Hello CF community! Today I thought for some time, whether I should write this blog or not, as I don't have anything, one can say solid as a proof, other than mutual belief of some of my friends and some consistent practice.

I know, most probably, it's quite hard to change that tag now, but to get your insights about this thing and understand it, I decided to write this blog.

Recently, in the Codeforces Round 842, my solution got skipped for Problem C, stating that it significantly coincides with some other people's solution.

While I checked those solution, I indeed found my solution very similar to them, but this didn't happened first time to me. Many times, me and my friends solutions coincides as well, the only difference we see is of variable name difference and some other minor things, thankfully it didn't happened in any contest yet (happened during just usual problem solving).

But this time, it got skipped! I got a bit low after I received this message, the first thing I start to do is, checking other peoples code who got skipped too, and genuinely I find it very similar. But on the other hand some of my friend (not the ones I personally know, just CF friends), during contest submitted almost similar solution as me, and yet they have AC till now.

It's not about why they had that AC & I got skipped, but more about, the solution to the problem C I later wrote (after messing up initially and getting WA) could possibly be similar to many other's as it was a normal greedy in my opinion. I did checked some ACs as well. You too can check the problem here

For an instance, check my skipped solution : click

And this AC solution is also very very similar to my solution (not sharing the link, as I don't want anything to happen to their AC status too)

Also this one which is also an AC solution

And many other like these.

I found them quite similar as well, because probably the way of writing is quite similar, just some variable difference.

One more thing I can say is : you can check my two earlier submissions, which I messed up in, had the similar idea, but I wrote bad long code, and got a bit stuck during the contest, but I sticked to the main Idea and wrote the AC solution again, obviously taking some time. Here they are : WA1 WA2

At last, I just want to ask what you people think about the solutions for common greedy like problems, which could have similar solutions?

Also, after discussing with one of my friend, I got one more doubt as he pointed it out to me. Although I'm not considering it in my case, as my submission time was rather late.

The doubt is, if someone solves a problem and locks it. And if they want to mess with someone else in their room by seeing and sharing other's solution in some groups, wouldn't that be a problem? How would someone get to know who did that? And even if we're able to find it out, wouldn't it be quite messy to handle such scenarios even for the Mike & Team if this practice gets too common? And the person who even don't want to get into this thing, too will get plagiarized.