Original mock contests

Three-problem sets in USACO style, one per division. Each set is calibrated to the typical difficulty range of that division. Self-grade with the rubric on each problem page.

How to take a mock. Set a 4-hour timer (5 hours for Platinum). Close every tab except the problem page and your editor. No editorials, no AI assistant, no chat. When the timer ends, score yourself using the rubric, then read the solution sketch.

🥉 Mock Bronze · "Springtime"

Three problems, 4 hours total. Focus: complete search, simulation, ad-hoc.

#	Title	Skills	Target time
B1	Flower Sorting	Simulation, sorting	30–60 min
B2	Cow Bingo	Complete search over bitmasks	60–90 min
B3	Fence Painter	Ad-hoc + case analysis	60–90 min

🥈 Mock Silver · "Pasture Tour"

Three problems, 4 hours total. Focus: BFS/DFS, binary search, prefix sums.

#	Title	Skills	Target time
S1	Lost Sheep Count	BFS on a grid	30–60 min
S2	Hay Bale Stacker	Binary search on the answer	60–90 min
S3	Sunrise Schedule	Sort + suffix-min + binary search	60–90 min

Detail pages coming as you reach Silver. Skeletons land first; full statements get added during August in the study plan.

🥇 Mock Gold · "Migration"

Three problems, 4 hours total. Focus: DP, Dijkstra, segment / Fenwick tree.

#	Title	Skills	Target time
G1	Highway Toll	Dijkstra on layered graph	60–90 min
G2	Pasture Permutations	1-D DP with combinatorics	60–90 min
G3	Friendship Index	Fenwick tree + offline queries	60–90 min

Self-grading rubric

USACO scoring is per-test-case out of 1000. For mocks (where you don't have a judge), grade each problem out of 1000 like this:

Outcome	Score
Full correct solution, fits constraints, you tested it on a hand-crafted edge case	1000
Correct algorithm, works on all samples, you ran it mentally on one edge case	800
Brute force only, correct on small n, would TLE at full constraint	400
Wrote something but didn't finish / known WA on some cases	100–200
Didn't attempt or didn't compile	0

Total possible: 3000. Target for promotion-equivalent: clear a typical USACO cutoff (a 50-multiple in the 600–850 range — e.g. Dec 2024 Bronze was 700).

After the mock

Don't open the editorial yet. For each problem, spend 15 minutes writing what you tried, what worked, what didn't, and the moment you got stuck.
Now read the editorial. For each unsolved problem, identify the one piece of knowledge or trick you were missing. Write it down.
Re-implement any problem you didn't solve, without looking at editorial code.
Add the technique you missed to next week's drill schedule.