I am pretty sure he skipped compiling! I am being serious here.
Honestly, I am not sure why you are surprised. Competitive programming is different from regular programming, and like every other field it require years of training and experience to become good.
After a while you just learn to recognize patterns and common topics.
I think your comparison to chess is a good one. Both chess and competitive programming require years of deliberate practice to become good.
Source: done both. Though I was only somewhat good at chess, I was fairly successful at programming contests a few years ago(not this guy's level good though).
> Is that person simply a genius? My ego is shattered beyond recognition. (Instead of being happy that I solved my first competition problem...)
Don't feel bad about yourself! Imagine a Java programmer writing their first haskell program and being surprised at how quickly haskell programmers are able to write code in haskell. That's how your post looks to me.