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: [111, 48, 244, 114, 218, 69, 112, 253, 87, 27, 61, 141, 58, 30, 161, 54, 179, 227, 25, 202], k=17

A: 218
****
Q: [254, 115, 173, 94, 228, 168, 130, 202, 129, 42, 142, 61, 15, 244, 185, 123, 144, 256, 49, 227], k=1

A: 15
****
Q: [116, 77, 23, 192, 244, 55, 15, 93, 272, 76, 252, 41, 34, 61, 139, 28, 43, 157, 50, 231], k=12

A:
93
****