Hello, Codeforces! Codeforces #843 (Div. 2) round took place not so long ago, and I was one of its authors. When an hour had passed since the contest had started, I (you could say, by tradition) decided to enter the groups with cheaters and make fun of them once again.
And one more thing before we begin. peltorator has launched a cool blog contest, I encourage everyone to participate: blog.
Next. COOLMAARK, thanks for writing about the cheaters group, but it was better to do it not in the comments to the announcement, for not to advertise the group.
Now to the point. So, since some cheaters recognize me, I invited try_kuhn to help. In all the past cases, there was a problem: yes, sure, cheaters would submit the bad code, but they would change it, which would make it harder to automatically check for anti-plagiarism. So I decided to try to get around that.
So, try_kuhn went to that group on discord and two other groups on telegram, and wrote this message:
In this way, we hoped that cheaters would believe us and start sending code without changes. Also, just like last time, we wrote a completely wrong solution to the C problem, so that the cheaters would make WA on simple and wrong code and get caught by the anti-plagiarism.
Also try_kuhn went into two telegram groups, and started dropping off wrong solutions to everyone.
For some cheaters, we didn't send the code, but made fun of them on purpose. I have collected the most interesting messages for you.
Here we decided to make a maximum absurdity in this correspondence:
I believe that my trolling should not only help to ban cheaters, but also help them learn sports programming. So we thought it would be a good idea to make cheaters at least learn the algorithms:
To be honest, in this case we even overcomplicated the algorithm. I even feel a little sorry for this cheater. He's obviously not a very high ranker, and here's something like this:
And I would like to refer to the last blog. I'm often reminded of a screenshot from a previous blog about cheaters, so let it be similar here:
In the last blog, I also decided to exchange solutions with cheaters, but we cheated each other: I sent him the wrong code, and he sent me the wrong code. This time, it looks like it was just me who wasn't honest:
I knew that cheaters convert C++ code to assembly language to bypass the anti-plagiarism check — but this cheater was even trickier.
It seemed to us that cheating all cheaters is somehow too much, and we decided to confess:
Well, at least it's honest:
Somone the group turned out to be either not a cheater, or a very conscientious cheater. Either way, they decided to make fun of him:
Where without the cheaters, who are trying to make money:
I never cease to be amazed at how people recognize me, even though I am not the one who writes messages in these groups! I decided to write to this person and talk to him by myself:
Finally, I decided to show up in their group:
A couple more funny correspondences happened:
All in all, it was an interesting adventure. In conclusion: cheaters, I do not really understand why do you do it. Well, look: there's nothing in it from a practical point of view. The rating on codeforces has no effect on the job search. Honestly, no employer needs that number in your profile. It also will not give you success in the contests if it is obtained dishonestly. And if you're doing it just to look cool, that's not clear to me either. Yes, maybe some people will be impressed, but if the truth comes out, I think no one will believe you in the future. Moreover, you will understand by yourself that this is not fair.
Thanks for reading this blog!
P.S. If you read this blog and understand the phrases that cheaters wrote to me in a language other than English, please post the translation of the phrases in the comments. Google translator didn't help: