grid = [ [75], [95,64], [17,47,82], [18,35,87,10], [20, 4,82,47,65], [19, 1,23,75, 3,34], [88, 2,77,73, 7,63,67], [99,65, 4,28, 6,16,70,92], [41,41,26,56,83,40,80,70,33], [41,48,72,33,47,32,37,16,94,29], [53,71,44,65,25,43,91,52,97,51,14], [70,11,33,28,77,73,17,78,39,68,17,57], [91,71,52,38,17,14,91,43,58,50,27,29,48], [63,66, 4,68,89,53,67,30,73,16,69,87,40,31], [ 4,62,98,27,23, 9,70,98,73,93,38,53,60, 4,23]] highest_sum = 0 # take the current number index at grid slice # call into the index, and then the index + 1 on the next grid slice def recursive_solver(index, level): if level == len(grid)-1: return grid[level][index] else: val1 = recursive_solver(index, level + 1) + grid[level][index] val2 = recursive_solver(index + 1, level + 1) + grid[level][index] if val1 > val2: return val1 else: return val2 print(recursive_solver(0, 0))