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CHAPTER 2
GAME PLAN FOR A CONTEST
26
Keep a log of your performance in each contest: successes, mistakes, and what you could
have done better; use this to rewrite and improve your game plan!
The Judges Are Evil and Out to Get You
Judges don't want to put easy problems on the contest, because they have thought up too
many difficult problems. So what we do is hide the easy problems, hoping that you will
be tricked into working on the harder ones. If we want you to add two non-negative
numbers together, there will be pages of text on the addition of `0' to the number system
and 3D-pictures to explain the process of addition as it was imagined on some island that
nobody has ever heard of.
Once we've scared you away from the easy problems, we make the hard ones look easy.
`Given two polygons, find the area of their intersection.' Easy, right?
It isn't always obvious that a problem is easy, so teams ignore the problems or start on
overly complex approaches to them. Remember, there are dozens of other teams working
on the same problems, and they will help you find the easy problems. If everyone is
solving problem G, maybe you should take another look at it.[6]