I briefly looked at a few of Gemini's solutions https://github.com/google-deepmind/gemini_icpc2025. What struck me was how Gemini finds clean ways to express an idea - perhaps because it knows a large set of tricks for each kind of sub-algorithm (within the larger algorithm). I am a former competitor and managed to reach world finals at Google CodeJam and Topcoder Open. It took me a lot of work to get there but I will gladly concede that Gemini is way better than my peak. I haven't competed in 15 years and have forgotten a lot of tricks but Gemini's code reminded me how quickly algorithms can get complicated sometimes without a bag of tricks.

There are parallels to tactics in chess - humans might miss them but a machine will not. And that can be a huge difference in a game or even in a software project.

EDIT: minor correction.