@Voile @Blind4Basics Perhaps I'm just a 'newbie' with no 'common' sence, but surely the purpose of the story is to aid understanding and not cause confusion and misunderstanding.

But perhaps you think I'm wrong?

If so, then why don't we create kata with purposefully misleading and contradictory stories? After all the description would "technically" be correct!

Heck, why stop at confusing kata?

Why don't we give all the questions in programming classes and textbooks misleading stories too? Perhaps it would teach "newbies to coding"
some "common sence"!?

And what if english is your second language? Surely we should give our international coders some consideration. After all, we have a moral duty to aid accessability and not misslead them.

Do we come to CodeWars for a linguistic battle? To filter through murky descriptions? To strech our reading and comprehension skills?

No! We come here for a technical challenge. To polish our coding skills; not our english.

Therefore the stories should serve (Not detract from) the problem.

Ok

That'd mean most of us are aliens. I'm not sure if that's a better news ;-)

@Voile. Ah, you assumed Earth. But Kata description does not say it is Earth.

or again, just make the difference between the story and the actual description of the task you have to handle. I agree that the description isn't perfect, but well... you have examples, precise explanations and all. Just read.

People seem to have forget that the earth is a sphere (is everyone flat earthers all along?) which has curvature, so you can't just cancel directions like on a flat plane: e.g from North Pole, walk south 1/4 circumference of the earth, then east the same amount, then north the same amount, you'd actually end up at the North Pole again.

Sometimes I wonder if being newbie to coding would make one forget common sense. This comment section never fails to make me think it's true.

or you just actually read the description, meaning: without interpreting it...:

with the needless directions removed (W<->E or S<->N side by side).

Where did you see that you're searching for the shortest path?