I think it's better to use this space to do what you wanted to do at first. This is a great exercise to understand and practice algorithms and recursion

yeah that's the way she goes sometimes. i do these challenges just to nail into my brain the kinds of built in functions you can use, because I hate doing what you did and realizing I spent so much time for no reason. A good rule of thumb is that for 7/8 kyu problems, you generally don't have to reinvent any wheels.

I think it would have been better if you had tried to get to the algorithm properly. You would have learned more. Using the solution is good when you already know how to get to the solution.