Q: Thoughts on winning?

A: It definitely feels good to win today, but I'm going to try not to let it get to my head (see my answer to question 3).

Q: You had a slow start, what was the cause and how did it affect you?

A: Since I heard the competition was mainly to get used to the environment, I treated it as such, and wrote A and B without testing. It seems I'm not awesome enough to actually do that succesfully though. I did not know where it gave feedback, and I just sat around for a while and checked E-mail before seeing the feedback page: I did not realize for a while that I had gotten a compile error on A, and had accidentally submitted problem B as problem A. Oops! (My solution to B also missed the same caveat as everyone else.)

Q: How were you able to solve problem C so quickly?

A: I coded up an answer to A, submitted; coded an answer to B, submitted; coded and answer to C, tested on the given case, then submitted, then sat around for a while and noticed the feedback format, and then went back to fix A and C. While I didn't jump in and start coding the first thing that came to mind for C, I did jump in and start coding the second thing that came to mind. It was a fairly naive brute force; it might have an upper bound less than O(n^2), but this would be difficult to prove. I'd be surprised if I was the only one to submit this, and I have no idea why my naive solution passed when so many others failed. Maybe the grading program just likes me?

Q: What are your thoughts on the overall problem set?

A: It was definitely harder than you made it out to be. The excitement therefrom might actually be a better way to retain newbies than three problems of difficulty akin to "find a+b."

Q: How did the judging delays affect you?

A: I would have definitely gotten B a lot faster were it not for the delays. Other than that, just the psychological guilt of doing homework instead of double-checking solutions after I had submitted everything. (As I said, I did not take today seriously.)

Q: Anything to add?

A: Other than how I excited I am for the season, no.