CodeTiger OTZ OTZ OTZ
MITIT was the only in-person competitive programming contest I went to in 9th grade (outside of camp contests). Last year, I teamed with two other people from Lexington and we got first place in-person HS beginner (we were CodeTiger ORZ ORZ ORZ).
This time, there was actually much more prize money for the advanced division, and also an individual round which seemed cool. I wanted to do the individual round, and at the time they didn’t say you could take both the beginner team round and advacned individual round, so I was planning to solo. But then soon later I found out that alter is coming so I teamed with him along with mrmoooo (another camper).
Saturday
On Saturday, I got there late because of BMT online tiebreakers. I carpooled with vyx so I was watching the awards ceremony on the car while he was playing tetr for the saturday night event. He got second, which is orz considering that the car was pretty shaky.
When we got there we met Bhavy and CodingPokemon, and we played cambio. During lunch I also met CodeTiger and mrmoooo. CodeTiger asked why I wasn’t in the club leader discussion block oops. Then for the second block we went to play poker (CodingPokemon left), and then a bunch of people we didn’t know joined which was kind of fun but not really at the same time because I’m not that good at socializing.
While leaving, we (me and vyx) met alter and we took a selfie (the quality was a bit questionable).
Sunday
Arrived a bit late, I forgot why, but I think they also delayed opening ceremony a bit. Sat with the Lexington squad for opening ceremony, then I left for indiv round.
Indiv
This round was 2 hours long
Solved A after 33 minutes after quite a few incorrect greedy attempts. I was like 10th onsite HS so I sort of panicked. Then I read B and didn’t have any idea after thinking for 20 more minutes and realized that there’s only 1 hour left.
So I read C which had 70 points worth of subtasks. I quickly knew how to get 30 points, and since the 20 point subtask was easier to implement, I did that one. But I kept getting WAs until like 20 minutes later when I changed the code to account for Q < 2 and got the points. Probably should’ve asked them to change the statement at this time, but around the same time I figured out the solution to the third subtask and implemented it first. And then I forgot to ask 😭 (how did all other people who had 20-30 only ask 10 minutes before the contest ended though)
I figured that even if I miraculously get 100 on C I wouldn’t be top 5, so I decided to spend all the remaining time (20 minutes) on B. I was kind of desparate, so I saw the number of people who got AC and made a guess which made sense but I wasn’t completely sure how to prove it. I verified the solution with the 30 point subtask first, then implemented the full solution. I was very nervous because I didn’t have a lot of time left for debugging, but I eventually got it right. This was actually very lucky.
I was 2nd place and nowhere close to first place. I spent the remaining time on the brute force subtask (10 points) for C but didn’t get it.
mrmoooo was like 6th place (could’ve been better but he didn’t see the Q<=2 clarification on C) but the first place person ended up getting disqualified so he got 5th. alter had the right formula for B but didn’t believe it was actually right, and had a persistent trie solution for C that he couldn’t finish debugging, rip. This further shows how lucky I was during this round.
Our club took a picture with CodeTiger during lunch. I also spent too much time discussing / thinking about problems for indiv round so I didn’t eat a lot. Then it was team round.
Team
mrmoooo claimed A and I claimed B because I thought I was good at constructive. I had something and finished implementing at around 30 minutes. But then I realized that it was wrong for almost every single triple of numbers. I spent like 90 minutes on fixing the code (I stresstested by printing out things and pasting them on a google docs file 💀). But I got it eventually and my teammates knew how to do C so we might still end up getting second* place.
Alter told me how I could get 20 points on D (which was actually the 30 point solution), and I understood but somehow implemented it wrong and didn’t get it. In the last few minutes I decided to just farm the 20 point subtask while alter was farming subtasks for G. He got 10 points (could’ve been more, but oh well).
*We were second place on the scoreboard when the contest ended, but the first place team “Arclinux” cheated so we ended up being first place. This was kind of expected because a team with the same teamname also cheated on CALICO.
Then me, mrmoooo, alter, and a bunch of lexington people started playing cambio and mao while they finalized the results. It was pretty fun.
Awards
It started with an acapella performance by logarhythms, then there was a speech from jonathanpaulson (usaco coach) and CodeTiger’s farewell speech. CodeTiger ended the speech with a call for more in-person contests and also talked about how gpt cheaters ruin contests. As a contest organizer (which he himself founded, actually) it’s very relatable.
Anyway, for the individual round mrmoooo got 5th and I got 1st. Our team, CodeTiger OTZ OTZ OTZ, got first place on the team round. Notably I think third place team was just one person which was pretty orz.
Maybe I should start referring people by initials, it seems much simpler because people have so many different usernames, perhaps starting next blog.
School
Obligatory mention, could’ve included this in another blog but I’m lazy. I learned how lucky I actually was with having easy teachers in freshman year, and how that confidence came back to bite me when I wasn’t as lucky. Or maybe I’m actually still lucky but simply don’t work hard enough compared to others. But my sophmore GPA is currently … a bit questionable (compared to my freshman year at least). I kept bombing recent tests even though I believe I spend more time on them so I don’t know what’s happening, maybe my brain just got smaller.
Also I feel colleges shouldn’t consider GPA that much (maybe they don’t) because it actually varies a lot between different schools. Thankfully though our school has A+ so APCSA and calc can potentially save my gpa if I lock in.
USACO
If you haven’t heard, they demoted all non IOI finalists (aka camp - egoi) to gold. I can see why they did this, but I know many people who got demoted and I am also biased because I stay at plat as a result. This means that only around 20 people will be competing for the certified leaderboard though, hope I can make it this time 🙏
Also I made a manifold market which is somewhat relevant https://manifold.markets/C0DET1GER/how-many-people-from-us-will-promot
Camp chances for me this year aren’t that high in my opinion because holstein is much harder to make; there would probably be around 25 past campers / comparable seniors competing for <= 12 holstein spots, and I haven’t been grinding that much compared to many others. Well I guess I might be going to ARML then (still no A team though most likely). I will still try my best to do good each contest though, of course.
Good luck to everyone taking USACO!