result == 1537373473728);
}

int main() {
partOne();
partTwo();
return 0;
}

That’s it! See you again tomorrow!