In case you’ve not come across it… Advent of code is:

… an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels that can be solved in any programming language you like. People use them as interview prep, company training, university coursework, practice problems, a speed contest, or to challenge each other.

My son had started working on it this year, and inspired me to have a go as well. However, rather than following the usual route of solving the puzzles by writing computer programmes, I’ve decided to try to solve each one using the OpenRefine software which is designed for working with large data sets.

After a few days I can already tell you OpenRefine is definitely not always the right tool for this kind of job… but that’s OK. This is just a fun challenge and the point (for me) of doing in OpenRefine isn’t to find the best of most efficient way of solving the problem, but rather to have fun, challenge my brain, and explore the abilities, and limitations, of OpenRefine along the way.

Each day there are two challenges, and I’m going to try to post a short video for each day I try and see how far I get with the two challenges in OpenRefine. I’m playing catchup at the moment and have already solved the first few days but I’m only just getting round to recording a video…. so here is Advent of Code 2022, Day 1, solved using OpenRefine