Are Div 3 and Div 4 Contests Still Relevant?

Revision en2, by SrabonGitikar, 2026-07-15 21:43:14

Lately I have been seeing many many blogs after the recent Div 3 contest (Codeforces Round 1109 (Div. 3)) regarding cheating and AI usage. While this post is not directly regarding that, one question has been constantly bothering me. That is — are Div 3 and Div 4 contests still relevant?

You can detect if someone copy-pastes an AI generated code. But let's say an user gives the problem statement to an LLM and asks it to break down the problem brick by brick. Or even worse, someone can literally give the AI one of his previous codes (that he wrote himself) and he can then ask to write the solution code in exactly same format (same spaces, same type of variables, human-like variable declaration, no advisory comments etc). This is no big deal if your prompting is not terrible. Nobody can ever detect this type of 'smart AI usage', which is obviously, strictly prohibited!

LLMs like Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude solve problems from Div 3 like it is nothing. There was a time when these LLMs could solve up to C-D, but now that bound is completely broken — it seems that an efficient AI can solve an entire contest today.

And even worse, I would like to share an experience of mine from the last Div 2 contest (Codeforces Round 1108 (Div. 2)). In this contest, I solved A, B and C. After trying a lot, I couldn't solve D, it kept getting wrong answer on pretest 3 (Here are my submissions during the contest: 382292963, 382297206). Finally after the contest, a little frustrated, I opened Gemini and gave the problem and my code. It gave me a 'corrected code' within a minute (382302565) and unexpectedly (or expectedly), it got accepted. Therefore LLMs are solving Problem D-s of Div 2 on first tries, now-a-days. God have mercy on lower divisions.

Edit 1: I seem to have failed to convey what I meant. The fun and excitement of any contest never changed, and it never will (hopefully). But is the rating still relevant? Personally I think the system needs to be adjusted a bit according to the present scenario, involving AI and all.

Tags contests

History

 
 
 
 
Revisions
 
 
  Rev. Lang. By When Δ Comment
en2 English SrabonGitikar 2026-07-15 21:43:14 298
en1 English SrabonGitikar 2026-07-15 18:22:04 1913 Initial revision (published)