Syllabus Lesson 12 of 141 · Rules of the duel
Rules of the duel

The three checks

Why it matters You cannot get better at escaping the obvious answer if nobody can tell whether you escaped it. Every graded problem in this course is judged the same way, by code, so your result never depends on someone's taste.

Each problem comes with the answers an AI assistant would most likely give, written out and sealed. You do not see them until you pass. Most problems are built so those first answers fail. Some are not: there the obvious answer is right, and the clever one loses.

The three checks

Behaviour tests: hidden inputs your code must handle correctly. The data is made with a fixed seed, so it is the same every time.

A budget: a limit on work, memory or code size, counted by the course's lab kit. Never a stopwatch: a slow laptop must not fail a good answer.

The trap: something the sealed answers miss. A budget they blow, a hidden change request, an input they did not expect. Every trap is written in the exercise. If you read it carefully, it is fair.

Several roads pass

Before a problem ships, the course proves that at least two different good approaches pass and that every sealed answer fails (on a boring trap: that the plain one passes and the clever decoy fails). You are never marked down for not finding the author's favourite idea.

Recap Tests, a budget, a trap. Solve first, then see the AI's answers and an expert's side by side.

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