me too! No worries, my codebase at work looks way more algorithmic. I couldn't just think clear at the day I made this Kata, so I decided to just input the numbers myself Until I pass the tests, because I noticed that the test aren't randomized.
It was actually kind of meditating.

This terrifies me

Using any kind of operation that modifies the original list will change the requirements for autovalidate.
For example .reverse! will cause your code to be invalid but nums = nums.reverse is valid.