Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

adventofcode.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 226 posts

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#91

Post by thaumasiotes »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #85
thaumasiotes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles Really? The name of the event is "Advent of Code". Having 25 puzzles is easily its most strongly-determined aspect. You could argue for 23-29 puzzles, or perhaps for 5, but at 12 what's the name supposed to refer to?

No, Advent means that it goes for the four weeks prior to Christmas. It doesn't mean "one thing each day" during that duration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent_calendar

Minimum one, sometimes two.

(Also, Advent doesn't mean four weeks. Christmas might fall on a Monday.)

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#92

Post by thaumasiotes »

roetlich wrote: post #38
danielbln wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the implication has always been that it's a Christmas calendar where you open one door per day until it's Christmas eve - just with code riddles instead of chocolate.

> one door per day until it's Christmas eve That would be 24.

You also open one on Christmas. Some people consider Christmas more important than Christmas eve.

https://www.hallmark.com/house-and-home/figurines/precious-m...

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#93

Post by this_user »

eterm wrote: post #21
thaumasiotes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles Really? The name of the event is "Advent of Code". Having 25 puzzles is easily its most strongly-determined aspect. You could argue for 23-29 puzzles, or perhaps for 5, but at 12 what's the name supposed to refer to?

Well advent calendars traditionally had 24 doors.

They still do in non-Anglo European countries where the main celebration is held on the evening of the 24th.

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#94

Post by bananaflag »

kleiba wrote: post #61
TeMPOraL wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to be the... whoever I'm being right now, but names have meaning. It's the reason to have them in the first place. > Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has nothing to do with it. It's the Advent of Code. Not "Random late year event with no religious / commercial tradition connotations whatsoever" of Code. The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).

For Christian Advent to be exactly 25 days long, that would be a coincidence. Advent is not the time from December 1st until Christmas, it starts on whatever days the fourth Sunday before Christmas happens to fall on that year. This way, there are exactly four Sundays in advent. If Christmas itself should fall on a Sunday one year, it doubles as the fourth Sunday of Advent, i.e., then the first of Advent will be only…

Anyway, this is Western Christianity.

In Eastern Christianity, the Nativity Fast starts on a fixed day: November 15.

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#95

Post by geerlingguy »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #65
kleiba wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Christian Advent to be exactly 25 days long, that would be a coincidence. Advent is not the time from December 1st until Christmas, it starts on whatever days the fourth Sunday before Christmas happens to fall on that year. This way, there are exactly four Sundays in advent. If Christmas itself should fall on a Sunday one year, it doubles as the fourth Sunday of Advent, i.e., then the first of Advent will be only…

All correct. Which is why I said religious slash commercial tradition - Advent is first and foremost just another sales event, and for convenience of sellers and buyers ( and their children) the commercial advent got regularized to 25 days, so the stock of calendars that failed to sell last christmas season can be put up to sale in the coming one.

If I were Christmas of code, it would start mid-June and end on Christmas Eve!

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#96

Post by TeMPOraL »

geerlingguy wrote: post #95
TeMPOraL wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All correct. Which is why I said religious slash commercial tradition - Advent is first and foremost just another sales event, and for convenience of sellers and buyers ( and their children) the commercial advent got regularized to 25 days, so the stock of calendars that failed to sell last christmas season can be put up to sale in the coming one.

If I were Christmas of code, it would start mid-June and end on Christmas Eve!

You're forgetting about Halloween, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and the most recent Singles Day (11.11); the Commercial Calendar is steadily squeezing the Christmas Season into December and out of the rest of the year!

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#98

Post by kleiba »

SJMG wrote: post #83
kleiba wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sunday after the first full moon after March 21st (first day of spring) - what could possibly be confusing about that?! j/k ;-)

Since we're all being exacting here… =p > (first day of spring) It's actually the March equinox. "Spring" is true only in the northern hemisphere. What's more it's the ecclesiastical equinox, not the astronomical equinox, whose date actually varies depending on the year. Never mind that all this is descriptive of dating in countries that grew up with Western Christianity. Countries where Eastern traditions dominate o…

+1 from me!

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#99

Post by pajamasam »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #63
kleiba wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could also publish the puzzles only every second day, I guess.

Give a kid half of an advent calendar and tell them to open the window every second day, let's see how long it'll keep their interest (I expect much less than 12 days) :). That's not how Advent Calendars work!

We’re not kids though…

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#100

Post by thaumasiotes »

majoe wrote: post #72
eterm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well advent calendars traditionally had 24 doors.

This lead me done a rabbit hole on wikipedia: Advent calendars in their earliest forms were invented approx. 80 years ago. The four week advent period goes back to the 7th century and was introduced by pope Gregory I..

> This l[e]d me done a rabbit hole on wikipedia:

> Advent calendars in their earliest forms were invented approx. 80 years ago.

Well, Wikipedia starts its "History" section in 1945, which is 80 years ago. But what it says about advent calendars in 1945 is that they were lower-quality reprints of earlier designs. This strongly implies that they weren't a new concept in 1945.

The German wikipedia is more interested in the concept and cites the word Adventskalenders to the novel Buddenbrooks, which features one set in the year 1869 but was published in 1901. Either way, the calendars were clearly an established cultural phenomenon well before 1945.

Looking at the talk page (for the English article), it seems that the history section was provided by a "translation group" from their translation of a matching section of the German article. It's not clear why they began with the post-war period; the German page goes back much further than that, which was also true at the time they provided their translation. But this does explain why the English "history" section begins by referring to prior context that doesn't exist in the English article.

Post reply on HN