The problem asks to find a continuous subarray (that is pattern) which repeats ~k~ times in a row. The simplest way to do this is to iterate over all continuous subarrays and check if it repeats ~k~ times in a row. We can iterate over these subarrays using two nested for loops, one going over all possible left ends of the subarray, and one going over all right ends. Denote by ~l~ and ~r~ the left and right end of the subarray, respectively. The length of the current subarray (denote it by ~d~) is then equal to ~r-l+1~. In order to check whether it repeats ~k~ times, we must check whether the following ~k-1~ subarrays of length ~d~ are the same as the initial subarray (from ~l~ to ~r~), that is whether ~[l+d, r+d], [l+2d, r+2d], \dots, [l+(k-1)d, r+(k-1)d]~ is the same as ~[l, r]~. This is done using two nested for loops, one going over those subarrays and the other checking if they are the same with the initial one (from ~l~ to ~r~).