awang11's blog

By awang11, history, 2 months ago, In English
Gusty Garden Galaxy — Mahito Yokota, Super Mario Galaxy

Hello, Codeforces!

IceSerpent and I are pleased to invite you to Codeforces Round 1085 (Div. 1 + Div. 2) on Mar/08/2026 17:35 (Moscow time)! While some of us will be turning our clocks an hour forward for daylight savings, our theme will turn it way back to the 2010s.

You will be given $$$8$$$ problems to solve in $$$3$$$ hours. Note that some of these problems are further divided into subtasks. Some of the problems may be interactive, so please read the guide for interactive problems if you are not familiar with them. The scoring distribution is as follows:

$$$\ \ \ \,$$$ $$$\ $$$ $$$\ \,$$$ $$$\,$$$ $$$\quad\ \ \ \ \,$$$ $$$\quad\ \ \ \ \ \,$$$ $$$\ \ $$$ $$$\qquad\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \,$$$ $$$\qquad\quad\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ $$$

$$$750 - 1250 - 1500 - 2250 - (1750 + 1000) - 3250 - 3750 - (3250 + 1000 + 1500)$$$

The problems of this round were authored by IceSerpent and myself, awang11. In addition, we would like to thank:

UPD 1: The scoring distribution has been released!

UPD 2: Editorial is released at https://mirror.codeforces.com/blog/entry/151886. Hope you enjoyed the round!

UPD 3: The results!

Div. 1 + 2

  1. ecnerwala

  2. ksun48

  3. tourist

  4. turmax

  5. hitonanode

  6. jiangly

  7. Elysion

  8. Kapt

  9. tickcross.y

  10. StarSilk

First clears

A. LeonVir, 00:01

B. ksun48, 00:09

C. Golovanov399, 00:11

D. PelicanPilot, 00:16

E1. liaoyanxu, 00:14

E2. Ayush79, 00:33

F. littleju, 00:34

G. ainta, 01:25

H1 + H2 + H3. ecnerwala, 02:31

  • Vote: I like it
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Vote: I like it -16 Vote: I do not like it

Auto comment: topic has been updated by awang11 (previous revision, new revision, compare).

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Vote: I like it +31 Vote: I do not like it

As a tester, I loved the problems and wish y'all the the best of luck when participating!

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Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

Hope to be one step closer to Specialist.

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Galaxy.

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By the way, I'm one of the organizers for the upcoming MIT Informatics Tournament! If you're interested, check out https://mitit.org/ and https://mirror.codeforces.com/blog/entry/151788.

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Hope to increase my rating.

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Vote: I like it +25 Vote: I do not like it

As a tester, this round is memorable. I encourage you to participate.

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Vote: I like it -8 Vote: I do not like it

Auto comment: topic has been updated by awang11 (previous revision, new revision, compare).

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Vote: I like it +22 Vote: I do not like it

Hope this 2010s contest doesn't make my rating 2010

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Vote: I like it +5 Vote: I do not like it

As a tester, I tested

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Good job, artist! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

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Good luck!

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I wish good luck for all who will participate in DIV1 + DIV2 and I wish that all participants will show great results and Thanks for awang11 for this DIV

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Rev. 2  
Vote: I like it +96 Vote: I do not like it

Meme

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whats hogrider doing lol.

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good luck for everyone

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Vote: I like it +28 Vote: I do not like it

750 — Mario (Super Mario Bros)

1250 — Toppat clan(?) (Henry Stickman)

1500 — Swampy (Where's My Water)

2250 — Pokeball (Pokemon)

(1750 + 1000) — Hog Rider (Clash Royale)

3250 — Fire Nation (Avatar The Last Airbender)

3750 — Strike Class Symbol (How To Train Your Dragon)

(3250 + 1000 + 1500) — Bowser (Super Mario Bros)

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Looking forward to being goomba stomped yet again

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With brainrot slop taking over the internet nowadays, it will be wonderful to visit the brainrot-free past.

While neither time was necessarily better for its own reasons, I believe the time before 2020 was better for people who knew how to enjoy life and not feed off the shit humans create

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Only legends can hear the voice line

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man thats like 20 questions that crazyyyy

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Vote: I like it -6 Vote: I do not like it

As an interactive enjoyer I hope this contest will be very orz

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"our theme will turn it way back to the 2010s" , i feel so old.

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is that A Hat in Time?

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hope to become a candidate master in a few months

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Excited for my first Codeforces round with a 2010s theme! Good luck everyone!

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why not 1st of April?

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i hope many indians don't participate today (due to world cup final) and i get better ratings for once.

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hope I reach expert again.... -_-

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what is this bro? only like 2000 people solved b and it was still less than c somehow. smh.

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World cup final and no obvious cheaters among top ranks, WHAT A DAY !!

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Didn't any of the testers fail B? It seems like the round wasn't tested at all.

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    2 months ago, hide # ^ |
     
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    How did you do C bro, can you please help me with that question?

    Here is what I tried: I brute forced the best position for first drain and calculated rem array where rem[i] represents remaining water at that index, then my final answer was the sum of water drained by the first drain + max (sum of consecutive non-zero rem[i]). It fails on 3rd pretest.

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    My dumb O(m*log(m)*l) simulation solution. Probably smth like that is expected solution. my sub

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      I have done something close to this. But couldn't be done in time...

      I was really dumb enough to not think of reducing the sample space for an increase when the remaining flashlight actions are reducing.

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      Why couldn't you just use deque instead of vector if you are trying to get O(m*l)?

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What the fuck is this problem B? And why is C so much easier???

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    m*l<=2e5, you can just brute force over it at O(ml*log(m))

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    How is C easy? I've thought it for all of the contest. And still can not figure out a better solution than O((n^3)/4)

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      I'm not saying C is easy, but it's more straightforward. You can compute in O(n^2) how much water you drain from column j by putting a drain in column i. With this information you can bruteforce all pairs in O(n^2) with prefix sums (you split the drainage in the maximum column between the two drains).

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        Wow, I didn't think of splitting from the maximum in between, I was trying to find a way to reduce O(n) in traversing elements between the drain and choosing left or right from them,

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        Rev. 2  
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        You don't even need the prefix sums: when you pick column c1 for the first drain, you can try c2 from (c1+1) to n in order, keeping track of the maximum value seen in between.

        Python code: 365916824

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was F's solution finding the minimum ranks you need to remove so that all cards of same color appear in right order in the hand?

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B and C should've been swapped

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Congrats Team India on winning the world cup , congrats team !!

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B felt so tough... but C and D were such a nice problem!

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B wasn't bad but it's definitely not 2B difficulty

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Me forced to write O(n^2) solution knowing that there exist O(n*log(n)) solution or better: This is not elegant, but because of limited contest duration, I will write this non elegant solution x_x"

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Auto comment: topic has been updated by awang11 (previous revision, new revision, compare).

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wtf is this contest? like, ok, div1+div2 is harder than div2, but this harder ? man i must be dumb

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Can somebody tell how to do C?

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    Best answer would be either taking only a single point (this is quite simple) OR take two points. For 2 points case we can just maintain a prefix + suffix sum for each index. Suppose we took $$$(i,j)$$$ such that i < j, then $$$j$$$ can never cover any extra water other than what $$$i$$$ has already covered to its left... similarly it goes for the right part as well. The only thing now left is to check the amount of water collected in the middle of $$$i$$$ and $$$j$$$... upon observation one can see the water collected will fall from a mountain (increasing then decreasing) shaped structure, and the peak would be any index in b/w $$$i$$$ and $$$j$$$ denoting the max. height in between.
    So, final answer = $$$PRE[i][1,i] + SUF[i][i+1,ind] + PRE[j][ind+1,j] + SUF[j][j+1,n]$$$

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Was B like ternary search on the number of animatronics to use?

Like my reasoning (playing for the animatronics): at each time it makes sense to improve the least improved animal within some set. Each time beam kills the most advanced animal.

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    you are almost correct, the thing is you increase the min(r + 1, m)th monster's danger(in reverse sorted array) where r is your number of flashlights remaining. so like you keep decrementing the number of monsters you are dealing with

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very depressing contest, way too hard after a

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I think I'm doing div1 instead of 1+2

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how to solve B?

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I might be completely out of touch, but that did not look similar to typical div1+div2. I had a feeling of solving a regular div1 tbh (which might be my personal skill issue). A seemed not that simple as A usually are, B is just what? (i couldn't figure out what can be a good approach even, there is a counterexample for everything). D-E seemed interesting and not that more difficult than B.

What I did not figure out is why C is quadratic limits? After you've precalced answer for each single cross, putting 2 crosses is as easy as taking lca-ish point between two crosses, which is basically a point that is in the overlap, and can be processed bottom to top with merging segments and getting max, so $$$O(n \alpha)$$$ solution is definitely possible, and maybe even linear.

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way too hard lol

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This lunatic jumped directly into H1 after passed A, B, C only because H1 is an interactive problem and didn't know why got MLE

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hey, looks like someone was streaming the contest live on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4hMy4E_MaQ while solving

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Problem B made me quit the contest, shifted to problem C and got flabbergasted, and then I started watching the cricket world cup cuz why not?

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Can anyone prove that using greedy algorithm twice in problem C is correct? My code is accepted but I cannot prove its correctness.

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    Let's say if you choose the ith, jth columns contain drains and i<j.

    Then all you have to do is find a peak k such that i<=k<=j.

    Then it breaks down to get drained(1,i) + drained(i+1,k) + drained(k+1,j) + drained(j+1,n)

    The terms at above expression can be calculated in O(n*n) just by iterating forward and backward for each index.

    For me, the toughest part is finding that peak within my setting. lol

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I will say A < C < E < F < B < D . Seem that the parity of problem id strongly affect its hardness.

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The constraints for E1 are fake. So annoying, I had to resubmit because of it. Assertion $$$a_i \le 1e6$$$ does not failed.

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my first div 1 + 2....don't think I'll be participating in another one!

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Thank you for brilliant problems! Please marry me

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AhmetKaan was disabled after this contest. Who decides these? What should be done to undo this? I can assure you that he did not cheat

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    The admin decided that, and how do you prove someone not cheating? Do you have the recording of him doing the entire contest?

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      Who is the admin? Is it Mike or someone from this contest's team?

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        Definitely Mike and also some people that mentioned in this blog post too!

        But you don't answer my question yet, how do you gonna prove someone not cheating?

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          Its impossible to prove if someones cheating or not if there is no screencast. I think they disabled him because his last few performances were really good. I admit it might look suspicious, but you can not oversee that he has been a fair competitor for 7 years and virtually everyone in Turkey will vouch that he didnt cheat.

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            I am sorry to hear that, can you explain this timestamp and why he switched D -> E1 -> D -> E2 -> D rapidly?

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              Because it's been his strat since at least this september(We were in the same room during contests in late september and after contests he would always talk about how his strat makes things better)

              The strat is whenever he sees a roadblock in a problem, he switches to next problem and tries to solve it, and in the meantime hopefully the break makes him unstuck on the current problem.

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          I cant just prove he isnt cheating but maybe disproving the reasons for the ban can be done.

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best div round in my life (i mean best tasks)

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Finally ecnerwala became #1 on Codeforces

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Despite of regular practicing not able to solve single problem in the contest. I am not understanding why I am not able to think the solution in the contest any one can guide me please

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Auto comment: topic has been updated by awang11 (previous revision, new revision, compare).

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Today's div(1+2) was much harder than previous any I attended :(

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Why there were only 6000 participated this contest? Any particular reason?

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The problems were great, but the placement could be better.

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constraintforces

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I demand a serious action on these people who are doing this . I came across a youtube stream which was sharing codes during live contest as for proof here is the link to stream Cheaters

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Vote: I like it +23 Vote: I do not like it

Hi, can we please do something about tickcross.y?

This guy has cheated to gain literally around 500 rating over the past two div 1s (you even mention him as a top performer in your post here).