so I have to try to figure out how to avoid all best practices and intentionally mutate something outside the function? this is not a lesson one should bother learning

was in javascript. I don't necessarily agree that it is obvious the best scoring word is '', since there is no word so an argument could be made for null or an empty array or etc, and I perhaps think the statement that all inputs are valid tends to imply there will be inputs (which, technically there are, with spaces, so I do see your point there as well as mine). Typically, I see katas that have something in the instructions about "if there is no answer: return 'something'" but there's no reason an instruction like that has to be in there, I suppose, so I certainly can see it your way as well. Anyhow, enjoyed the challenge, thanks for a good kata

it says all inputs are valid but I'm failing tests where x is blank. This means I SHOULD have been checking if inputs were valid after all. Also, this means it doesn't tell me what it wants returned in the case of invalid inputs, so I'm just going to have to guess what will make it pass.

ah, sorry, didn't realize these discussion pages weren't language-specific. I'm doing it in javascript.

and yeah, I'd love to see what argument was actually glitching it. I take it there's no way on here to see what random ones it selects?

my code passes all sample tests, and passes all fixed tests on hitting "attempt", but my attempts still fail because it times out after that. I'm guessing something in one of the random tests is causing it to loop infinitely, I guess? I don't want to get into spoilers, but the only thing I could think of that might cause a loop was a random string starting with too many # symbols before it got to letters. I wrote several different possible lines to account for that, though, and none of them prevent the timeout. not sure where to go from there, since I can't see what test is causing the problem?