still not working, the same problem with the last test

My god this comment is in fact very helpful thanks

Please use spoiler flag next time. Your post was visible in the homepage.

updated last test to only do 50
can you verify if that helps fix the issue?

also there was a note in the description saying the last test was flaky

Yes, this solution isn't exactly best practice even if it is syntactically short.

Turn your head 45dgrs, and see how many grid points can fit within the width of the rectangle. It's pretty straight forward from there on. There's one extra pitfall associated with oddness partiy but you can cross that bridge when you get there.

Just reread the instructions and I had already mentioned this 😁

8. The start level may be any level of the car park.

Updated 🙂

It was stated above in the comments, but to save you some time...

"Because the requirement asks "How many years does the town need to see its population p0 >= p inhabitants?", so you need to repeat the increase of population until p0 < p.
If you repeated the while until p0 <= p, you'd get an extra year in the result (e.g. if p0 = p, you'd get 1, but the expected value would be 0!)."

Agreed.

Absolutely agree, i was very confused with the wording of the question