Topcoder Open 2013 editorial: TheGameDAG

The other month, I utterly failed and couldn't advance to round 2 of the TopCoder open. I didn't even get a t-shirt. Something after that I was contacted by an ominous figure, goes by the name of Rustyoldman. Apparently this year the TCO bloggers (read: Rustyoldman and .... misof) were going to write the editorials for the TCO onsite problems. The catch would be that this time editorial writer would have access to the problems long before the matches, so that editorials could be published fast.

I was undecided. On one side, that means money. On the other side, if my explanations get published at the same time as Rustyoldman's or, worse, misof's, then it would become very clear that my editorials are awful in comparison. I have a very fragile ego and I do not need any of this. Also, TCO onsite problems are ...hard. This was going to be a time sink.

But I eventually agreed. I only had time to write a small amount of editorials (possibly just the following one, I can't disclose more info). So here we go:

TheGameDAG

Problem statement available at: http://apps.topcoder.com/forums/?module=Thread&threadID=803574&start=0

Editorial available at: http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/tc/TheGameDAG

This one problem was very hard. I needed a couple of weeks (of course, also busy with homework and the other editorials) to think of it. Ultimately I had to ask for help. Gotta thank bmerry for the help in getting me to understand this problem.