algorithms Memes

So someone decided to detect a cycle in a linked list by just... checking if the head node's value is the letter 'E'. And wrapping it in a try-except that returns False on any exception. This solution somehow beats 5.18% on runtime and 7.89% on memory, which means there are actually worse solutions out there. For context, the proper way to detect cycles uses Floyd's cycle detection algorithm (the tortoise and hare approach), which runs in O(n) time with O(1) space. But why bother with elegant algorithms when you can just hardcode a character check that probably only works for one specific test case? The try-except is the cherry on top—because when your logic is this questionable, you might as well catch literally everything that could go wrong. The real mystery is what kind of test suite allows this to pass as "Accepted" with a green checkmark. Someone's edge cases need an edge case.