yeah so um HOW THE ACTUAL FUCK DID 8k/10k DIV 2 PEOPLE SOLVE B if you look at the page im on in standings

IM THE ONLY ONE WHO SOLVED C AND LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE INSTASOLVED B

this idea is like harder than 90% of div2 Bs, after seeing the solution, yes it makes sense but i am not expecting newbies to solve ts

so either half of the people in the div2 are cheating (which is crazy), or this somehow is a 1100 and im super retarded? (but if the latter was the case then how the fuck did i solve C when far less people solved C)

like C is way easier, even after seeing the sol to B, even though I literally overcomplicated C, it was still far easier than B

like ofc I enjoy cp and wanna solve for fun, but when 8k people solve something within an hour and you cannot in 2, and then half of them get stuck on the next problem but you can solve it reasonably fast, how the fuck would you not feel borderline suicidal

all of you downvote ts i dont care i want an answer

I will show 3 images, about the contest quality on codeforces. Firstly I must emphasise, none of this has to do with perf, many rounds i performed well (well for me) and the contest was just boring in 2026, just problem quality and how it felt to do the round.

The circled contests are contests I felt are good, and the more red the circle is, the more I like it. In fact some of the contests in mid-late 2025 were some of the most fun I've ever had in codeforces, these contests genuinely make me feel nostolgia, and having feelings over cp problems might be a bit crazy, but they were genuinely just so fun to do even when I performed bad, I don't even have words to explain it. I feel there has been a big drop in problem quality in 2026. Im aware that problemsetting is no easy task, in fact i have some experience myself and yes it takes a lot of effort and time to make a good round, but so many good rounds into so many boring rounds is unlikely variance, there is likely some other trend I would like to discover. If anyone feels they have an idea behind this trend, please leave a comment.

Secondly, note this doesn't go beyond D in most contests, sometimes including E for specific contests, and this evaluation does not exist for contests I haven't looked at obviously, so don't go saying "but round 10XX" was really good, when I haven't done 10XX. For example, someone said 1092 is a good contest, but I havent done it.

Mid 2025:

Late 2025:

Early 2026 (up until now):

As you can see, the contests in 2025 felt way better, and at times there were 5 contests in a row which had very enjoyable experience. What happened? I know there's still good problems out there, but it feels more few and far between these days, I don't get the same thrill I did back then.

To close out, I want to say two things. Firstly, no I'm not salty about this, I just want to know what happened to cause a general drop in quality. Secondly I want to raise awareness to the current round setters, again I know how hard it is to set, but if we as a community we figure out what went wrong, we can find a way to fix it and bring back the days of enjoyable contests every day. This benefits not just me, but many people both new and old in the community.

The cheating allegations in this community are getting ridiculous Blog

Note how in here, multiple people were calling out other people who performed well for cheating with minimal, or in these cases no evidence. Firstly the poster instantly got accused by some random guy???? bro doubled down and tripled down on it too all because of a single comment. Yes, while its rare, some people do write down their thoughts inside their code, this is down to personal preference

Apparently trying to clear up confusion about the situation = "Also, if you really weren't using AI, would you have edited this 5 times to desperately try to prove your legitimacy?"???? Yes because legitimate users would totally go "yeah i cheated" instead of trying to clarify that they're legit.

Now next up, rating growth = cheating apparently too, based on another user later down that blog. "Oh you got +200 in 2 months? cool did you change up how you practice, did you grind harder, did you get a few lucky contests? Nah acutally you just cheated for sure bro"?????

And then we have the people (such as the second person mentioned) going out of nowhere to bring random other people into the conversation to accuse them as a cheater (once again without sufficient evidence).

I genuinely don't know how this benefits anyone, also, I claim that some of these people are trying to "expose cheaters" just for contribution, otherwise "virtual internet points", yeah that sounds familiar right, they have the same desire as the cheaters, but instead a different "virtual internet point".

I'm aware I only showed one blog, but there's been multiple of them up to this point, and there all virtually the same thing, its completely ridiculous. Instead of promoting negativity, maybe go learn something, or write about your findings.

When I first started in this community, cheating was already a thing, but there were a lot more informative, educational, and even normal funny shitposts, than this witch hunt of people randomly accusing others, which is toxic, and even if correct in most cases, can be handled better i.e. submitting to the CF cheater database.

All this is, especially when there is no sufficient evidence is a witch hunt that is completely toxic and benefits nobody (except the poster's internet points, but most of the time that backfires too). Please cut out the unnecessary toxicity.

Sorry if I've gone on too long in this blog, but I'm honestly pissed and disappointed at the state of the community currently. tldr: tspmosmicl.

Now I know what you're thinking... "oh no. hes being racist again"

however, if you would so kindly look at any recent standings, especially ones which favour the timezone of indians... (like the last div1,div2 combined round...), you would notice quite the coincidence. And if you think, oh well Codeforces is fucked... you would be wrong Codeforces gets the short end of it, just look at meta hacker cup round 3, and compare it to any other year.

Now is calling out Indians racist? Without valid reasoning that they are the supermajority causing issues, yes. However, I believe I have valid enough reasoning. If the pure statistics don't convince you that we must target punishments towards India/bangladesh/pakistan?/basically that geographic region, then why not use logic instead?

Why do these people want to cheat? Well I've asked a few who obviously, I will keep anonymous. Simply put, its peer pressure. Somehow, most likely due to government corruption and other political things I will not get into, Indian students believe it is ok to cheat as long as they get good results for a job eventually. Because their peers all cheat, they also feel compelled to cheat. Now obviously this is a fundamental flaw widespread in only india, pakistan, and similar regions.

Overall, it seems the majority of cheaters are Indian, and due to the difficulty for online proctoring or other completely fair solutions, I believe banning Indian (and similar) based off the area code on their phone numbers by default will have great contribution both for academic integrity, and the CF infrastructure. What do I mean by default? Well we cant ban everyone, that would be unfair for the actual high level Indians who do not cheat. Due to these being so incredibly rare, we can have non Indians vouch for them. If they are still caught cheating both the non Indian and Indian are banned.

Actually by using a phone number when registering (luogu does this btw) you can prevent alt accounts as well. Its a win-win if you think about it. Or maybe, we can allow registering of accounts, but they have submission limits, and cannot participate in contests without phone number verification.

The submission limits should help reduce the long queues, and by using phone numbers, botnets would be impossible. While banning Indians seems racist, unfortunately It would be the most realistic and simplest solution that would largely fix the problems on this platform currently.

Finally: on the topic of mass downvoting this blog. Sure go ahead, especially to the cheaters and Indians who don't want such changes to take effect, in fact I have a message for you. Unlike you, I really don't care if one online number goes down, mass downvote me all you want, I really couldn't care less, I'm just trying to propose a feasible and realistic solution.

Hi. See todays rounds (Codeforces Round 1059 (Div. 3)) standings, front two pages, and 700-800 These are clearly bot accounts so my question is the following:

what exactly does cloudflare contribute????

it blocks normal users, but when there's an actual botnet on the loose, they're all let through?

Of course, naturally all these bots are utilizing LLM to solve as well, so please consider filtering for unrated that solved either

a b c d f g, or a c d f g (because their b fst/hacked LOL), for an immediate purge (not including the normal plagiarism check)

this nonnegligibly affects participants in the top 2000 of the contest, more than any other recent case of cheating

note, f is much more difficult than e from my experience, so not being able to solve e, but solving f is a clear sign of LLM.

I understand the admins are busy, but I understand they want best for this site, and much of us, the community do too.

Thank you for your efforts, and I hope this issue is fixed soon.

(NOTE: Great wall of India is a joke seeing how all the usernames are Indian sounding as is NO means of being racism, please take this lightly)