ICPC Asia-West Finals took place on 8 March 2026, and while official confirmation will take some time, my team will probably qualify to WF (based on the ranklist, previous year trends, and unofficial hearsay from the organizers).
After the contest, I went back to my home (instead of my uni) for a week, where I only had access to a Macbook. I couldn't play games or do any of the work I usually do on my x86 PC, so I chose to write several thousand words on my experience with ICPC, which included a summary of this contest. The stuff that precedes the summary (prior experience with ICPC, anecdotes with my teammates, etc.) is way too long and personal, so I'm omitting it over here. As such, I'll offer a brief overview of my prior experience:
- I'm a filthy tryhard that has been to ICPC regionals 7 times, and AWF thrice.
- Excluding this contest, my team has always performed really badly.
- The last two times we went to AWF, I was in a team with (redacted names) WellGroomedHair and GeometryDashAddict.
- This year, I was in a team with GeometryDashAddict and GrokSponsoredPS5.
- The AWF contest is hosted on CodeChef, and there are therefore several references to it.
The blog is REALLY long, because I was trying to preserve everything that happened in my private writing. A lot of the technical details are also overlong and not rigorous for the same reason. You can skip them. Proceed with the knowledge that you might be wasting your time.
You can read the blog here.
Note: An even longer, less polished version that includes the backstory can be found here.
U have mentioned in ur blog,
I'm a filthy tryhard that has been to ICPC regionals 7 timesMay I ask, How u have been to 7 regionals and still competing in ICPC as it goes against the rules
A student who has competed in qualifying regional contests during five different contest years is NOT eligible to compete with the following exception:
For the regional years 2025/26 and 2026/27 it will be ok to compete even if already having competed during 5 (but not more) regional years, as long as not having completed more than the equivalent of eight semesters of full-time STEM study as of the date when the eligibility status is determined
?
I have been to 7 regionals, in 4 years. In my country, a person can participate in 2 regionals during any given year.
Oh Nice! Best of Luck for the upcoming World Finals.
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Nice Blog!
Bro spent more time writing the blog than the contest itself
jokes aside, hope we both qualify
are you the guy from the IIITD team I met during c*defest?
Yes lol
Author is an absolute chad. Orz.
If it makes you feel better, no one thinks that India is charming on paper. Also, I feel like cf definitely has pretty annoying wa/tle/mle indicators. The $$$AC$$$ is definitely nice, but the failure messages (and coloring and font) are pretty boring, which I guess is what they should be, but they get annoying after some time. But maybe that is just from associating them with $$$WA$$$, though. Btw this was enjoyable to read, I think these things are nicer when written more like a short story vs just a recount of the events.
As an Asia West tester, this was a nice read. Hopefully you liked the problemset!
I'm obviously biased since this was the one AWF I didn't fuck up, but the problemset seemed way better than the last two years. There weren't any weird problems, and the difficulty/distribution of the problems seemed appropriate (supported by the variance in the 6th/7th problems solved by teams).
While the problems themselves were pretty good, some of them had weak tests that allowed incorrect solutions to pass (B and L from what I've heard).
this is one of the best blogs I ever read.I hope you will write another one after you win the WF :P
Pray tell, what brazen soul, so void of modest grace,
Wouldst dare possess a PlayStation, by Grok’s own coin bestowed?
Congratulations
Nice read, Welcome to the NHK pfp guy! However, I wasn't the biggest fan of the AWF problemset (given we did so poorly onsite haha). PS — The wasp issue is very real.
Loved your blog, congrats for WF, make a WF blog too.. also cool website dude
You write so well. This was very fun to read. This AWF was my first and we completely fcked it, hope to come up with a story like yours, next year maybe.
I enjoy reading your blog very much! (though I skim through the part about AWF 2026 quickly)
May I ask do you build this blog on your own or you use blog frameworks like Hexo, Hugo? The interaction with the cmd window in the blog is pretty cool.
I am also curious about why you don't participate in contest in CF frequently? Your rating isn't even converging.
The website doesn't use any blog frameworks. It was built from scratch in september 2025 through the process of me giving instructions to Sonnet 3.7 and GPT-o3 (I don't know how to write a single line in HTML or JavaScript xd). I kind of hate it right now, because current SOTA models would have built a way better website with the same number of tokens (it's also unusable on mobile).
nvm I just spent an hour fixing the mobile version with Opus 4.6, and now it should be functional
Very well written, could feel the emotions and tension as I read through your experience. Please do write one sharing your WF experience after that’s done