ez

You run the risk of an error without it.

Bro 💀

I thought of this when I looked at kyu level again after having a timeout error. No way you need to use algos for this level.

timeout error + 8 kyu = there's a simple brutforce

I too was going to add .strip() to my code to take the spaces off the ends. However when I tested with just .join() it passed so I left it out

I like it. Learned from this kata the purpose of quotes.

the problem with this one is it can return 0, which won't happen in game with 21 sticks, but making a move of 0 is bad in general.

GOD ! there are lots of talented people in here . I would never even think of this .

I was going for this but couldn't figure out how to use the strip in the same line.
End up adding a second line with: return words.strip('')
:-(

I dont C/P. I am printed, dude...

When I first saw this, I was like what??!! :D

It's start:stop:step
Here it means start at the 2nd element (index 1 in base 0) then take every other element (step of 2).

stop is empty so default is until the end of the string.

could you please explain the slicing method st[1::2] ?
Thanks

face => palm