SEATST 2026 Experience + Day 1 editorial

Revision en8, by blackscreen1, 2026-05-26 16:45:29

Introduction

This last weekend, I took part in SEATST (Southeast Asia Team Selection Test) 2026. A few people (namely YSH2020 and Tyx2019) have posted blogs on the contest.

About SEATST

SEATST is a IOI format (2 days, 3 problems in 5 hours on each day) contest made in 2025 that "replaced APIO as a crucial component of IOI selection in Singapore." (this statement is directly quoted from the SEATST website found here).

Looking at my APIO scores for these 2 years and my SEATST scores, I believe I am one of the largest beneficiaries for the shift away from APIO towards SEATST. Here are my scores:

  • APIO 2025: 87/300, 10th in SG
  • SEATST 2025: 380/600, 3rd in SG
  • APIO 2026: 13.5/300, 21st in SG (I know my strategy was kinda screwed but whatever)
  • SEATST 2026: 419/600, 4th in SG

My experience this year

I had quite an interesting experience in this year's SEATST, best summed up by my score distribution:

(300 on day 1, 119 on day 2)

This is also why I'm only doing editorial for day 1.

The contest quality was actually pretty good. Just that on day 2 I spent too long debugging and failing to spot the bug.

Problems

The problems can be found here. There are English translations on the website.

The following includes abridged problem statements and ideas for each problem.

Problem 1A (Two Exams)

Abridged statement: Given positive integer $$$N$$$ and two permutations $$$A$$$ and $$$B$$$ of $$$[0,1,2,\cdots,N-1]$$$, a permutation $$$P$$$ of $$$[0,1,2,\cdots,N-1]$$$ is valid if for all $$$0 \le i \le N-1$$$, one of the following hold:

  • For all $$$j$$$ such that $$$P[j] \lt P[i]$$$, $$$A[j] \lt A[i]$$$
  • For all $$$j$$$ such that $$$P[j] \lt P[i]$$$, $$$B[j] \lt B[i]$$$

Minimise the largest value of $$$P[i] - i$$$.

Thoughts on problem
Motivation and Solution

Problem 1B (Country Ranks)

Abridged statement: There are $$$N$$$ people, sorted in order of their rank from $$$0$$$ to $$$N-1$$$. The country rank of the person is defined as the rank of the person within every person in their country, i.e. the number of people in the same country who beat the person. Given each person's country rank, determine the number of pairs of people that (a) must have the same country and (b) must have different countries.

All ranks are zero indexed.

Part (a) is worth 30 points, while part (b) is worth 70 points.

Thoughts on problem
Motivation and Solution

History

 
 
 
 
Revisions
 
 
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en11 English blackscreen1 2026-05-26 17:19:59 0 (published)
en10 English blackscreen1 2026-05-26 17:14:10 470
en9 English blackscreen1 2026-05-26 17:10:40 8641
en8 English blackscreen1 2026-05-26 16:45:29 9022 Tiny change: ' in $O(N\lgN)$\n\n</' -> ' in $O(N\logN)$\n\n</'
en7 English blackscreen1 2026-05-26 15:20:37 1885
en6 English blackscreen1 2026-05-26 15:04:05 1773
en5 English blackscreen1 2026-05-26 12:34:56 1480
en4 English blackscreen1 2026-05-26 12:20:02 2 Tiny change: 'i] - i$.\n\n' -> 'i] - i$.\n'
en3 English blackscreen1 2026-05-26 12:19:20 822
en2 English blackscreen1 2026-05-26 12:06:31 726
en1 English blackscreen1 2026-05-26 11:06:28 527 Initial revision (saved to drafts)