It’s that time of the year! We’re excited to kick off a new ❄️  Coding Challenge ❄️  for the Holiday season.

🎅  Santa has been working from home for months trying to get ready for Christmas and he feels like he needs a break. We need to help Santa get inspired before his big journey!

Answer the following set of questions using Algolia Search and corresponding frontend libraries to help Santa get back on track. 

For each participant, Algolia will donate money to the HackYourFuture charity, a free web development program for talented refugees and other disadvantaged groups with limited access to education and the labor market.

📱 The prize for the winner, chosen at random from completed submissions, is an iPhone 13 or a Samsung S21, to be put under the tree!

Fill out this form to register for the challenge, submit your answers, and receive access to the official Algolia Discord server for this contest.  The Challenge is open from December 6th to December 19th, 11:59pm PST. If you want to join this challenge but haven’t used Algolia before, you can sign up now here for free.

Challenge #1 🎤

Santa is a huge Star Trek fan. He remembers his favorite Star Trek actor once gave a Ted talk with an inspiring rating between 800 and 900 that was tagged storytelling.

A pep talk from his favorite Star Trek actor is just what he needs! Santa is nothing if not a builder —  perhaps by building a search interface similar to this demo he could find the talk!

After watching the video, Santa is feeling so inspired he decides to go visit the actor!

Data Source

Ted Talks

Question

What is the name of the speaker, (who is also a famous Star Trek actor), that Santa is going to visit? (Submit via Form)

Bonus Question

What is the most viewed TED Talk tagged for both collaboration and society?

Challenge #2 📽

As he prepares for his trip Santa remembers that little Bryan, one of the children on his “nice” list, has asked for a movie that stars both the actor he plans to visit and the actress Amy Poehler. Santa needs another search interface to find the title of this movie (and when it was released).

Maybe he can get the actor to autograph a copy when he goes to meet them!

Data Source

Movies:

This data set is too large for the Algolia free tier, so you may want to use the hosted version directly without having to push anything to your application.

You can use the following credentials:

App ID: latency

API Key: 56f24e4276091e774e8157fe4b8b11f6

Index name: movies

Question

What is the title and release year of the movie that Bryan wants for Christmas? (Submit via Form)

Bonus Question

What is the title and score of the highest rated movie with the genre Crime released in 2008? 

Challenge #3 🍷

Santa, of all people, can’t show up at the door of his favorite Star Trek actor without a gift!  He decides to be clever and get them a bottle of Bordeaux wine from the Fronsac domain (the actor’s favorite) that was bottled the same year as the movie above was released. He remembered a handy demo he’d seen of something similar.

Data Source

Wine

Question

What is the name of the Bordeaux wine from the Fronsac domain released in the same year as the movie in Challenge #2? (Submit via Form)

Bonus Question

What was the highest rated wine under $30 from 2010?

Challenge #4 🛩

Wine in hand, Santa is ready to start his journey. But where? He knows his favorite Star Trek actor recently made the following flights:

• ATL → SEA
• AHN → LGA
• JFK → MCN

He can use this information along with map data, (similar to this demo), to figure out the major US city where the star is staying. Santa would make a great detective!

Data Source

Airports

Question

What is the major US city closest to all three flights listed above? (Submit via Form)

Bonus Question

What is the closest airport to Carson National Forest in the United States?

Challenge #5 🎸

Once he knows where he’s headed, Santa uses his UberReindeers app to catch a sleigh and is on his way!

When he arrives in the city, Santa remembers another gift he still needs to pick up for a girl on his “nice” list. All little Julie wanted for Christmas were tickets to see the musician that played in that same city sometime between August 14 and August 18, 2019.

Data Source

Concert:

This data set is too large for the Algolia free tier, so you may want to use the hosted version  directly without having to push anything to your application.

You can use the following credentials:

App ID: latency

API Key: 059c79ddd276568e990286944276464a

Index name: concert_events_instantsearchjs

Question

What was the name of the artist Julie wants to see for Christmas? (Submit via Form)

Bonus Question

What was the last city where the band Coldplay performed in 2018?

Conclusion 🎄

It worked! After an inspiring visit with his favorite actor (and a little bit of Bordeaux wine), Santa is feeling refreshed and ready for his big day. He was also able to get some last minute Christmas shopping done along the way, always a bonus!

Thanks for helping Santa, and thanks for helping others by submitting your answers to this coding challenge. Have a wonderful holiday season and we’ll see you in the New Year! 🥳

Coding Challenge Official Rules

The Official Rules of the Coding Challenge are available here. By participating to the Coding Challenge, you agree with the Algolia Coding Challenge Official Rules.