"Participate" doesn't mean "win". You can look things up as well. I haven't done a ton of AoC, but the harder ones from it I've seen were not very hard to searc

"Participate" doesn't mean "win". You can look things up as well. I haven't done a ton of AoC, but the harder ones from it I've seen were not very hard to search/research for the correct algorithm (even avoiding "what's the answer for day X" searches).