The Puzzle Gauntlet 🏟️

This is it — the graduation unit. No new tools. No training wheels. Just puzzles.

Here's a secret worth knowing: many of these problems are FAMOUS. Two Sum, the palindrome check, the anagram test, the majority vote, move-the-zeros, Collatz, Fibonacci — grown-up programmers get asked these in job interviews at the biggest tech companies in the world. You're about to solve them for fun, in a costume party version.

How to fight in the gauntlet

1. Read twice, code once. What exactly comes in? What exactly goes out?
2. Name the pattern. Almost everything here is secretly a search, a tally, a best-so-far, a pair-hunt, a stack trick, or a simulation. Once you name it, you've half solved it.
3. Brute force with pride, then upgrade. Several puzzles appear twice — the honest slow way, then a TURBO version with a clever trick. Slow-but-correct is always a respectable first draft; the upgrade is where the magic lives. Two Sum's dict trick is the single most useful idea in this whole unit — savor it.
4. Test your instincts against the edges. Negative numbers, ties, empty-ish inputs — the gauntlet hides its traps where instincts fail and tests don't.

Between you and graduation stand Pairs & Partners, Words & Mirrors, Number Puzzles, and the Grand Challenges — where every problem needs at least two of your skills at once.

And at the very top of the Champion path waits the Final Door, with a three-part lock. You've been collecting its keys since your very first print(). Go. 🎓