Codechef Long Challenges

Hello Codechef Community! I want to ask how one can prepare for Codechef Long Challenges. Since they are 10 days long, we have a proper platform and sufficient time to study about the topic ( if required ), work diligently and submit our codes correctly. Also, patience, perseverance and self-belief are important key factors during the contest.
What other technical knowledge, algorithms, tips or tools do you suggest?
How one can increase their problem submission count?
It would be very useful to share your experience. Thank you in advance!

2 Likes

You don’t prepare for long challenges. Long challenges prepares you. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyways this is a good place to start : Learn Data Structures and Algorithms | DSA tutorials | CodeChef

14 Likes

As a beginner I feel that long challenges are the best opportunities for us to work on transforming into pro coders.
I’ve joined codechef approx 2 months ago, and participated in 2 long challenges. I try my best to solve as many problems I do 5 problems completely and 6th one partially. Everytime the long challenge covers different aspects of competitive programming.
Now I don’t remember all of the problems but I remember GUESSPRM in July challenge from math section, ENCODING from digit-dp, a zombies problem related to a standard DP problem of “overlapping intervals”, and so on.
The problem types don’t repeat a lot, thus every problem is an opportunity to learn something new.

I personally think that knowing what type of problem isn’t that hard. So I look at the problem, i quickly identify the type, but I don’t know exact implementation. Then I look it up on the internet, codeforces blogs or geeksforgeeks I pretty helpful.

For instance, the after reading the zombies problem, it immediately clicked to me that I had come across a similar problem where movie release dates and ending dates were given, and I had to tell, on which day can you watch the most movies, which is overlapping intervals problem. I had ignored this problem earlier, but thanks to the August long challenge, it made me learn it.

I’m not so experienced programmer as others but as a beginner all I can say is try to simplify the problem and relate it to some standard problem, identify the problem type and start studying that topic. The time limit of 10 days is a good motivation, you don’t procrastinate when you have limited time to make submissions.
Hope this helps.

5 Likes

Answer for a beginner : -

1)Start solving first 3-4 problems of previous Long Challenge…

2)Now, you may ask , how much ?

My answer:- Keep doing till you feel comfortable with first 3-4 problems of div2-long .

Upper Limit:- (2019-August---->2015-Jan)

3)Now, whenever you will see a problem(first 3-4) in the future longs, voila!! you will 90%+ of the times have the required pre-requisites. :slight_smile:

4)Don’t and never be demotivated due to bad results… The contest in which you perform the worst teaches you the most .

5)Move fast! Do as much as you can, collect as much info and knowledge as possible!

6)Now, if you want to reach the next level, deal with the discomfort and study dp+math+graph+trees.

7)Slowly, but surely all dots will start connecting .

8)Keep doing this, and one day you will be able to solve most of the problems of the long :heart:
9)Read this:-https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-develop-problem-solving-skills-I-know-several-algorithms-but-seem-unable-to-arrive-at-elegant-solutions-to-many-problems/answer/Karan-Gujar-32

My Last Advice:- When you get good , Help beginner guys and contribute, give something back to the world and make it a better place ! :slight_smile:

31 Likes

Thank you so much. It was very helpful. I’ll try to implement above suggestions.

1 Like

Continuing the discussion from Codechef Long Challenges:

hello… i am facing problem with recursion !!!
I am trying to deal with it by solving hacker rank recursion question ,reading editorial too,saw the solution too… to trace and understand in better way but still find a bit difficult to deal with it .
since before moving to dp at lease recursion must be strong enough right!!
any suggestion please !! that would help me to to go for recursion and dp!!