What it takes to be a 4 star?

general
1

I want to know what are the advance topic , I must be good at , to become 4 star ,
Its not like I am here in CodeChef competition for so long but somehow I feel like I am not having what it takes ,
like in general , in Long Challenge (Unrated Ones) I can maximum answer upto 3rd question (div2)
in Cook Off upto 2-3 problems (div 2)
in Lunch Time upto 2-3 problems(div 2)

In short contests after that barrier , problem level seems much hard that I got irritated , even after I spend 1 or 1.5 hour in that problem still failed to solve , its so irritating . What to do ?

Only way to beat cheaters is now to improve speed and solve the rank decider problem before the cheaters , but HOW ???

2

Well you see in CC there is nothing fixed. In every contest 1st 3 problems are greedy + math + general algorithms + rarely string manipulation after that its very varied. Say someday the ask something related to bfs and dfs someday they ask something like shortest path in grid or number of ways to reach somewhere or dynamic programming or ad hoc math problems sometimes even Range queries or LCA or bit manipulation.

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3

I think you can practice from a site which hosts short contests more like codeforces or atcoder.

Topics for first 3 problems are usually just observation simple greedy, brute force, implementation, math, binary search, or ad-hoc.

the 4th problem might be related to graph or bit manipulation and topics for first 3.

I am speaking from whatever I have seen across the few cookoffs I gave so far… There could definitely be more topics.

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4

AtCoder is good. If you are not practicing at AtCoder start today. Don’t miss beginner contests. And to be a 4 star at Codechef. You don’t need any advanced topics (be good at DP but).

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5

thanks , I have never participated at AtCoder , I will soon .

6

thank you , I will be working on it .

7

yeah

9

Cheating and plag evasion

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10

Everyone struggles but with practice , results do come.
Solve lots of codeforces div2ABC , div3 ABCD and if you get stuck in a problem then learn from editorial and remember it.
If you encounter a problem which uses some algorithm/technique that you are not familiar with then learn it from cses.fi/book , youtube.
You can also maintain a sheet of problems you needed help with and revise them later.
Keep doing this I am sure you’ll become 4 star.Good Luck.

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12

thanks alot