Today, I received a mail from Codeforces stating that my solution was flagged for plagiarism in Educational Codeforces Round 173 (Rated for Div. 2) on 2043B - Digits. In my defense, I believe this accusation is unjust for several reasons, and I want to share some points on why I feel this way and how the system might have failed in this instance.

1. Limited Scope for Different Implementations The problem in question didn’t allow for much creative freedom in implementation. Its solution boiled down to writing just four simple if-else statements. Naturally, when the problem is so straightforward, there’s a high probability that multiple participants will have identical or near-identical code. Penalizing coders for such similarities feels unjust.

2. Top Coders Had Similar Code To further support my point, even top-rated coders, like aryanc403 298208825 had code that was nearly identical to mine 298237599. This demonstrates that the flagged similarities weren’t due to any malpractice but rather due to the nature of the problem itself. If experienced and respected coders write similar solutions, it’s evident that the algorithmic approach was inevitable.

3. My Wrong Submissions Differed from Others’ Interestingly, if you compare my wrong submissions with those of the flagged participants, you’ll notice that I was missing a different logic point. This clearly indicates that our thought processes and debugging approaches were different, even if the final code looked similar. Such differences further validate that I worked independently on my solution.

4. My Track Record Proves My Integrity Over the years, I’ve participated in 55 contests on Codeforces and never faced any plagiarism accusations. This track record should speak for itself—I'm a genuine coder who relies on my skills and never resorts to unfair practices.