In this task, you are given a list of integers and an integer k. You need to find the kth smallest element in the input list and return that.

Q: [99, 213, 61, 207, 279, 41, 21, 34, 151, 165, 139, 102, 277, 97, 251, 79, 186, 290, 276, 229], k=4

A: 61
****
Q: [42, 196, 182, 276, 226, 154, 296, 33, 167, 83, 36, 210, 112, 246, 149, 169, 159, 177, 84, 242], k=7

A: 149
****
Q: [113, 128, 35, 235, 243, 222, 247, 220, 150, 126, 105, 238, 293, 240, 81, 261, 191, 10, 148, 144], k=17

A:
243
****
