Hi all. I recently started doing cp. I have attended only two contest thus far, and haven't done much practise at all -- Contest #662 and #663 Div2 — I solved problems A and B in both of them and got ranks 4743 and 9891 respectively. The subsequent questions in both of the contests seemed to be way beyond my level of understanding and implementing within the contest duration.

So my question is — How many problems are/were you guys able to solve when you had just started out in cp. I have heard a lot that with practice, one becomes better and better. But that just means that every person who has had enough practice and is logical enough — would eventually be able to solve all the 5 problems in the Div2 contests, right? But that just seems too good to be true. So how many problems in the Div2 contests should one realistically aim for to get a sense of his coding level and expertise w.r.t other programmers with the same experience as him out there?

One could also say that I am asking the approx timeline of the CP journey -- How much time did you take to improve and solve more questions consistently. I think the answers would really benefit the other members starting out with cp like me as well. Thanks in advance for any comments and suggestions!