History Website / AdventOfCode

* ASCIIArt: The entire site is designed to evoke the retro style of an ANSI-enabled terminal. Even the glow effects on the bolded text can be considered to be intended to emulate the phosphorescent glow from a CRT display. Other than its favicon, the site uses no actual graphics at all, relying on [=ASCII=] art to display charts or other graphical represetations in puzzle text. The retro-terminal look is only broken by the fully-completed calendars, which use effects that would not be possible for ANSI displays.

** [[https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/2 2023-2]] again references ''[[Film/WarGames]]'': The text that has a hidden title is "would you like to play a game," and the title text itself reads "No, the Elf's name is not 'WOPR'. It's Joshua."

** 2017: The circuitry inside Santa's printer. The various chips are references to electronics concepts but some of them are shout outs to movies such as ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' or ''Film/WarGames''. Additionally a personalized Naughty/Nice list is printed at the top, with the Easter Bunny as "naughty" and your name as "nice", and if you are on a private leader board, names from there are randomly picked and added as either naughty or nice.

*** [[Film/BackToTheFuture 1.21 GW or FLUX CPTR]]

* Puzzles based on games such as a RPG [[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2015/day/21 2015-21]], [[https://adventofcode.com/2018/day/24 2018-24]][[/note]], a strategy game [[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2018/day/15 2018-15]][[/note]], [[BreakingOut Breakout]][[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2019/day/13 2019-13]], [[/note]], {{VideoGame/Tetris}}[[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/17 2022-17]][[/note]], a platformer[[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2019/day/21 2019-21]][[/note]], or a text adventure[[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2019/day/25 2019-25]][[/note]]

* Puzzles based on games such as a RPG [[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2015/day/21 2015-21]], [[https://adventofcode.com/2018/day/24 2018-24]][[/note]], a strategy game [[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2018/day/15 2018-15]][[/note]], [[BreakingOut Breakout]][[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2019/day/13 2019-13]][[/note]], a platformer[[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2019/day/21 2019-21]][[/note]], or a text adventure[[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2019/day/25 2019-25]][[/note]]

* CosmeticAward: Each puzzle solved progresses the Advent calendar on the main page. Once all 50 stars are collected, the calendar is shown in its full glory, with animations, a snow effect and Santa flying in his sleigh in the background. The picture on the calendar relates to the story of the season:
** 2015: Just a Christmas tree as there is no overall story.
** 2016: The Easter Bunny HQ campus with 3 office buildings.

** 2018: Santa's hat, sleigh, a candy cane, hot chocolate and a red-nosed reindeer.

** 2017: The circuitry inside Santa's printer. The various chips are references to electronics concepts but some of them are shout outs to movies such as [[Film/BackToTheFuture Back to the Future]] or [[Film/WarGames War Games]]. Additionally a personalized Naughty/Nice list is printed at the top, with the Easter Bunny as "naughty" and your name as "nice", and if you are on a private leader board, names from there are randomly picked and added as either naughty or nice.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: Day 25 of every season is actually a one-part problem, the second part merely gives you a free star and acts as a check whether you have all the other stars, "solving" the second part unlocks the ending. The day 25 puzzle is also generally simpler than what the usual difficulty curve would predict. This is probably because 25 Dec is Christmas Day and you'd be better off celebrating than solving programming puzzles.

** [[https://adventofcode.com/2016/day/5 2016-5]] references the infamous scene in Film/WarGames where WOPR attempts to search for nuclear launch codes character-by-character and has you doing a similar thing. The puzzle text even praises those who produce a similarly "cinematic" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBvavbutRJA animation]] for the process.

* DifficultySpike: There seems to usually be one or two per season that both community consensus and statistics indicate to be significantly harder than the surrounding days. [[note]][[https://adventofcode.com/2015/day/19 2015-19]] (part 2), [[https://adventofcode.com/2016/day/11 2016-11]], [[https://adventofcode.com/2018/day/15 2018-15]] (mostly due to how many implementation details and tiebreakers there are to screw up), [[https://adventofcode.com/2019/day/22 2019-22]] (part 2)[[/note]] Puzzles released on weekends also tend to be harder.

* FoxChickenGrainPuzzle: [[https://adventofcode.com/2016/day/11 2016-11]], specifically a generalization of the "jealous husbands" variant. Considered to be the DifficultySpike of that season.

* SelfImposedChallenge: Many people take the opportunity to learn a new programming language using the puzzles. Another popular challenge is solving every day in a different language - you will quickly run out of the most common languages and have to reach for something you haven't used (much) before. Certain individual puzzles lend themselves to custom challenges, such as visualization of the solution. [[https://adventofcode.com/2016/day/5 2016-5]] can be visualized as individual characters of a password locking into place as they are found, just like in HollywoodHacking.

** [[https://adventofcode.com/2017/day/25 2017-25]] gives a nod to ''Franchise/StarTrek'' by reversing the ImADoctorNotAPlaceholder formula when a character says, "I'm a garbage collector, not a doctor."