Before downvoting me, please hear me out.
I have solved some problems on CSES and then I got stuck at a problem for quite a long time. Then after searching for that problem, I realized that it involved Segment Tree and was pretty standard problem for it.
Now, I am wondering how would I know which new data structures or algorithms I would need to know in order to solve the problems. Should I just search up that question when I can't come up with a solution or do something else?
Thank you.
You can check William Lin's Video. Although not all the problems are solved in that video, many of them are there.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think they're supposed to be the practice problems for the first book here.
Ah right, maybe I should try reading through it when I can't solve some problem. Thanks.
I think that the point behind problemsets such as CSES and Timus is to be able to think about certain problems without having an editorial, so that you can force yourself to not look up the solution when you're stuck, and give the problem some more thinking time. CSES tries to not be too extreme and gives you hints in the form of topics (like Range Queries).
If you're stuck, I guess a good strategy would be to give it a few days, and if not, maybe look up the name of the section of the problem you're stuck at, and see if there is something very basic associated to that topic that you don't know. If not, then learn the topic, and try to apply that technique (and if that doesn't work, do it all over again).
If you're really stuck, maybe it's a good idea to look at the book that was mentioned in another comment on this post. I'd say looking at solutions while learning new problems is not really optimal since it takes away a lot of the thought process that you could have had.
Thanks, this is very helpful and that's exactly what I was thinking as in not looking at the solutions.