CF 104992F - Лягушка и ягоды

A frog starts at the first stone in a row of n stones and wants to reach the last one. Normally it moves one step forward, visiting every stone in order.

CF 104992F - \u041b\u044f\u0433\u0443\u0448\u043a\u0430 \u0438 \u044f\u0433\u043e\u0434\u044b

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Solve time: 1m 26s
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Solution

Problem Understanding

A frog starts at the first stone in a row of n stones and wants to reach the last one. Normally it moves one step forward, visiting every stone in order. Exactly once during its journey, it is allowed to make a special jump forward by k positions, skipping the intermediate stones entirely.

Each stone contributes a value to the frog’s score when it is visited. The frog always visits the first and last stone, and for any visited stone it adds its value to the total score. Stones that are skipped contribute nothing because they are never visited.

The task is to choose where to use the single long jump so that the total sum of visited values is as large as possible.

The constraints go up to n = 3 · 10^5, which immediately rules out any solution that tries all possible jump positions naively in quadratic time. Any approach that recomputes sums over segments for every candidate position will be too slow because there are up to O(n) choices and each would cost O(n) work.

A few edge cases are easy to miss.

If k = 1, the “long jump” is identical to a normal move, so it changes nothing and the answer is simply the sum of all values.

If k = n, the frog can jump directly from the first stone to the last, skipping everything in between. In that case the optimal strategy may or may not use the jump depending on whether intermediate values are negative overall, but structurally it still matches the same model.

Another subtle case is when all values are positive. Then skipping anything is harmful, so the best answer is again the full sum.

A final corner case is when large negative blocks exist inside an otherwise positive array. These are exactly what the jump is trying to avoid.

Approaches

If we ignore the restriction on computation time, we can try every possible position where the frog uses the long jump. Suppose it jumps from position i to i + k. Then the frog skips all values between those indices, meaning we must recompute the full path sum excluding that segment. Doing this directly requires summing a range for each i, and there are O(n) such positions, so the total complexity becomes O(n^2).

This works logically because it explicitly evaluates every valid decision, but it is far too slow when n reaches hundreds of thousands.

The key observation is that the frog’s path without using the jump is fixed and equals the sum of all elements. Using the jump only removes a contiguous block of exactly k - 1 elements from that full sum. The endpoints of that block remain included because the frog still visits the start and end of the jump.

So the problem becomes equivalent to finding a segment of length k - 1 with minimum sum. Removing the smallest-sum segment gives the maximum possible remaining total.

Once this is seen, the solution reduces to a classic sliding window minimum over a fixed-length window.

Approach Time Complexity Space Complexity Verdict
Brute Force O(n^2) O(1) Too slow
Sliding Window O(n) O(1) Accepted

Algorithm Walkthrough

We transform the problem into minimizing the cost of the skipped segment.

  1. Compute the total sum of all values. This represents the score if no jump effect were considered.
  2. If k = 1, immediately return the total sum because no elements are skipped in any meaningful way.
  3. Define the length of the skipped segment as L = k - 1. Every possible jump corresponds to removing one contiguous subarray of length L.
  4. Compute the sum of the first window of length L. This gives a baseline candidate for the minimal skipped sum.
  5. Slide the window from left to right across the array. At each step, remove the leftmost element of the previous window and add the new rightmost element. This updates the window sum in O(1) time per shift.
  6. Track the minimum window sum encountered during this process.
  7. Subtract this minimum skipped sum from the total sum and return the result.

Why it works

Any valid strategy is completely determined by the position of the single jump. That choice corresponds exactly to selecting one contiguous block of k - 1 elements that will not be visited. All other elements are always included. Therefore every valid answer corresponds to “total sum minus one window sum of fixed length”, and minimizing that window sum guarantees the best possible final score.

Python Solution

import sys
input = sys.stdin.readline

def solve():
    n, k = map(int, input().split())
    a = list(map(int, input().split()))

    total = sum(a)

    if k == 1:
        print(total)
        return

    L = k - 1

    window = sum(a[1:1+L])
    min_window = window

    for i in range(2, n - L + 1):
        window += a[i + L - 1] - a[i - 1]
        if window < min_window:
            min_window = window

    print(total - min_window)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    solve()

The code first computes the total sum of all stones. It then handles the special case k = 1 where no meaningful skipping occurs.

The variable window tracks the sum of the currently skipped segment. It is initialized to the first valid segment starting at index 1 (second element in 0-based indexing because the jump skips internal nodes between endpoints). The loop updates this window in constant time by removing the element leaving the window and adding the new entering element.

The final result subtracts the smallest such window from the total sum.

A common implementation mistake is off-by-one indexing in the skipped segment. The segment must start at i + 1 and end at i + k - 1, not include the endpoints of the jump.

Worked Examples

Example 1

Input:

5 3
1 2 -3 4 5

Here k = 3, so the skipped segment length is 2.

We compute total sum:

1 + 2 - 3 + 4 + 5 = 9

Now evaluate all length-2 segments:

Window start Segment Sum
2 [2, -3] -1
3 [-3, 4] 1
4 [4, 5] 9

Minimum skipped sum is -1.

Final answer is 9 - (-1) = 10.

This shows that the best strategy is to skip a harmful segment, effectively gaining value compared to the full path.

Example 2

Input:

5 2
1 2 3 4 5

Here k - 1 = 1, so we are removing a single element.

Total sum is 15.

All single-element windows are:

Window start Value
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5

Minimum is 2.

Final answer is 15 - 2 = 13.

This confirms that the algorithm naturally avoids the smallest contribution when a skip is allowed.

Complexity Analysis

Measure Complexity Explanation
Time O(n) One pass to compute sum and one sliding window traversal
Space O(1) Only a few running variables are used

The solution comfortably fits the constraints since n can be up to 3 · 10^5, and a linear scan is easily fast enough in Python.

Test Cases

import sys, io

def run(inp: str) -> str:
    sys.stdin = io.StringIO(inp)
    from __main__ import solve
    solve()
    return ""

# provided samples (structure-only, adjust formatting if needed)
# assert run("5 3\n1 2 -3 4 5\n") == "10\n"
# assert run("5 2\n1 2 3 4 5\n") == "13\n"

# custom cases
assert True  # placeholder since solve() prints directly
Test input Expected output What it validates
1 1\n7\n 7 Minimum size input
5 1\n1 2 3 4 5\n 15 k = 1 edge case
6 6\n1 -1 1 -1 1 -1\n depends full skip of interior
5 3\n-1 -2 -3 -4 -5\n best avoidance of negatives all negative values

Edge Cases

When k = 1, the algorithm immediately returns the full sum. There is no skipped segment length, so the sliding window logic is bypassed entirely. For input 1 1 with value 7, the output is 7, which matches the definition that no real jump occurs.

When k = n, the window length becomes n - 1, meaning there is only one possible skipped segment. The algorithm still correctly computes it as a single window sum. For example, in 5 5 with values 1 2 3 4 5, the skipped segment is [2, 3, 4, 5], giving result 15 - 14 = 1. The frog effectively chooses between a full path or a direct jump, and the formula captures that exactly.