A cheese week

Codeforces hosted its Round 631 during the Mar 30 - Apr 5 week (problems, results, top 5 on the left, analysis). I had a relatively good start on the first four problems, but could not make progress in the last one and switched to challenging with about 20 minutes remaining, also without success. Um_nik, on the other hand, had an even better start and did not give up so easily on E, earning the ultimate reward of being the only contestant to solve all problems. Great job!

When solving problem C, I could not come up with a solution analytically for quite some time, so I've used the adage "so many people got it accepted, the solution must be simple!" and started thinking in terms of what a simple solution might look like. I've came up with the [ultimately] correct greedy very quickly, but could not prove that it works. After some more time, I've decided to just implement and submit it, relying on pretests and the adage to help :)

When this approach works, it is satisfying, but I feel that using it might be detrimental in the long run: it greatly reduces the motivation when solving the problems analytically, the opportunity to just start submitting good-looking solutions is too tempting. Or maybe it really is a part of the game?

Thanks for reading, and check back for more!