From Knight to Guardian 🛡️

On December 1st, I posted a discussion about achieving the Knight badge:

🔗 https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7385792/achieved-the-knight-badge-with-100-ratin-8dld/

But what next? 🤔

I had already set my next goal.

So I started learning new DSU patterns and different data structures every day 📚

Later, I also set a deadline for myself.

Before my second year ends, I want to reach Guardian.

Did I achieve this deadline?

Spoiler (Almost) 😅

So the story continued week by week.

Still trying in every contest for my first AK.

Then came the Biweekly Contest on 20th Dec.

As usual, I solved 3 questions.
Now only the 4th one remained.

After seeing the constraints, I was sure the solution had to be around:

O(log n)

or

O(sqrt(n))

I opened PyCharm and started simulating the problem for small numbers.

Then I carefully observed one pattern.

The whole problem was about tracking the gaps between numbers, the first number, and checking whether the first number will stay or deleted.

And that was it.

I got my first AK 🤩🔥

I was extremely happy. (this happiness continues for sometime more)

ratings is going up and down every week.

Sometimes i feel amazing after achieving a rating like:

224 🚀

And then your rating becomes:

But it doesn’t last long.

Remember what I said in my previous discussion:

Don’t skip contests because of fear of rating.

That line cost me a lot 😭

I was at a family function, and giving the contest properly was almost impossible.

But somehow I got some free time, and I thought:

“Let’s just give the contest for consistency and streak.”

But that decision went very wrong.

I participated in both the Biweekly and Weekly contests, and my rating became:

And let me tell you one thing:

At the 2000+ rating level, losing 59 points feels like a nightmare 💀

It takes around 2–3 really good contests just to recover from that.

But guess what?

That was just the beginning.

If you look at the graph, this situation happened more than once.

Like going from:

2102 → 2043

And those downfalls caused me to miss my deadline.

My Favorite Problems From This Journey 🏆

These are the types of problems I enjoyed the most during this journey:

• State DP problems

• String problems

  • Especially lexicographical problems 🔥
    I solve those every single time.

• Fenwick Tree / Segment Tree problems

• Bitwise problems

• O(log n) observation-based problems

My Favorite Contest From This Journey 🏆

Weekly Contest 491

🔗 https://leetcode.com/contest/weekly-contest-491

I was stuck on the 4th problem.

The problem was about finding all subarrays with exactly k distinct integers where each integer should appear at least m times.

It was a sliding window problem, but definitely not a straightforward one.

First, I got TLE.

Then I realized I was missing some counts because I was counting only one answer for every r, while multiple answers were possible.

I fixed that part.

But now TLE was still ruining my contest.

I tried everything.

And now there were only 7 minutes left ⏳

Then suddenly, one idea came into my mind.

I found a small manipulation inside the loop that completely solved the TLE and reduced the time complexity to:

O(2n)

I was staring at the screen.

Then I hit:

Ctrl + Enter

And suddenly something green appeared on my screen 🟩

That feeling honestly felt like victory.

I slammed my hand on the table so hard that the sound was loud enough for my family to run toward my room to check what happened 😭😂

That contest was not just another contest for me.

It felt like a personal victory.

And that’s my journey till Guardian 🛡️

Whenever my rating dropped, I kept thinking about just one thing:

“If reaching Guardian was easy, then it wouldn’t be valued this much.”

And what about my deadline?

My target was before May, around the time of our end-semester exams.

I was a little late.

I achieved it one week after my results.

But since my 3rd year hasn’t started yet, I’ll count this as my victory 😄

And honestly, becoming a Guardian as a 2nd-year student means a lot to me.

Rating Chart 📈

Full Journey

Knight ➜ Guardian Journey 🛡️

Next Goals 🎯

For now, I’m going to shut down this account for some time and focus more on:

• Codeforces
• My second LeetCode account

Hopefully, before my 3rd year starts, I can achieve:

• Specialist on Codeforces
• Knight on my second LeetCode account

The journey continues 🚀