The Problem

You've fallen into a garbage compactor (classic! 🎬) and while waiting for rescue, a family of cephalopods asks for help with math homework. Their worksheet has problems arranged in columns, with the operation (+ or *) at the bottom.

Summary

Part 1: Human Math (Horizontal Reading)

Goal: Read numbers left-to-right within each problem's columns, one number per row.

Part 2: Cephalopod Math (Vertical Reading) 🐙

Goal: Read numbers top-to-bottom in each column. Each column becomes one number!

Spaces are skipped when building the vertical number!

Parsing Strategy: Right-to-Left

The clever part is parsing problems from right to left. We scan the bottom row (operators) backwards, tracking the width of each problem:

for (let i = lastLine.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
    const char = lastLine[i]

Clean Abstraction

Both parts share the same parsing and solving logic - only the number extraction (getColumn) differs:

function solve(problems: Problem[]) {
    let sum = 0;
    for (const problem of problems) {
        const { operation, initial } = operations[problem.operation]

The operations lookup table handles both + (initial: 0) and * (initial: 1) cleanly.

Performance