One Layer Deeper Postmortem: Top Entries Only Learned Part of the Solution

marksaroufim · x · 2026-09-13

A follow-up on the One Layer Deeper challenge: the task was to repeatedly square a number modulo N. Author Mark Saroufim notes the strongest entries took shortcuts — building remainder tables, learning digit arithmetic, or selecting from supplied programs — so they only learned part of the solution rather than composing reusable operations into deeper computations.

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