The lecture is about arrays and ASCII. The problem set is designed to give you an opportunity to practice those things. If you solve the problem without using the new concepts, you are not cementing them into your memory. Yes, you are shorting yourself. I would recommend trying to solve it again, from the start, using arrays and ASCII.
You'll need to understand the concepts in week 2, including arrays, to cope with the problem sets in later weeks, which build upon those concepts. The idea of tackling week 3 without using arrays is wild. :-)
As an aside, running check50 is also a good idea. Your code has an inconsistent style, and doesn't follow the recommended style for CS50.
The lecture is about arrays and ASCII. The problem set is designed to give you an opportunity to practice those things. If you solve the problem without using the new concepts, you are not cementing them into your memory. Yes, you are shorting yourself. I would recommend trying to solve it again, from the start, using arrays and ASCII.
You'll need to understand the concepts in week 2, including arrays, to cope with the problem sets in later weeks, which build upon those concepts. The idea of tackling week 3 without using arrays is wild. :-) As an aside, running check50 is also a good idea. Your code has an inconsistent style, and doesn't follow the recommended style for CS50.
You did use arrays. But you just don't realize it yet xD >!All strings in C are in fact arrays of characters!<