As some of you might be aware, I decided to try pretty hard for candidate master last quarter. The main thing I tried to do was do as many virtuals as possible (particularly at the start of the quarter), and kinda copy lnsuyn here. What I didn't realize in hindsight was that it's hard to commit to regular virtuals and actually upsolving if you're a full-time college student. Anyway, that's beside the point. I did 17 virtual contests, and I found the results quite interesting.

I also made a fake rating for myself starting at 1600, so I could see how my virtual rating would change.

It's pretty easy to see that even in contests as late as the 850s, I had no issue maintaining candidate master. In the very last contest that I took (which was unrated later), I solved ABDEF, and would've ranked 15th officially (although I took the virtual without problem C, which was later impossible, so this should be taken with many grains of salt).

My point is that contests have definitely gotten much harder, and participants have gotten much better over time. I don't think cheating accounts for this.