--- Day 7: The Treachery of Whales ---
A giant whale has decided your submarine is its next meal, and it's much faster than you are. There's nowhere to run!
Suddenly, a swarm of crabs (each in its own tiny submarine - it's too deep for them otherwise) zooms in to rescue you! They seem to be preparing to blast a hole in the ocean floor; sensors indicate a massive underground cave system just beyond where they're aiming!
The crab submarines all need to be aligned before they'll have enough power to blast a large enough hole for your submarine to get through. However, it doesn't look like they'll be aligned before the whale catches you! Maybe you can help?
There's one major catch - crab submarines can only move horizontally.
You quickly make a list of the horizontal position of each crab (your puzzle input). Crab submarines have limited fuel, so you need to find a way to make all of their horizontal positions match while requiring them to spend as little fuel as possible.
For example, consider the following horizontal positions:
16,1,2,0,4,2,7,1,2,14
This means there's a crab with horizontal position 16
, a crab with horizontal position 1
, and so on.
Each change of 1 step in horizontal position of a single crab costs 1 fuel. You could choose any horizontal position to align them all on, but the one that costs the least fuel is horizontal position 2
:
- Move from
16
to2
:14
fuel - Move from
1
to2
:1
fuel - Move from
2
to2
:0
fuel - Move from
0
to2
:2
fuel - Move from
4
to2
:2
fuel - Move from
2
to2
:0
fuel - Move from
7
to2
:5
fuel - Move from
1
to2
:1
fuel - Move from
2
to2
:0
fuel - Move from
14
to2
:12
fuel
This costs a total of 37
fuel. This is the cheapest possible outcome; more expensive outcomes include aligning at position 1
(41
fuel), position 3
(39
fuel), or position 10
(71
fuel).
Determine the horizontal position that the crabs can align to using the least fuel possible. How much fuel must they spend to align to that position?