Tackling two more 'divine' Harry G challenges

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome. It's been a while since I was here in Excelopous, the mysterious game created by Harry Ross.

[00:00:08]Uh, but it's a Harry case in the Harry tournament this weekend, so I figured why not come back. Uh, and let's see, where do I stand? So, I finished all the expert challenges. I've still got five divines, three curated easy, uh, and then a few advanced and a few easy on the table. But I think I'm going to go see if I can do a divine. Uh I'm not going to be more ambitious than to try one today. Uh I think I think I've seen all the ones that I haven't done at least once yet. And well, some of them are quite hard, but let's see how we do.

[00:00:44]I'm Michael Garm, the reigning Excel world champion. H [laughter] out of date, Buster. I'm Starruck.

[00:00:50]As you should be aware, I set the hardest challenges in the game. Let's see them. All right. [snorts] 13 minutes. That's not very long.

[00:00:59]Uh, okay. How many valid parenthesis expressions can you make out of exactly 20 left brackets and 20 right brackets?

[00:01:07]Oh, oh, oh. I know this kind of I have come across this problem before. So, so either you have something around the whole outside. So let's just say P of 20 is going to be P of 18 because you have something around the whole outside or it's going to be like P of 2 * P of 18 plus P of Yeah.

[00:01:41]Okay. So I think I can do this. Um so two for this plus two down as far as 20. So with two rockets you can only do it one way. with four.

[00:01:54]You can either do it that way. Well, whatever. You can either do it that way or that way. So, there's two ways. Uh with six.

[00:02:03]So, you can either do one around the outside, in which case you get four ways. Or you can split it in which case you get Okay. So, I think the general formula is going to be uh sort by this by sequence rows. I don't even know if I have all these formulas. Uh minus one just copy.

[00:02:28]Yes, good. Uh it's going to be that times this. Uh and in both cases, I need to lock that and that and that.

[00:02:39]Uh so it's going to be sum of that. Uh except I don't have some but whatever some product of that plus this if there's one all around the outside.

[00:02:51]So, I think this is the answer.

[00:02:56]Apparently, it's not. Okay. Uh, three.

[00:03:00]It's telling me the list. Okay. Let's see the list.

[00:03:08]Oh, sorry. Is it 20 pairs? Oh, yeah.

[00:03:11]Sorry. It's 20 pairs. Okay, fine. Uh, so we just need to keep going.

[00:03:22]Apparently, it's not that either. Okay.

[00:03:24]Uh, so where are we?

[00:03:28]Where did I put the text? I thought I put it somewhere. Never mind. Okay.

[00:03:35]So, with three, we have one, two, three, four, five. Five. Oh, dear. That's not what I got. Ah, right. Cuz I'm double count. Oh, shoot. M. Okay.

[00:03:51]Yes. So, I'm counting this as a four plus two and as a two + 4. Oh dear. How do I adjust for that? Uh, I guess you could think of it in terms of the smallest unit that comes off. So you can think of this is a one followed by a four. This is a one followed by a four or whatever. A two followed by a four.

[00:04:25]Two followed by four. This is a four followed by a two.

[00:04:33]Okay. So, I guess I need to keep track of how many in total and how many complete. Would that make sense? Maybe.

[00:04:46]So, complete I mean can't be broken up into parts. So, total and complete. If that's the right way to describe it, fine. So, there's one of those. There's only one four that is complete.

[00:04:59]So then when I get to here, it is a complete followed by anything.

[00:05:10]So which one of these am I?

[00:05:14]I don't know. I'm moving one of these over.

[00:05:20]Don't know.

[00:05:22]Something like that. Uh and then this is what um Isn't it just this?

[00:05:35]Yes, because you have to have a pair of brackets around the outside and then you can have anything valid in the middle.

[00:05:40]So, yes.

[00:05:43]So, music is so distracting. Uh, I don't know. I don't feel hugely confident in that, but confident enough to plug it in and try. Ha. Hooray. Okay.

[00:05:56]You won, but no new unlocks this time.

[00:05:57]Thanks a lot. All right. Well, that went a little faster than I was expecting.

[00:06:00]So, let's see. That brings me to 11 out of 15. All right. Fine. Uh, yeah. What the heck? I'll try one more.

[00:06:11]Okay.

[00:06:13]The sum of Oh, I thought I had done this one. Maybe I almost did this one. Okay.

[00:06:16]So, this is sort of simple case basically. Uh, so I need to figure out how to multiply two numbers together. So let's do 1 2 3 4 and 5 2 6 7 I don't know whatever. Uh we'll do that times that. So the way we're going to do this is mid of this sequence len of this one and we're going to do mid of this sequence comma len of this one. And we're going to take this multiply by that.

[00:06:47]Then we're going to take sequence len of this plus sequence comma len of this.

[00:06:58]Uh and then we're going to call the two of those.

[00:07:08]We're going to group uh these are the row fields. These are the values. Sum 0.

[00:07:16]And then so let's see my answer. Yes, my answer ends in eight. Yeah. Okay, fine. So then do I have drop? I'm drop the first column. I don't take the first column.

[00:07:31]Yes. Fine. Uh and then I need to flip it.

[00:07:37]Uh so sort by this sequence rows of this uh minus one. Yes. Then I want to reduce starting from empty string and zero. So zero is what I carry over string is the number so far through this lambda av.

[00:08:01]What I want to do let raw be uh v + index a12 then my output is going to be oh hang on do I have h stack I think I don't yes I don't fine uh whatever then we'll say if one zero so the first part is the number and that's going to be the end of that so we'll say mod of raw by 10 and index a1 one. So in other words, we'll take the number so far and then add one more digit to it. Uh and then just see if all of that is going to cause me any Okay, that works so far.

[00:08:56]Good. Um and then this is going to be uh int raw over 10.

[00:09:05]So, I got 66 22878.

[00:09:08]That is good. Hooray. Uh, but I also want to consider Yes. So, if I if I'm still carrying something over at the end, then I need that. So, okay. So, now I need to turn all of this into one giant bloody let.

[00:09:23]Okay.

[00:09:25]So, let actually do it here. Let one be this.

[00:09:38]Then digs one can be that and num two can be this and digs two can be the same thing but going across. Num two sequence comma then num two one rods can be to call of digs one times digs two and the position can be this plus this.

[00:10:23]Uh, sorry, that's also too cold.

[00:10:31]Then we want to group by rods some 0.

[00:10:40]Just take all of that and hopefully that gets us up as far as this bit.

[00:10:46]No way. Where do I need to go?

[00:10:48]Oh, sorry. It's double equals.

[00:10:51]Yes. Good. Uh, okay. And then we want to take that last column.

[00:11:00]Uh, okay. So then this is call that to a to aggregate.

[00:11:08]Terrible name. Uh, okay. So then it's going to be reduce. Well, yeah, just copy the flipping reducing.

[00:11:18]Uh so this is sorry to aggregate then reduce is going to be this. And now instead of that I want sort by two egg minus sequence rows of two egg.

[00:11:46]Uh okay then all the rest of that stays the same. And then I want uh if [snorts] index red one two equals zero then at red otherwise index red one two and at red.

[00:12:10]Okay. So now I have implemented multiplication that will not break with Excel's limits.

[00:12:18]So then let's see to get to a,000 uh so if I can get to 125 then I can just square square just square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square square so to get to 125 I need to raise power okay so let's just start with 2 to the^ of 5 32 then that squared will get me so this is power five this power 10 that squared will get me to the power of 20 and then that times That will get me 2 ^ of 25. And then I basically want to apply the same operation. So I want to double it.

[00:12:57]Double it. And then multiply that by two steps above. That'll get me 125. And then I just want to double it. Double it. Double it. And that'll give me 2,000. Okay. So, uh, where is my multiplication formula madness? It's here.

[00:13:15]Be nice if I could save it at lambda, but I can't. Terry, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I kid because I love uh Okay, so it's going to be that and that.

[00:13:26]And let's just see how long. Presumably that's already too long. 16. Yes. But if I just do this squared.

[00:13:35]Uh cut and paste and format as a number.

[00:13:44]Yes, it agrees except in the last digit which does indeed need to be four. Okay, fine. So, we double, we double and then instead of doubling this time, we point it to that one and then we double and we double and sorry, double the power obviously square. Uh, so then I think wait sorry now I need the sum of [music] these digits. So, it's going to be sum minus minus mid this sequence len of this one.

[00:14:10]It's because I don't have sum, isn't it?

[00:14:14]Fine. some product of minus minus made this sequence land.

[00:14:27]All right, that honestly went more smoothly than I thought. I thought I had done all the kind of easy ones. Um, it would be foolish to attempt a third in one video. Well, I was right. But as usual, I didn't take my own advice. So, I did try a third. It went terribly.

[00:14:46]Took me ages. I'm not going to publish that one. So, uh, that's all I have for today. Thanks for watching.