Nah, it’s just that LC problems take practice to get good at. Similar to weight lifting you wouldn’t expect to bench 250 lbs your first week, but after training

Nah, it’s just that LC problems take practice to get good at. Similar to weight lifting you wouldn’t expect to bench 250 lbs your first week, but after training and making progress you’ll get there (or close). If you’ve never done LC (or any competitive programming) you’ll struggle. Practice more and you’ll recognize the dozen or so patterns. Also LC is not “novel,” maybe at the time when the algorithm was first devised but not when you have 20 minutes to solve one.