You could also delete the min element if this leads to the requirement √y ≤ x earlier. See also DarkD1's comment

Nice! I should forget about regex for a while! Everytime I see katas with strings involved, I try to come up with a solution based on regex.

The question is, if you can compose a word out of letters. You can access the preloaded array words the same way as any variable in your code, try to print it on your screen.

Note to myself: loop back and forth.

Nice solution, I was searching for a pattern which matches both, the starting letter and the letter after the '.'.
Thanks for the link to B4B's fork, it makes the code even more clean.

Your name in combination with the function name is somehow funny.

I think your points are valid. In order to solve the kata, you can ignore this subtleties as you mentioned.

So readable, very nice solution!

Nice one!

The Python translation seems to have an issue with the random tests (commented by airatmulk)

Now I know how to update the variable (k) in the dictionary. Nice!

Really funny. DM for president!

Thank you very much for authoring these kind of katas! They are so much more fun to solve than lot's of the other katas just because of the "story".

My code actually passes all tests except two. I understand the expected result for only one these two. Maybe someone could point me into the right direction of how to get to the result of 2533968 if the 'needle' is happy birthday and the 'haystack' is hhhappyyyy biirrrrrthddaaaayyyyyyy to youuuu hhapppyyyy biirtttthdaaay too youuu happy birrrthdayy to youuu happpyyyy birrtthdaaay tooooo youu. Thank you in advance!