Until the problem statement clearly specifies that the leaderboard is immutable (meaning the player's scores, as they are processed and a ranking is assigned, do not change the leaderboard), I don't believe the timeout test cases are valid. You need to KNOW that the leaderboard is intended to be immutable to achieve the needed performance. Am I wrong?

Does this problem have these assumptions?

1) Player scores will always be ascending? 2) Player scores do not mutate the leaderboard when they come in?

If so, are these assumptions ever mentioned in the problem statement?

Here is my solution in C++:

vector<int> climbingLeaderboard(vector<int> ranked, vector<int> player) {
    vector <int> result;
    
    auto start = unique(ranked.begin(), ranked.end());
    ranked.erase(start, ranked.end());
    sort(ranked.begin(), ranked.end());
    int index = 0;
    
    for (auto it : player) {
        while (index < ranked.size() && it >= ranked[index]) index++;
        result.push_back(ranked.size() - index + 1);
    }
    return result;
}

This times out on large ranked input > 100k

r = sorted(list(set(ranked)), reverse=True)

z = len(r)
w = len(player)
low = r[z-1]
high = r[0]
score = list()

for x in range(0,w):
    for y in range(0,z):

        if (player[x] < low):
            score.append(z+1)
            break
        if (player[x] >= high):
            score.append(1)
            break       
        if (player[x] >= r[y]):
            score.append(y+1)
            break

return(score)