Christmas is coming and for all of you who enjoy a challenge - take a look at the Advent of Code
Eric Wastl has created an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill levels that can be solved in any programming language you like. People use them as interview prep, company training, universitycoursework, practice problems, a speed contest, or to challenge each other.
You don't need a computer science background to participate - just a little programming knowledge and some problem solving skills will get you pretty far. Nor do you need a fancy computer; every problem has a solution that completes in at most 15 seconds on ten-year-old hardware.
Day 1
--- Day 1: Historian Hysteria ---
The Chief Historian is always present for the big Christmas sleigh launch, but nobody has seen him in months! Last anyone heard, he was visiting locations that are historically significant to the North Pole; a group of Senior Historians has asked you to accompany them as they check the places they think he was most likely to visit.
As each location is checked, they will mark it on their list with a star. They figure the Chief Historian must be in one of the first fifty places they'll look, so in order to save Christmas, you need to help them get fifty stars on their list before Santa takes off on December 25th.
Collect stars by solving puzzles. Two puzzles will be made available on each day in the Advent calendar; the second puzzle is unlocked when you complete the first. Each puzzle grants one star. Good luck!
Give it a go by visiting the site here
A great way to test out your programming skills. Using Python, the first challenge was fun and easy to get into, roughly 15 to 30 minutes and very accessible. I heard last year the problems became quite complex by the 24th challenge so there is something for everybody.