Python

I had a hunch that part 2 would just be part one with more places and immediately factored that code into a separate method. Overall quite happy with the compact code.

from functools import partial
from pathlib import Path
from typing import List


def parse_input(input: str) -> List[List[int]]:
    return [list(map(int, l)) for l in input.splitlines()]


def find_highest(bank: List[int], n: int) -> int:
    if n == 1:
        return max(bank)
    rest = bank[bank[:-n+1].index(place := max(bank[:-n+1]))+1:]
    return int(f"{place}{find_highest(rest, n-1)}")


def part_one(input: str) -> int:
    bat_banks = parse_input(input)
    return sum(map(partial(find_highest, n = 2), bat_banks))


def part_two(input: str) -> int:
    bat_banks = parse_input(input)
    return sum(map(partial(find_highest, n = 12), bat_banks))


if __name__ == "__main__":
    input = Path("_2025/_3/input").read_text("utf-8")
    print(part_one(input))
    print(part_two(input))