Since starting competitive programming on Nov 2020 (before that I just did the standard DS/A CS class in uni), I finally hit red after Codeforces Round 866 (Div. 1)! It has been a long 2.5 years. I actually hit orange pretty fast, but then orange to red seemed impossible.

After doing CF for a while, I realized the trick to gaining rating is to solve "easy" problems fast. My most difficult solve in rated contests is only 2600 (and it only happened once), the rest are mostly <= 2300. However, I realized as long as you can solve <= 2300 fast and consistent enough, it's enough to hit/touch red. Also, questions at that rating don't require any fancy stuff/algorithm, and have at most 1-2 observations required. Thus, if the solution seemed to use fancy algos, its probably not intended.

Actually, my main goal is to attend ICPC WF (I have one final chance before graduating), which is quite difficult because of the many IGMs in my school...

Hello, Codeforces community!

We are happy to invite you to participate in National University of Singapore (NUS) CS3233 Final Team Contest 2023 Mirror on Monday, April 10, 2023, at 09:35 UTC. CS3233 is a course offered by NUS to prepare students in competitive problem solving.

The contest is unofficial and will be held in Codeforces Gym. Standard ICPC rules (Unrated, ICPC Rules, Teams Preferred) apply. The contest is unrated. Note the unusual starting time.

The problems are written and prepared by user202729_, rama_pang, and pooty.

We would also like to thank:

• Dr. Steven Halim for coordinating and teaching the CS3233 course;
• user202729_ and rama_pang as teaching assistants;
• stack.py (Pyqe, hocky, faustaadp) for testing the contest;
• errorgorn for existing;
• the Kattis team for the platform used in the CS3233 course and in the official contest;
• Codeforces Headquarters for letting us announce on the main page; and finally
• MikeMirzayanov for the amazing Codeforces and Polygon platform!

The contest will last for 5 hours and consist of 14 problems. While it is preferred to participate in a team, individual participation is also allowed.

The problems themselves may be quite standard as they are targeted toward those who have just learned competitive problem solving. However, we have also included a few challenging problems for stronger teams, such as ex-IOI or ICPC participants taking part in the course as well. So, the participants can expect a good mix of problems of varying difficulty levels, that we hope can be educational!

We hope you will enjoy and have fun in the contest. Good luck!

UPD: Contest is over! Editorial is up!

Congratulations to P+P+P (998kover, 244mhq, 353cerega) for the win!