a possibly more straightforward way would be

if ( !ingredients[recipeKeys[i]] ) {
    cakes = 0;
    break;
}

in the body of the loop, but +1 for documenting your approach

heh, talk about a 'general purpose solution'...

Nice! I wondered if I'd see anybody else using defaultdict. Gotta love the collections module for cleaner looking faster running code

this happens to me in python more often than I'd like to admit. my understand is that it normally means code needs optimizing cuz it's not fast enough yet. it sounds like codewars.com implements the processor time restriction in a way that has some variability due to server load - I'm guessing for practical reasons + realism - so code that's right on the edge of efficient enough may sometimes pass & sometimes fail

username checks out.
;)

it's quick on these test cases, but sure not going to win any codegolf this way

anybody else solve it for parens, sq brackets & braces instead of just parens & submit solution before you noticed it only had to check parentheses? I feel dumb, but also a little bit smart, over that

i thought you'd done
factorial = lambda x: 1 if x < 2 else x*factorial(x-1)

...which seems to work. kinda surprising to me

right you are. it was late at night & i was on an android phone... thought you were calling the lambda in its very own assignment & i was surprised that it worked

thanks for setting me straight, it's obvious now on second glance

I didn't know you could do a recursive lambda assignment like that w/out monkey-patching anything

that's true as far as it goes, but we can see that it's not an issue with the actual font used here. some fonts make semicolons & colons hard to distinguish, too. but most times it's easier to change the font than change over to a different language or syntax