[bittumenEntity]

At the bottom of the article they mention that this was discouraged because they hadn't covered strings in the course yet

[MrJohz]

And more importantly, because it sidesteps the interesting pedagogy around edge cases and testing that the instructor is interested in.

[vsnf]

The correct solution here is to give credit for the problem to acknowledge genuine clever problem solving, and then offer extra credit for doing it the pedagogical way.