going over the "very large array" twice ends up taking twice as long, twice as much memory.
if the array was billions of members long - the 10 lines of code you saved would cost a lost of money.

this code may be impressive to newbies exclusively.

So far all exercises were cool.
This one however - just horrible!

What if get NORTH-NORTH-SOUTH-SOUTH?
So this would not be "needless directions"?

It makes no sense!
The worst thing is that it is explained in length, using words and metaphors as if it is intended to make sense - but it does not!

It takes too long to explain a silly exercise that makes no real logical sense.
PASS