Hello guys, today we are going to talk about the best competitive programmer of all time. It's not tourist, Benq, jiangly or anyone you would think of whenever you think about the best competitive programmer. He not even an LGM and you probably even haven't heard his name. He is a hidden gem, overshadowed by flashy colors of other competitive programmers.

His name is Engineer Arik Rayhan. He is from Ishurdi, Bangladesh. As a partly Bangladeshi guy myself, it makes me proud. His current rating is 1437, and his max rating is 1603. But don't let his rating fool you. Because what he has, is one of the highest solve count in Codeforces, with a staggering number of solves of 10024. Even most LGMs don't have these many solves. In fact, the only other person to have these many solves is maspy, topping with a solve count of 10836.

But unlike maspy, he has some staggering achievements that no human have ever achieved. Because when you look into his submission heatmap, you see that most of the heatmap is empty. The laws of physics imply that, lower density in most areas result in extremely high density in some areas. In fact, most of his solves are concentrated in just 8 days. From 25th May, 2024, to June 1st, 2024. He had solved over 5289 problems. Which more than half of his entire solve count.

Indeed, he is the engineer of solving problems. On top of that, he is very humble. He doesn't show of his genius with flashy colors like purple, yellow or red. Not to mention he is very loving, as implied by his rating of 1437, which means "I love you forever". (Source: google)

Here are some more fun facts about Engineer Arik Rayhan.

• His max solve per day is 2608 problems, on May 29, 2024. Which means, he solved ~109 problems per hour.

• On 29th May, 2024. he solved 1346 problems. From 11:00pm to 11:10 pm. He had solved 32 problems, in just 10 minutes. Afterwards, he probably had to go to washroom. But he was back again in 8 minutes. Afterwards he solved another 20 problems in 6 minutes.

• His longest minute streak is 199 minutes. From 2024-05-25 19:42:00 UTC to 2024-05-25 23:00:00 UTC, during this time, he had at least one submission per minute

• He has more 3500s than tourist and jiangly combined, and ignoring the intersections.

• He solved the entire Microsoft Q# Coding Contest — Summer 2020 contest, which had 18 problems in it, in 7 minutes, despite not getting a job in microsoft.

• He knows a variety of languages, including python, C++, kotlin, Q#. But it doesn't seem like he knows Java.

• He has an accuracy of 93%, basically he has an A+ in Competitive Programming.

Hello guys, today I am going to give you guys a look into the daily life of a candidate master in CF. Ever since I started watching youtube, I have come to know a lot of people vlogging about their daily lives in online platforms like youtube. A wide range of content creators, from all ups and downs of life, travelers, software engineers, high school students, university students, and specially jobless people have been producing enormous amount of vlogging contents since inception. Ever since I started CP, I have always dreamt of becoming a grandmaster and becoming a vlogger. Becoming CM in codeforces has given me the opportunity that I always needed, to fulfill my cravings for attention. So today I am going to write a blog about my daily life, particularly today.

Morning Routine (Not)

I woke up at around 11 am in my university lab. Perk of being jobless, is that I don't have to worry about waking up early in the morning and can do whatever I want. The lab is situated in the third floor of the academic building. Just outside my lab, there are two ICT labs where classes are held, mainly for non-departmental undergrad students. Right now, no classes are being held as it is time for semester finals. But I am not taking part in any exams. Because I have already graduated from my university (Which my university doesn't know yet) and I am currently jobless and have no place to live within a 300 mile radius. So for that reason I still live in my university lab as an ehem.. ehem.. competitive programmer. So anyways, after waking up, I spent the next couple hours staring at my PC. Which brings me to the next segment of my day that is..

Practice Schedule (Not)

As a representative of my university in the competitive programming community, I maintain a strong, consistent and clean practice schedule. My practice routine is so consistently clean that the one green dot in my codeforces heatmap looks like a bug. Otherwise, that's the only inconsistency in my perfectly consistent practice routine. Anyways, after waking up, I spent the next couple hours staring at my desktop. Today, the problem I was staring at is called "Weights". It was the first problem in Bubble Cup 14 — Finals Online something something. I remember that because I was consistently staring at my screen for couple hours, although I can't recall anything else. As a result of my consistent staring, my eyes are currently feeling watery, giving me trouble as I am writing this blog.

Afternoon to night

In the afternoon, I realized that I was hungry as I hadn't eaten since I woke up. So, I had to walk to a local snacks store around one mile away, there I bought some curd and flattened rice (locally known as "Doi Chira") to alleviate my hunger. I also ate a egg-sandwich. Both of them tasted very yummy yummy. The sweet, milky curd and flattened rice in combination with the spicy, oily egg-sandwich was exactly what I needed after a long day of starving. Afterwards, I came back to my university lab, walking another mile. But returning to lab, I realized that I am still hungry. So this time, I walked about another mile to my university gate. There to my pleasant surprise, I met another friend of mine who graduated alongside me and is now planning for business. He offered me a treat, which saved me some money (Thanks for the treat bro). Afterwards, we had chai and drinks together and we bade each other farewell. I came to know that, 7 of my classmates have already gotten married and have a job while I am spending my days away doing whatever I am doing. One the way back to my lab, walking another mile for one last time, I pondered over deep philosophical matters like "What am I doing with my life" and "What's the point of doing anything anyway". Back in the lab, I rewatched the last episode of Devilman crybaby, which is one of my favorite anime endings of all time. Which brings me to this, writing a blog about my daily life.

Conclusion

One of the cons of being jobless, is that money doesn't have to worry about coming to you can come to you whenever it wants. Aside that, nothing feels so good as having no job and dying inside and solving problems all day (Unfortunately which, I don't). Don't tell my university, I have no job and no place to live in a 300 miles radius. Anyways, hope you enjoyed this blog. Sponsor me for more pointless blogs like this, I need money for doing pointless things.

Hello guys, Tonight I am going to look back at my CP career and analyze my growth, opportunities, shortcomings etc and discuss the mistakes I made, opportunities I lost and what can my fellow competitive programmers learn from it.

My journey in CP began six years ago, when I was a freshman in my university. I met some guys and they were like, "Bro, you need to do CP bro, you are totally gonna nail it". At first I didn't take them seriously, I was busy with my research on "Subatomic Particle Acceleration with Large Hadron Collider". My research was on the way to making a breakthrough, and as the only guy in my university with any clue on what this subject is about, everybody had high expectations off me. But I started CP anyway. I picked some 800 rated problems on CF, and decided that it was too easy for me. And I love doing easy stuff because that make me feel good. So I started solving problems in CF. Eventually, I got bored with 800 rating problems, so I started solving 1200, then 1400, then 1600, 1700, 1800 and 1900s. And in between, I did some contests and became CM. Suddenly, I realized that it's been 6 years as an undergrad student and I am no longer an undergrad student at all. As a result, my research on "Subatomic Particle Acceleration with Large Hadron Collider" was left behind and I never made any breakthrough.

Growth, Opportunities and Shortcomings

Since I started CP, I have spent a lot of time sleeping, which I couldn't do while I was researching "Subatomic Particle Acceleration with Large Hadron Collider". So, the biggest growth I had was that I had a lot of sleep. My body did better recoveries as I got a lot of rest and surpassed the break-even point. As a result, my body, mind and soul went through developments which probably wouldn't have happened without doing CP. For example, before I started CP, I was 5'9". Now I am 5'10". CP gave me the opportunity to touch and smoke some grass that I was lacking in my life, and made me realize that there is more to life than particle physics. My only shortcoming was, that I couldn't start CP earlier. But again, if I started earlier, I probably would have gotten bored of it too soon and have gotten back at my research on "Subatomic Particle Acceleration with Large Hadron Collider". But again, if I started even earlier, I probably wouldn't have began my research on "Subatomic Particle Acceleration with Large Hadron Collider" and wouldn't be in this inconvenience to begin with.

Lessons and advices for my fellow CPers

My first suggestion to my fellow competitive programmers would be, if you can, try starting CP earlier. Also, there is a 5 in 6 chance that you are probably not Chinese, so there's not much to be stressed out. My next advice is to solve 1600s, 1900s, 2200s and 2500s in CF. A friend of mine said, they are very fun to solve. Last but not least, don't research particle physics, it might ruin your life.

I hope you found this blog informative and helpful and my shared experience has meaningful impact in your life. Like and subscribe if you found it helpful. Let me know if you have any more advices or suggestions in the comment section

Look at this beautiful beautiful SSes. Could we imagine such colorful ranking in CF just even an year ago? I see all those beautiful color. I see black, I see grey, greenery, a lot of flora and fauna as well. And sometimes I see violet and orange. Codeforces has reached the ultimate communist utopia, where people from all ratings has finally become equal. Now all we need to do is usurp the conventional hierarchy and reverse it. I can't wait to see the day when CF ratings are measured in negative direction and grey becomes the highest Rank in CF.

Hello guys, it's zzzzsust19 once again. After years of Zen Meditation, I have finally gotten to CM. Now, until today, people have been cyber bullying me by constantly reporting my post to oblivion. But, this time, I have finally achieved immunity towards cyber bullying in codeforces by surpassing around 95% of you guys. Bwahahahahaha....

Anyways, since today I have finally got to CM (without any practice of course), I have decided to push aside all my trash-talking for this one day. Ask me anything

Hello guys, after months of nonexistent problem solving, I have finally decided to take a break from CP. I think my method of sleeping around is not working any more. I need to wake up from my slumber. What's the best course of action, I want to hear your thoughts about it. Also, how to become CM?

This is a convex hull trick problem. I am building my convex hull from leaf to higher nodes. Every time I am going through all my child nodes, I am merging them together. In this solution, I am not applying light to heavy technique. Because of the increasing CHT size, I would expect my solution to get TLE on the given constraints. But for some reason, it's not getting TLE. Anyone got any proper explanation?

Problem: 932F - Escape Through Leaf

My submission: 227235272

Last time I made a blog about the sad tale of my journey in competitive programming, many people were highly supportive towards me and showed their support by downvoting my post into oblivion. But after a long journey throughout the valley of despair, once again I am about back into my form in competitive programming, and also back to piss everyone off. Also look at my graph, I haven't practiced a single problem in past 4 months!

Anyways, I am a tri-Expert (Quadra if you count deranking and upranking again), ask me anything (Except how to become expert).

Hello everyone, everyone's favorite zzzzsust19 here. As you may not see, I have been going through a rough time. So, I want to discuss and contemplate about the difficulties I am facing and try finding out what's going wrong. You see, I have spent a lot of time in competitive programming. It's already been 3 years since I opened this account, basically that means I have over 3 x 365 x 24 = 26280 hours in competitive programming. But compared to my time spent in CP, I clearly haven't made enough progress at all. I spend hours after hours behind thinking about what I am doing wrong and why I am not a Grandmaster yet but am struggling to find an answer. As you can guess by my profile pic, I spend a lot of time sleeping and dreaming about becoming grandmaster in Codeforces. In my mind, I already am the best philosopher and the best Grandmaster in codeforces. But reality fails to reflect that. I also asked the CP community several times "How to become GM". You see, doing CP is like playing Kabadi, everybody gets together to pull down the one person who is trying to achieve something. So clearly the community doesn't appreciate my quest for becoming a Grandmaster in Codeforces.

You may notice that I haven't practiced a single problem in past 4 months. It's because I believe in smart work, not hard work. Hard work is for dummies who can't think clearly enough, complicating simple matters. Isn't it right guys? I also went through severe depression throughout my last month and did contests anyways, because mental illness is clearly not a thing and I definitely don't need to see a therapist.

But despite my best efforts, I am not a grandmaster yet. Clearly, I am doing something wrong, right? So guys, how to become GM?

Look at this solve count. I have accumulated 100+ 1900 rating problem solves, but am barely an Expert. My practice approach doesn't look alright. If you are wondering how I practice, I arrange a sheet of problems, which are taken from the problemset ordered in ascending order of rating. No guides, no tutorial, no tags (Yes tags if I am stuck on it for a while), until the problem is solved. But somehow it doesn't feel right. It feels like I am still just as good as I was when I had half the 1900 solves I currently have.

And also, somehow 1900 feels easier than 1800. Am I imagining things

Hello guys, I have finally reached an absolute contribution of 50, which is a great deal for me. It took me about 3 years to reach this point. By next year, I am aiming to reach an absolute contribution of 100, wish me good luck.

Bro I have been following you for like months, but still haven't seen you active in any contest. You are still about 800 ratings away from taking the hotspot. Looking forward to your future contests, huge fan. Also a huge fan of python, but python ditched me.

Hello guys, I have been an active codeforces blogger for quite a while now, farming contributions. So far I have only caught up to -35. I want to go even higher (lower) but I am a bit concerned about the aspects of contribution. Is there any negative consequences of having contribution too low? Because I might have to farm some positive contributions from time to time in that case. Also, thanks to everyone I pissed off who ended up downvoting, your opinions matter shit.

I have been active in competitive programming for around a year, have been solving problems like every day. But I still can't get over this problem. I almost never accurate codes on first try. If I have taken half an hour to write a code, I have to spend another half debugging it. This happens in almost all medium to large sized codes. How do I improve accuracy of code?

Problem: 1624F - Interacdive Problem. Submission: 191765637. I am testing test cases offline, my answers are correct. However test cases show wrong answer on the first case. And it doesn't even let me know what is wrong with my answer or what my output is. Who created these dogshit testcases

jiangly_fan_fan_fan_fan has participated in four contests. His positions in these contests are 1st, 1st, 9th and 1st. All of them are Div 2. At first, I was excited to be the one to find out that this is Jiangly's alt account, because (-1)^4 = 1. But then I found out that this guy is not Jiangly. Both of them participated in CF round 843 and also their coding styles do not match. Such a shame to get tuned down from Sherlock Holmes to a basement dueler conspiracy theorist. Anyways, before you go asking about who asked, you may boggle your mind wondering who asked "who asked", because I didn't.

Whazzup guys, last time I wrote a QnA blog post sharing my experience of being a quadra-specialist. Now, some of you guys were visibly unimpressed about my blatantly unimpressive performance of being a specialist four times. So, I deranked myself (unintentionally) and became specialist again. Now, I am a penta-specialist in codeforces with the experience of being specialist four times! Now, before you go about "Ewwww... Cyan", let me remind you that I am no ordinary Cyan. I have been cyan for like forever (for like 4 months), so I have been here for longer than most of you guys have ever been in cyan, also I am a penta-cyanist. That makes me a darker version of Cyan, which is basically Blue.

Now, I actually wanted to write this post after I became blue and proved my worth. But I just got smacked down hard in my main id to below 1500s. So, that won't be happening anytime soon.

If you are wondering about my qualifications and why I have been stuck in cyan for so long. Well, that's because I have been held back by a primordial power, the fear of heights.

Anyways, ask me anything

I solved this problem, Odd-Even Subsequence using binary search. But I also saw the tag DSU. I went for the tutorial but there is only the binary search approach. I am having a hard time connecting this problem to DSU. Can anybody explain how to solve this using DSU

This is my submission 184446767 The problem link: https://mirror.codeforces.com/problemset/problem/1620/E

At first I thought I was getting MLE for using maps, then I used vector for mapping the elements of list. Not to mention, the number of elements in which test case I am getting MLE is surprisingly small. It's only 1000 * 2 items in array at most.

Now, I created a separate vector to store queries, it's a 2d vector. I am using first dimension to store the index where the query starts. The second dimension implies the number of queries in that index. This is the only thing that looks sus to me. Otherwise I don't get the cause of MLE

Without you, I would have never started CP. I can never express how grateful I am to you for the inspiration and dedication. You would be happy to know that I have finally become a specialist. That's why, today I have drawn several pictures of you just to show how grateful I am to you.

You see, having a negative contribution of 35 in codeforces is the best/worst thing I have ever done in my life. It's quite easy, every time I make a post about "how to become a red coder", my contributions pile up a little. Now, I am not content with just -35, I envision to take it much further. Currently, my aim is to become a LGM in negative contribution by surpassing the likes of great GMs and LGMs like Sparky_Master_WCH1226 and more. Now using the same formula results in diminishing returns as stated by a great economist, and getting to that height takes a lot of talent and effort. It's a shame that there's no achievement trophy for it. Good and evil are like two sides of the same coin and one shouldn't be looked down at than another. There should be a leaderboard for people like me, like maybe a "Bounty Hunter Board" or something, whenever you see 'em downvote 'em. A thing like that might boost our morale and efforts.

By the way, how to become a red coder?

Guys I am having trouble getting to specialist. How do I become a specialist?

My guess for problem H would be 1800. How would you rate the ICPC problems this year?

Hello guys, quadra-specialist zzzzsust19 here. I call myself quadra-specialist because I became specialist 4 times. My hobby is becoming specialist. I got myself from 0 to 1400+ 4 times because I am too afraid of going down. Ask me anything Also, be sure to downvote this blog as much as you can. Use all your alt accounts

Guys how do I become blue then purple then orange then more orange then red then black red coder?