Hello, checkiomates🐱‍👤!

This week, we decipher a unique cryptographic tool and clarify the meaning of the arrow syntax for type hints. We then analyze the most popular frameworks of 2025, and for our mission, we challenge you to calculate how many pawns are safe on a chessboard (if you haven't solved it yet or have new ideas).

💡TIP

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🏁 MISSION

Pawn Brotherhood by bryukh -

A chess pawn is generally a weak unit, but we have 8 of them which we can use to build a pawn defense wall. In this mission, pawn is safe if another pawn can capture a unit on that square. You are given a set of square coordinates where we have placed white pawns. You should count how many pawns are safe.

safe_pawns({"f4", "g5", "c3", "d2", "b4", "e3", "d4"}) == 6
safe_pawns({"f4", "e5", "g4", "e4", "b4", "d4", "c4"}) == 1

📖 ARTICLES

SCREAM CIPHER (“ǠĂȦẶAẦ ĂǍÄẴẶȦ”) -

Seth discovered that there are more accented Latin A characters than letters in the 26 letters in the Roman alphabet. So what’s a guy to do but create a cipher?

What Does -> Mean in Python Function Definitions? -

Wondering what the arrow notation means in Python? Discover how -> is used in type hints, functions, and more with simple explanations and examples.

The Most Popular Python Frameworks and Libraries in 2025 -

Discover the top Python frameworks and libraries based on insights from over 30,000 Python developers.

👩‍💻CODE SHOT

What do you think the following code does?

def checkio(data: set[int], total:int) -> set[int]:
    
    if not total:
        return data

    order = sorted(data)
    order_sl = order[total:-total]

    return set(order_sl)

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