+ 898 (div. 4)—3/4/2025 +
+
+ Placed top 2000 but did not learn much. Was distracted (thinking
+ about writing this post itself) and was not taking the problems
+ seriously because they were not that challenging in the first place.
+
+ + Take problems seriously or you're wasting your time. ++ . I was also continually nervous/pressuring myself and thought about + my own thought process. The time for analysis is after, not during. +
Pressure ruins performance.+
-
+
- + A: couldn't come up with the extensible solution and checked all + permutations. Step back and use explicit criteria, i.e. "what + qualifies being able to make it in one swap?" (at most 2 + characters being off). + +
- B: good math proof WLOG. Learning. +
- + Took a step back to architect the easiest way to count the score. + However, + only after erroneously calculating the score with an approach I + had already deemed incorrect. + +
- C: Trivial but should've been more patient. +
- D: binary search took me a second, but ok. +
- + E: sliding window but erroneously checked \(a[\{l,r-1\}] \% + a[\{l+1,r\}]\neq0\) without confirming it was in the + sliding window first. Err on the side of caution (i.e. if checks, + explicit edge cases, etc). Debugging could be + improved—target the likely differences between what you + think you're doing and what you're actually doing. + +
- + G: tried and didn't fully invest my time. For some reason my + subconscious still thinks getting lucky is a valid option. + +
- + H: much easier than G. Formulated the solution formally + before coding, allowing me to implicitly catch a lot of edge + cases: "whether V can get to the node closest to it in the graph's + cycle strictly before M." + +