Here’s today’s Hong Kong result: rk25/117, finally got that long-awaited silver medal🥈!!!
First, thanks to Guo Zesen for volunteering for our team, and to my teammates heyuanjie and l1f for carrying me❤️.
My QQ status had said “So stressed I can barely breathe” for a full month and a half…
After competing unofficially in Xi’an with a silver-level rk and in Hangzhou at the top of bronze, we were full of confidence for our first official contest in December—the Nanjing regional. After weathering huge changes in the pandemic situation and all sorts of pressure, we were in terrible form in Nanjing and, painfully, came home empty-handed by a margin of 40 dirt. It hit us hard. As captain, I kept trying to talk the other two through it, but we all knew what the upcoming Hong Kong regional meant—finishing this season with nothing, or making a comeback…
Thankfully, even though everyone on the team was under enormous pressure, we all stuck with it. Especially heyuanjie, who spent 20 days stuck alone in the lab at school studying, and pushed his cf rating from 1700 to nearly 2100.
Whatever happens, I believe Nanjing used up all our bad luck, and the effort we put in over these past one or two months was precious too.
But the whole thing was way too nerve-racking, so now for the time-honored tradition of a contest recap:
We followed the scoreboard and opened H first. The code was only five short lines. After all three of us checked and rechecked that everything was correct, we very happily earned a wa on our first submission. After looking it over again and again, we realized we’d written “k*(l+b-1)/b” instead of “k*((l+b-1)/b)”. A certified classic. We checked again and resubmitted, proudly collecting 2wa on the freebie. We only got the A at 30min, by which point our rk was around 100.
After we A’d the freebie, heyuanjie and l1f had also talked through K and jumped straight into coding. Having no idea what they were talking about, I crawled off to read A.
Once I’d finished the reading-comprehension exercise, I worked through it by hand and felt it was the most bare-bones tree dp imaginable. Since those two were still grinding away at K, I chose to spend some time pondering why this problem was so easy.
Soon they submitted K and proudly collected a wa. Then they kept submitting K and kept getting wa. After three wa submissions, they finally passed. We were now place 82, dead last on penalty time.
After repeatedly turning over this suspiciously easy-looking A in my head, I realized it really was that easy. I quickly talked through the statement with heyuanjie and went straight to coding. 1A. Now place 40, Time 89.
At this point heyuanjie had no problem to work on, so I talked through F with him and found that there were 3^k cases with k<=6. Then heyuanjie shot down my idea, claiming it was an O(n^2),n<=2e5 solution.
“Fuck, I’m a fucking idiot, you’re right.” And just like that, I was successfully led astray. Lol. We decided those two would work on E while I thought about F.
Then heyuanjie took only a few minutes to pin down E as a sweep-line problem. I helped type up fast input, and he jumped straight into coding. Fucking beast. After 1h of coding, we kept getting wa. With our dirt sky-high, we finally settled on prioritizing the number of solved problems above all else. heyuanjie was now repeatedly throwing submissions at E. After 30min of random attempts, it turned out the array was too small after all… The scoreboard was frozen by then, so all we knew was place 42, and we were down to the final half hour.
Then we realized my time complexity for F should have been right, while heyuanjie said C was a typical div2 C. In the end, the two of us alternated between tle and wa, producing gems like “If it lets me pass, I can pass.” We made one final submission and the contest ended, without us even knowing whether it had passed. A long sigh of relief…
19:00. Watched the thrilling scoreboard reveal with heyuanjie. When we found out it was a silver medal, we all jumped out of our chairs and hugged…🥹 sob sob, my precious Jie
From starting to learn dp in October ’21, to beginning preparations for this season in October ’22, to 1.14 in ’23—whatever else, it was all worth it together.
Looks like I have quite a connection with Hong Kong🇭🇰. Here’s hoping that connection continues sometime soon!