The big trick is - similar to many other problems - *caching*. This problem remembered me a little bit of problem-15. We use a `100x100` grid to remember pre-calculated sums. So in cell [3, 6] is the amount of sums which result in `6`, start with `3` and have all summands in descending order: ~~~ 3 + 3 3 + 2 + 1 3 + 1 + 1 ~~~ You see `cache[3,6] = 3`. Now to find a new value (for example `[4, 7]`) we just have to look at the our cache: ~~~ 7 = 4 + x sum(x) = 7-4 = 3 // first_digit_of_x <= first_digit, because of the descending order sum(x) = sum([n, 3]); n = [1..3] sum(x) = [3, 3] + [2, 3] + [1, 3] ~~~ You see it's important not only to remember the amount but also the first (= highest) summand, so we can guarantee the oder of the sums (an this way that we don't count any sums multiple times). *Note:* `cache[a, a]` is always `1`. But the problem rules dictate that when we calculate the final result we must ignore this (`100 = 100` is not a valid solution) Oh and this algorithm improves the native approach (enumerating all solutions) from `O(wtf)` to `O(n^2)`. I'm not sure if I would be still alive when my first algorithm finishes :) ---- **Edit:** I did a little optimization: The value of cell `[d, s]` is now the sum of all previous cells from `[0, s]` to `[d, s]`. This way we don't have to iterate through all the cells from 0 to d every time. We can just look at the biggest cell which contains the sum of all previous.