chaserxJ's blog

My solution got skipped just because others(whom I don't know) came up with similar Idea?
By chaserxJ, history, 3 months ago, In English

Hey MikeMirzayanov, don't even know if you will read this comment or not, but still hope that. Today I received mail regarding there is similarity between my code and a bucnch of usernames/submissions whom I don't even know. I have the code all by myself in the ongoing contest in my VS Code editior only.

Codeforces Round 964 (Div. 4) Problem D Slavic's Exam : 1999D - Slavic's Exam My solution was : 274868344 code :

My Code

Here is what my Logic was: 1. Created a boolean vector for storing the second string's letters' presence in first string. 2. 1st for loop through 1st string increased second string's pointerif second string's letter is in first string or if first string's char is '?' then replaced '?' with second string's letter and incremented second string's pointer. 3. 2nd for loop: here I checked for string s2 in string s1 and as I found the letters of s2 in s1, I marked the boolean vectors respective index as true. 4. in the 3rd for loop: if there were any remaining '?'s in s1, i replaced them with 'a' (well , most of coders who want to remove some '?' and replace it with only lowercase letters will first think of 'a' Or 'z' and this is the only thing that you system seems to give me the tag of suspicios submission ) 5. At last I just needed to check if the boolean vector is all marked with true or not(based on my code if last index of vector is true -> whole vector is true).

I don't use any online IDE for running the code on my end before submission, i use VS code.

The 4th step mentioned above was what was missing from my 1st submission where I divided that solution into two parts(which wasn't needed as I later figured): 274830513

Previous WA Code

And finally come on man, this wasn't that hard problem to come with solution , Just had to skip the letters in s2 and replace the '?'s in s1, that's it. I request you to got through my profile once and see for yourself If you think I can cheat on this code or Not. I don't think there was any other way for solving this particular problem other thatn a greedy approach (I am pupil, so 'I THINK'). I hope the admins read this comment of mine and remove the skipped tag from my solutions.

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3 months ago, # |
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It is an easy task. I think plag check had been more severe.

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    3 months ago, # ^ |
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    I think same, due to lots of mass cheating happening these days, I think they have made the plag algo more strict. But, hey man, at least they should improve the algo, I mean how can pupils miss this much easy problem? (some do miss it but just because the c was like more tricky than D in that contest (acc. to me due to interval overlapping ), that's why some stopped at B only).

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3 months ago, # |
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all these blogs about fake plag bla bla bla whatever cry for 15 lines straight but never attach a link to the screenshot of the mail they actually got i bet u its the same exact code 

Edit : contest has been so weird and there are many weird skips aswell
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    3 months ago, # ^ |
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    don't know how to attach ss, but here's the mail text :

    Spoiler

    Just what are you trying to suggest here?

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      3 months ago, # ^ |
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      i've looked into some of the submissions and i gurantee you that the for loop and many parts of the solutions are the exact same but anyways iam not gonne argue any further there is a small chance that u are right and the plag check is wrong if so hope u get ur rating back

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        3 months ago, # ^ |
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        well I am nowhere close to argue with a candidate master, but there is quite a greater than small chance of being some solutions' loops similar if there are above 10s of thousands accepted solutions just during contest. So I just looked your solution for this problem as well :

        your Code

        now don't tell me code of yours and mine are not 'exact' same just because you have moved "the part of code where we remove all extra '?'s and place some lowercase letter in place of it'' inside one for only. See what I am trying to say here is, the nature of the problem was so unique that there has to be unique solution only, as it happens to be the greedy one which everyone has implemented in their own way and despite turning out to be quite similir to as well.

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          3 months ago, # ^ |
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          Iam not saying u are cheating/ not and I don't know nor do I want to know but anyways a guy who was making a Screencast also got skipped not sure wth is going on with this contest and as I said if u r not cheating really hope u get ur rating back as its scary to see Any false accusations

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            3 months ago, # ^ |
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            don't meant to offend you man, just pointing out the coincidences which are a bit too much for this particular problem, btw thanks!!

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3 months ago, # |
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Well, your implementation is actually kinda unique and very different from many of the submissions that the plagiarism checker found it to be similar to. Using a boolean vector for checking if string2 is a subsequence of string1 is definitely not the most intuitive idea and I didn't find the other submissions mentioned in the mail you attached using it.

So yeah, I think that you didn't cheat but got caught up in the heat of the mass cheating going on in the last few contests. I hope a careful review takes place and you get your rating back.

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    3 months ago, # ^ |
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    Thanks for the words, don't know how the plag check works.

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3 months ago, # |
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The same thing happened to me. I am one of the candidates with whom you're submission got flagged to. I also used VS Code but my approach was different(almost completely) than yours. I've no idea why our solutions got flagged, they're are not at all the same.

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    2 months ago, # ^ |
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    Well it can happen sometimes because it's not done manually, but they should at least hear out the ones who are not cheated and still got skipped solutions.

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