Hello, I'm Sanae.
In ufc+8 zone, I watched the entire contest at midnight. Too many cheaters emerged and we were busy banning them. I noticed WA submissions on 2228B - Remilia Plays Soku, 2228C2 - Cirno and Number (Hard Version) and TLE submissions on 2228D - Sanae, Cross and Color, which was intended. Soon after the end of the contest, I released the editorial. The bad news was, the complaints flooded the website and my contribution fell from +91 to -92. After reflecting on the issues, I was anixous and blamed myself. Now, I make an apology to point out the problems to avoid them next time. Sorry, everyone!
- Too many cheaters emerged. Comment 1
- The problems stay in the queue for a very long time bothered contestants.
- B is easy but many contestants misssed the corner case. And C has many corner cases. Comment 1, Comment 2, Comment 3
- The time limit of D is too tight. Comment 1, Comment 2, Comment 3, Comment 4, Comment 5, Comment 6
- Problems are too hard. Comment 1
- The samples are weak. Comment 1, Comment 2
- The contest causes a lot of rage. My heart is broken. (;﹏;) Comment 1, Comment 2, Comment 3
- C>>D Comment 1, Comment 2
- E is AI-solveable. Comment 1
- E takes too much time and F is so easy. Comment 1
- C and D are dull implementation and attention exercises and full of corner cases. Comment 1, Comment 2, Comment 3, Comment 4
There are still problems unmentioned, but they are enough. I take 4 most seriously. Although 2 seconds can be enough for the best solution, some correct solutions are killed, which obey the principle of problem setting. During testing, D was accepted by different solutions and even $$$O(n\log n)$$$ solution can run within 1.1s. Given that, I didn't modify the TL. $If I had set the TL bigger, the contest could reach its expectation.
I'm sorry for the weak sample. The $$$n=2$$$ in B bothering everyone is intended, but I should have put it in samples at CF. But I didn't even realize C has many corner cases. I set $$$a$$$ up to $$$10^{17}$$$ to reduce the diffculty. In the original version, $$$a$$$ could be up to $$$10^{10^5}$$$. Although the corner cases are the necessary parts in the problem, I missed them. Sorry again.
We tried our best to capture the cheaters, and you can point them out on your own. I'm sorry for that. They are easy to find, though.
Indeed, E should have more scores than F, since it takes more time. I have done the wrong evaluation for the difficulty.
I don't want to show CNOI style initially and make the problems easier and easier. I only hoped that problems would be interesting. Some are said to be standard, but I still believe they have the value of thinking. A is easy. B is easy but have corner cases, which is intended. C is not so easy and happens to have many corner cases. TL for D is too tight. Score of E is too low. F is ok but misses the $$$O(n)$$$ solution. I have made so many mistakes even after so much testing. I let contestants down, failing to keep my promise. (T_T)
I will not author problems any longer until I'm mature enough. I'm guilty and carry this regret from then on. I hope my mistakes serve as a lesson. I have let you down. Sorry...
May love persist?
Upd on 2026.05.22: I left CF for a whole week and when I return, I find so many new comments have appeared. Somebody agree on these errors and share their feelings. Somebody cares my about mental well-being and sends warm words. Somebody makes me to reflect on the balance between explaining the problem and exposing the answer, which is a novel opinion to me. Some of his words are just what I want to say. I learn a lot from the experience and I finally feel at peace again. In conclusion, I'm convinced that it is through trial and error that our community truly progresses . Though I won't have much time for competitive progamming personally in a period of time, I can still witness how the community evolving and improving.
Dude, you don't have to apologise for this. Downvoting a round because of your poor performance is not a healthy habit.
yeah people are way too fickle & don't realize someone put their heart and soul into these rounds. everyone just yells and screams at each other, nobody's civil anymore, nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy etc etc
Truly a tragedy
Though I got a lot of Wrong Answer from A and B.And spent a lot of time on C instead of D.I still think your contest is good.Thanks for your contest!
Same with me!!!
please don't stop authoring problems. people are mad when they perform poorly. sure, the contest quality was not great but please keep authoring problems and please don't feel guilty for trying.
To the Codeforces community
I hope you see what you are doing by downvoting rounds whenever you don't like anything about it, without any regards to the problemsetting team.
Whenever you downvote a round, the authors of the round is less likely to write another one. Soon enough, there will be nobody willing to write rounds for Codeforces. And you all will be wondering what happened.
Only downvote if there is a serious issue. You doing bad isnt a good reaosn to downvote.
Yes, downvotes can hardly be a pleasant thing for the most people.
But how else do you suggest learning from mistakes, other than through negative feedback? Would you argue that authors are more likely to pay attention to the criticism and take it seriously if they mostly receive upvotes for their poorly prepared contest?
However, I think there also might be a problem (that is, a way for improvement) with how criticism is filtered and managed by setters. Sanae listed 10 points and for at least half of them they can't take any blame for. Say, how can an author take blame for cheaters unless they leaked the problems?
Other than that, I think C and D were somewhat mediocre. Both are dull implementation and attention exercises.
For me the contest wasn't the worst in terms of its quality. I encourage Sanae to give it another try in the future, with a work on mistakes done.
the point is that the "mistakes" are just people bitching for no reason, which again, hurts problemsetters for no reason
I can't agree that there is no reason, but yeah, I think some of the comments indeed have no value. That's why I said about filtering.
My point is the Codeforces community should appreciate the efforts by authors more. Nearly everyone whos downvoting never made their own contest, and know how much time and effort it takes to come up with an interesting idea, prepare a well-written statement, write strong tests, invite testers, etc. Everyone takes these regularly held Codeforces rounds for granted.
Thats why I said, downvoting should be reserved only for very serious issues: Wrong model solution, problems that are extremely poor in quality, plagiarized problems. None of these has happened recently, yet many many rounds get downvoted. If you just downvote for one small issue then you are demotivating the author team who clearly tried their best and didn’t make any serious mistakes.
As a side note, many things people downvote for is not even author’s fault / unreasonable to prevent. For example, expecting easy problems to not be solvable by AI (try coming up with one yourself and tell me how that goes); queue issues; cheater issues; etc.
"I came, I saw, I WA, I downvote" -Julius Caesar
You make me laugh. lol
This is my version:
'I registered, I code, I failed, I quit' — Kochiya Sanae
What do you mean by 'filtered and managed by setters'? Ok. I only find these points and the duplicates into one. I’m not really able to spot everything. I will include your points in my apology. Will that satisfy you?
I appreciate your criticism.
'Both are dull implementation and attention exercises.' I thought they would at least require competitors to think.
Sorry, I misunderstood Christine-’s meaning. My list was under-filtered, not over-filtered.
Yeah, as far as I am concerned the problems were good, not my best but I definitely enjoyed it, even upsolving C1 & C2 was one damn good experience for me.
Could you explain your solution for C1 and C2 for me ? I still couldn't understand it even after seeing the editorial (T_T)
for n-1 length if possible: make it of highest give number
for n+1 length : first: smallest non zero number and all other smallest number.
for n length: for i (1 to n) -> prefix (maintain at the end after this opperation) left and right = prefix; take corresponding digit from a look for just smaller and just larger number from the given array (if they are in the array). for left(smaller) for further digits take largest number from array, for right(larger) take smallest number. Now, check if the corresponding digit is available in the array!
The min absolute difference with all these numbers is the answer.
Note: use ull, else you may get annoyed.
You can refer to some nice code. You need to find the two closest number bigger and smaller than the given number.
I highly appreciate all the contest authors and am only doing competitive programming to get that feeling of an author when 30K people are participating in it and as a current participant the queue is the thing which increases the fun...
bro had to think 10 times before saying that
I think the most important reason why this round was voted down is that the weak sample was overlaid with queueueueueforces. According to my research, many contestants were very angry when they submitted problem D and found that C1 and C2 had both received a wrong answer on pretest 2 predict
If there weren't such a long queue at the beginning of the round, this round shouldn't have been downvoted so severely.
People need to realize queueueueueue is just part of the game, you signed up for it.
That is true. Submit a code of C2, then find it wrong when you are coding D. Lose the points of C1, or have to let two same codes run in queue (C1 and C2), with the risk of double "-1". As C has many cornercases for many solutions, this problem makes more participants angry. (Including me, sad.)
I know I don't have any rights to write about the contest, but ... umm... isn't problems are interesting when they're tricky? aren't they part of your learning journey? aren't you here to LEARN? if not, sweetheart, codeforces isn't going to make your CV heavy. Try doing different real life projects for high paying jobs you're targeting. But I can understand when people are angry because they might have missed the chance to reach next rank by little. idgaf
Plz don’t apologise, it was a great round except the queue issue which was not your fault. People just have their own excuses to downvote and blame the authors and their problem setting over their own bad performance. I really like the problem C.
The problem was pretty good for D and quite intuitive .... Only the tl was a bit tight rest was on spot ..... can anyone tell me why O(n) solution — first performs bad than the O(nlogn) solution second
For what it's worth, thank you for the contest.
Problems do have corner cases. Rather than hiding my head in the sand and asking for cleaner problems, I prefer to acknowledge the existence of tricky cases as well. I usually strive to find a most general solution, with the least number of corner cases. Also, I teach my students to strive for the same. It helps in the long run.
In problem D, my issue was input speed. In problemsetting, personally, I try to avoid ones where input speed is important, unless the whole problem is explicitly about constant optimizations. Nevertheless, such problems do exist, and I learned a bit of new stuff while dealing with problem D.
Problems do contain math. I didn't solve problem E. Also, I don't like it: statement is too formal and arbitrary to my taste. However, it's a personal opinion, and I'd hate to impose it on other problemsetters: if you do like such problems, great, go on setting them. Also, it's interesting to read the tutorial, even more so since it shows three approaches.
Accepting constructive criticism is important. However, don't let the popular opinion completely override what problems you set. If you, coordinator, and testers agree on something, most probably it's OK to try.
Yes, D is not good enough. By the way, why E is formal and arbitrary is to make the statement clear and neat. In the original version, I wrote a short background and deleted finally.
the problems in this round were not bad at all. i especially enjoyed upsolving d, but i guess weak samples and a long queue led to a great many frustrated downvotes. as for me, the weak samples were the final push to incorporate stress testing into my workflow. so don't be too discouraged, everything has a bright side! cheers!
An update to downvote on codeforces
- MikeMirzayanov circa 2026
You shouldn't mind those comments — they have never made a round yet so they don't know how hard it is. Your contest is great, and I love it. Let's just don't talk about the fact that I lose 60 ratings because of your contest. NVM, there're nothing here.
How do you solve the version of C where 'a' can be upto 10^(10^(5))?
it's like solving a problem with array of length (n = 10^5),
you just have to find some kind of O(n) or O(nlogn) solution.
But how do I perform operations like abs(a — b) where a and b are 10^5 digit numbers
abs( a — b ) is O(n) operation, use arrays.
I had horrendous performance because of problem C, I'd like to share my opinion.
1. Some people don't like implementation problem.
I think it's an okay topic to have sometimes.
2. Problem C has many corner cases.
I think it's not the author's job to make a problem have no corner case, it's the nature of the problem. It's my own fault that I couldn't find corner cases and stress test properly.
3. There's balance between weak samples and samples that exposes the answer.
I think samples should confirm "I read the problem correctly" instead of covering all corner cases. The samples in A-C2 are adequate.
Don't listen to strangers online who are only brave behind safety of a screen. I hope you don't stop making contests. Every contest is a win, except the ones that got unrated due to problem leaks.
please return to algorithmic problems that actually have a good amount of thinking evolved they almost never get complaints. this random number theory + constructive + random greedy style was meant to battle gpt (I think) but it has adapted as you can see. i hope we have good DSA problems again on CF i'm not talking specifically about your contest but rather code forces in general
"this random number theory + constructive + random greedy style was meant to battle gpt (I think)"
No it wasn't.
ok then I admit I was wrong about that. but don't you agree that at least one more classic problem in the range B,...,E would make contests more fun? (at least for people preparing for OI)
As a previous author who has authored a div2 round (round 1061), here are my suggestions.
1, Avoid using extremely large input for the problem. Making the input to be 2e6 lines are crazy and unnecessary. It is unfair to other language, and it is meaningless to force user use fast input and output. What's more, it doesn't filter out the O(n lg n) solution. So in this problem 5e5 is maximum.,
Also, there is no test case that are really hit the maximum. It should have one.
2, splitting problem C into two parts, in my opinion, is not necessary. In my contest, I also want to split problem B 2156B - Странная установка into two parts, one n = 20 and the other n = 1e5, but was stopped by coordinator. It turned out to be a good choice.
By the way, E is good, and you don't need to feel guilty so many cheaters use AI to solve E. It is nearly impossible now to design a problem less than 2400 difficulty that cannot be solved by AI. No problem can be made if we enforce this.
I don't want to split C into two parts, but my coordinator wants to do that to reduce the difficulty, which proves to be right.
To be very honest, this round was an average good round. The problems were unique and required thinking. Overall, the problems were good and the difficulty curve was also okayish.
So, all the downvotes mean nothing. I have recently seen that if the majority of users cannot solve a problem they just tend to downvote the round.
Rather than downvoting only if people focused on their problem-solving they would have solved the problems easily.
TBH I think you did a good job but it was just unfortunate that some of the things didn't get caught during testing. Like you said, I don't think it would have been unreasonable for me to set D to 2sec if all the solutions I and my testers could think of run in 1.1.
day 1 of begging to be hired as a tester so I can be employed on cf :)
Hi Sanae!
Thanks for the contest, I believe you put a lot of effort into it. In my opinion, the problems were well prepared and entertaining. Proper casework and implementation have always been part of problem solving. I think this comment and the corresponding discussion say enough about "weak samples".
The only arguable point is $$$n\leq2\cdot10^6$$$ in D, as on Codeforces constraints are usually set a bit softer to let people approach problems more freely with different programming languages.
Anyway, I don't see any real mistakes or anything you should be sorry about. Hope to see more contests from you!
Some of the problems are hard to avoid, like 1, 2, 9. You don't need to apologize for these. And it is not a good idea to try to refuse any $$$\Theta(n\log n)$$$ solution. This is difficult as the $$$\Theta(n)$$$ solution is complex.
Wish you can bring problems with higher quality, and prepare better contest next time.
A not important mistake (maybe): The two links of "8.C>>D" are both comment 1365371. May you want to show comment 1365338? Seemingly many of links are not true.
I apologize for my negative comment. It really wasn’t worth all of this.
Not the mindset to have. Everyone makes mistakes, and it's not nice of the community to be so harsh. We are here learning and improving together, both contestants and problemsetters.
I hope to see you author another round that we enjoy more!
It somehow became the norm on CF for a person to bitch and downvote the rounds when they participated badly. The only thing in your list that is actually a mistake is the size of the input in D, and it should have been caught by your coordinator, not you. Try to ignore mean comments. Their authors are not angry with you or your contest; they are angry with their own performance but can't admit it, and are trying to shift the blame.
I think input on D is not a mistake either. In almost all cases, people just wanted their n log n to pass.
It's such an incisive comment and I'm happy you can reply to me because you are the one who gave me courage in the beginning.
I'll try to ignore some meaningless comments， but still absorb some constructive opinions. Only when one person stops shifting blame to others and takes his responsibility can he really be mature and rational.
Round was pretty good. Vladosiya where is your apology?
Well, plz don't ask others to do something. They are free to express themselves.
Hello, I suppose I should apologise for the negativity, however I would also like to give my perspective in case anybody is interested.
I actually do problem set, and know the difficulty to make a good problem.
Maybe more than others, I am more particular about what is a good problem and not, in fact it is independent of my performance. For example, one of my best performing rounds I thought its problem C was really stupid and standard. I believe many people use codeforces as a way to find problems that are very problem solving heavy but more implementation-light compared to other platforms, of course that isn't to say I can stand implementation problems, but when you include many edge cases, it feels like an artificial, and unfun way to add difficulty. But rather than taking this as negativity, I suggest you take it as feedback, rather dwell on the issues.
Yes my message was harsh and I apologise for that. I should have worded it better, rather than take this experience as people hating you, try to take it as constructive criticism, its not meant to hurt you, its meant for growth, please don't stop setting.
Whoever is complaining about the queue, that is universal, so theyre just coping, same thing to those complaining about cheaters, there's always cheaters? except that one time that all the Indians took finals ig. So cry about it?
B is a nice problem lol, its hated for the same reason Xor factorisation is hated, which I think is just dumb, to understand a problem you should understand the full problem, especially if the edge cases are actually part of the problem solving.
"There's always cheaters". Please stop pushing toxic messages that make the community worse.
Cheaters that could have been caught were not caught and still are not caught.
Maybe you aren't high enough in the leaderboard for them to seriously affect you, but many are. And the criticism is not that cheaters existed, but that they were handled terribly. Even I could've done a better job.
Even now I can find so many obvious cheaters in the top 200 with evidence, and I know nothing is going to be done about them. It is the CF team's fault.
i meant that the argument about cheaters was dumb, not justified?
bro your contest was cool enough don't bother yourself with those petty people and you would never make everyone happy so as long as the contest was fun even for some then that's enough :)
Even though I got -155 in the contest, I would still say it was a great contest and I got to learn a lot of things from it! Also about the complaints:
"Too many cheaters emerged"It is not in your hands."The problems stay in the queue for a very long time bothered contestants."Server issues, not your issue."Problems are too hard."That's the point of problems."The contest causes a lot of rage. My heart is broken. (;﹏;) "You can always improve and perform better in next contest."E is AI-solveable."Every question is AI-solvable given the right prompts.About question D, I couldn't reach there but I definitely loved B and C. Don't let the hate get to you, You made an amazing contest!
Good handle!
You’re so kind to point out the real situation.
Thanks brother! I would be eagerly waiting for your next context :)
I want to support the contest author. I read the problems, and they are quite good. Then I read the comments linked in the blog, and I was shocked, to say the least. I haven't been actively following codeforces for quite some time. Could you explain: has this behavior really become the norm? Giving so many downvotes and writing negative comments without reason is definitely not normal.
Sanae, please keep creating problems; you're doing great. This contest absolutely doesn't deserve the hate it's received, and codeforces shouldn't lose a talented author.
While criticism should be taken into account, I recommend you pay attention only to detailed comments that offer criticism, not empty complaints .
Addressing the community: what are you doing? At this rate, no one will be creating contests. I just scrolled through the announcements and noticed that they're getting far fewer upvotes than they used to. Where does this toxicity come from? I don't believe contests are any worse than they used to be.
It may sound offensive, but most of the Div2 round audience can't give an objective opinion about the round. How can you objectively judge a round in which you can only solve just one of six problems? You shouldn't downvote a round if it requires skills you don't have. Being able to handle extreme cases is also an important skill. Knowing how to read other problems if you're having trouble solving this one is also important.
I apologize for the overly emotional comment, but the situation itself upset me so much that I couldn't ignore it. This doesn't mean you shouldn't criticize rounds. It doesn't mean you shouldn't downvote. But let's please try to do so objectively and with respect for the contest author.
Yes, the round is good and most of the hateful comments about the round itself are undeserved. But this:
"Too many cheaters. Seriously, is this the contest author's fault? Instead of writing comments like that, go solve more problems and improve. Your rating is just a number in your profile."
As someone who seems to have barely touched the site in years, you have no right to comment on this. You do not know what it's like to do contests in this era. Please do not reach for a moral highground.
And the harsh truth is that yes, the general sentiment towards rounds is worse these days than it was year ago. Undeniably a part of that is due to the scale of CF's cheater problem. Admin negligence is largely to blame (much less so people involved with the round), but unfortunately a side effect is that the rounds themselves get downvoted a bit more.
The harsh truth is that there are a lot of cheaters now, and that's why we as a community downvote contest authors under announcements because... Because what? It's your right to think the problem isn't being addressed enough, but why downvote an author and demoralize them over a problem they physically have no control over?
Now about cheaters. For some reason, many people think there weren't any problems with cheaters before. The truth is, they existed before. Yes, there were far fewer of them than there are now. Yes, they were only at the lower end of the rating scale (at least not en masse, because isolated cases of cheaters can probably be found all the way up to grandmasters). It's strange to say that I have no right to talk about cheaters, considering I wrote several blogs about mass cheating some time ago.
So, let's think about it. There are a lot of cheaters on this site. A lot. Because of them, the ratings of honest participants have dropped significantly (this is clearly visible in the rating graphs, seriously). And there are several options for what can be done. Of course, we could write blogs about each individual cheater (which, frankly, is already getting tiresome; recent blogs are always littered with them). We could protest and demand that the site administrators address this issue more actively. Or we could simply solve the problems, because that's what we came to this site for.
P.S. Interesting. Sometimes people say that the site administrators aren't doing enough to address the cheating problem. Are there any real suggestions for how to do more? Not just abstract ones, but something that can be implemented.
"Because what? It's your right to think the problem isn't being addressed enough, but why downvote an author and demoralize them over a problem they physically have no control over?"
I was making a statement on the community, not myself. Of course I wouldn't do it, I've never downvoted a contest announcement ever before. But these are the way things are for most. And for the record, every round does have small blemishes for better or worse. And the presence of cheaters is often a multiplier on how bad they feel to the participant.
"We could protest and demand that the site administrators address this issue more actively. Or we could simply solve the problems, because that's what we came to this site for."
It is not in your place to suggest others to alter their motivations. Please have some humility.
"P.S. Interesting. Sometimes people say that the site administrators aren't doing enough to address the cheating problem. Are there any real suggestions for how to do more? Not just abstract ones, but something that can be implemented."
Tons. But what's the point in having a long conversation about it here where no one will see it.
Ignoring any proposals of larger systems, how about just literally going through the top 100 yourself as one person? Any human can do that. I did that. Admin doesn't care to do that.
Well, I should have made my feedback a bit more constructive, I have been a bit emotional after too many WAs (and I think people felt that as you should see from AC/attempt rate on C1). We might be taking too many things for granted, considering that contests 5 years ago were nowhere close in average quality to what we see now. For constructive feedback I should say a few things (which I hope are aligned with objective belief):
Not all feedback is supposed to be taken seriously. People can express emotions, but that doesn't mean you need to listen to everyone. If you do try hard to make the contest better and better, then every piece of that effort is worth it.
P.S. I didn't downvote the contest
Yes, everyone may suddenly lose temper and be emotional. I was waiting for your answer until you now give me some advice.
I might be angry after somebody annoys me, be depressed after a failure and be happy after a small success. The naure is in our genes. It's not problem unless I need to socialize with others. Arbitrary words hurt others, and arbitrary behavior breaks rules and laws, going against our ethics.
As Confucius once said, '君子食無求飽，居無求安，敏於事而慎於言，就有道而正焉，可謂好學也已。' Once your word is spoken, there is no going back. Be careful with your words and actions.
I am not to criticize you. I just thought of a quote from Confucius, and I think the wisdom is worth sharing with you all.
I am curious, isn't usually final system tests = pretests + successful hacks by participants? Or is that just what most rounds use and you can sometimes have final system tests = pretests + some hidden tests written by contest authors + hacks?
final system tests = pretests + successful hacks by current rules. some hacks might not be shown in the Hacks tab and are only visible in the status tab with the Hacked verdict.
honestly after not participating in a cf round for nearly 6 months, i was happy to come back to a round where there was thinking involved instead of some round that's heavily math/dsa based.
please don't worry too much about these issues. they can happen to anybody and any round. (also there's just no stopping cheaters regardless)
excited to see what you bring to the cf community in the future!
There is a lot that can be done to stop cheaters. It's just not being done.
I performed terribly in this round and lost more than 100 points of rating. I didn’t manage to solve C and only solved B very late. Having said this, Sanae, you are being way too harsh on yourself. Sure maybe the round wasn’t perfect, but most of the problems you mention are not even real or relevant, they are just excuses made up by people which, like me, simply weren’t good enough or not prepared enough for this problemset. It was my fault if B gave me trouble, not the problem’s fault. It was my fault that C gave me trouble, not the problem’s fault. I believe that recognizing this is useful, if not necessary, to become a better problem-solver. Ultimately, it’s just sad that immature, angry people drive perfectly-good problem setters like you to stop making rounds, only to later complain that there are not enough rounds. Y’all are bitches.
I only solved up to D, but the only issue I had was D's time limit/input. If the intention was to allow O(nlogn) solutions to pass then the input size was too high.
anti N log N because of seemingly "low effort NlogN" isn't good practices. It makes the problem less interesting imo...
I thought the problems were fine. I do wish time limit on D were higher but it's a good lesson for me :)
Hope to see you set more problems!
my only problem with this round is that if you look at all the codes for problems E and F, even from like the top 30, so many of them are just blatant chatgpt
I made a severe and continuous lapse in my judgement, and I don’t expect to be forgiven. I’m simply here to apologize. The entire top 100 being cheaters was obviously unplanned. The problems were raw; they were untested. None of us knew how to write them or how to solve. I should have never posted the contest. I should have put Polygon down and stopped writing the contest. There's a lot of things I should have done differently but I didn't. And for that, from the bottom of my heart, I am sorry. I want to apologize to the internet. I want to apologize to anyone who has participated in the contest. I want to apologize to anyone who has been affected or touched by negative delta, or negative delta, or negative delta. But most importantly I want to apologize to Kenan the coding wizard. For my fans who are defending my actions, please don't. I don’t deserve to be defended. The goal with my contest is always to entertain; to push the boundaries, to be all-inclusive. In the world I live in, I share almost every problem I write. The intent is never to be heartless, cruel, or rotavirus. Like I said I made a huge mistake. I don’t expect to be forgiven, I’m just here to apologize. I'm ashamed of myself. I’m disappointed in myself. And I promise to be better. I will be better. Thank you.
The problemset looks really interesting (although way out of my league fosho), please continue on making problems, do not get demotivated!!! I can't say for all, but I loved the intuition behind them.
Honestly, I thought the problems in this round were quite nice. "Samples being weak" for B is an absurd complaint to me — samples are for understanding the statement, not to just tell contestants exactly what the answer to the problem is, in all cases. Similarly, "C having corner cases" is also a non-issue — it's a pretty educational digit DP problem, doesn't require any careful handling of carries, and can be implemented quite cleanly. D was fairly easy, and while it did have rather tight limits, it forced me (at least) to optimize my $$$O(N\lg N)$$$ to $$$O(N)$$$. "Programming" is part of "programming contests," there's no issue with having some implementation-related challenges as part of problem difficulty once in a way!
As others have pointed out in the thread, most of the hate directed to this round stems from the overwhelming number of cheaters, which certainly made the experience of taking the contest much worse. As others have pointed out in this thread, this is most definitely not your fault, every CF round this year has been overrun by cheaters. The CF admin has decided that not only are they going to allow a cheater into the overall top 10, they are also going to drag their feet as much as they can to simply rerate rounds months after the fact. They do need to get their act together, but in the meantime please don't beat yourself up for this.
Thanks again for the contest!
don't feel bad champ! contest was lit.
Chill up bro dont worry Sanae
Dont see about contribution.
we will get it back up.
The main point of contests is to train the contestant for the future job or olympiads. There will be some hard problems or problems with corner cases in olympiads and participants mmust be ready for them.
So your contribution dropped from 91 to -92 and got back to 103...
Auto comment: topic has been updated by Sanae (previous revision, new revision, compare).
Auto comment: topic has been updated by Sanae (previous revision, new revision, compare).
As a comment on D, in contest I thought the problem at first glance looked really tedious and still hadn’t solved C so i stuck with C but afterwards I went back to solve D and found it had a really simply idea that was really heavy in implementation. So after i was done and it passed the given cases, i watched it tle (and memory out of bounds lmao) several times. Despite this, I think I learned a lot about it and on like n<=10^6 cases. Much info was gained on optimizations and how to decrease constant factor as my original solution was o(nlogn) (sort,map,set) but i managed to eliminate the map and sets since the values in array were not 10^9 but 10^6 so i could store in an array. Overall fun contest and even though i lowk got rage baited by C’s edge cases, it was a nice contest.