diff --git a/day17/README.md b/day17/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..06a3f45
--- /dev/null
+++ b/day17/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+# A note about day 17
+
+Day 17 was a bit tricky from a software engineering perspective, and I couldn't (quickly, at 2am) think of a ncie way to generalize between the two parts, so part 1 and part 2 are more or less copy paste, with some common functionality broken out.
+
+The code is gross. Sorry.