Our code has many similarities

It hurt my self-esteem. How to trust people now? )))

Did the same thing when I realised ha!

You are not alone man

neither math nor coding.

good practice is to debug input or w/e wildly => T I M E S A V E R

this makes me feel particularly silly lol. I'm shook

wtf??? HOW?

Anyone like me, hard code this haha. I even put the data in Excel to alter it

I think, it is a good kata to solve it considering possibility of some chaotic touch in the initial data.
Lets say, someone has messed up the initial array and all that "apple-promo recursion beauty" is gone.
I like the kata - though I`ve spent a good 2.5 hrs to tune the loops right so they can work steady.

The point of a kata is to come up with a clever solution to a problem. The realization that lead to this answer is why this kata was written the way it was.

The point of this kata is "this solves the problem". IMO.