Hello!

Finally I am freed from the big part of summer cares and I can continue the preparation of Div. 3 rounds! I decided to add something written by me to this blog because TryToKnowMe (and many others, i think) noticed that i am really copy and paste this text from one announcement to another changing only contest name and start time. But... Who knows, may be this time which is saved by copy-pasting the announcement allows me to prepare the problems better?... Let it stay a mystery. So, let's go.

Codeforces Round #498 (Div. 3) will start at Jul/16/2018 17:35 (Moscow time). You will be offered 6 problems with expected difficulties to compose an interesting competition for participants with ratings up to 1600. Probably, participants from the first division will not be at all interested by this problems. And for 1600-1899 the problems will be too easy. However, all of you who wish to take part and have rating 1600 or higher, can register for the round unofficially.

The round will be hosted by rules of educational rounds (extended ACM-ICPC). Thus, during the round, solutions will be judged on preliminary tests, and after the round it will be a 12-hour phase of open hacks. I tried to make strong tests — just like you will be upset if many solutions fail after the contest is over.

You will be given 6 problems and 2 hours to solve them.

Note that the penalty for the wrong submission in this round (and the following Div. 3 rounds) is 10 minutes.

Remember that only the trusted participants of the third division will be included in the official standings table. As it is written by link, this is a compulsory measure for combating unsporting behavior. To qualify as a trusted participants of the third division, you must:

• take part in at least two rated rounds (and solve at least one problem in each of them),
• do not have a point of 1900 or higher in the rating.

Regardless of whether you are a trusted participant of the third division or not, if your rating is less than 1600, then the round will be rated for you.

Thanks to MikeMirzayanov for the platform, help with ideas for problems and for coordination of my work. Thanks to my good friends Mikhail PikMike Piklyaev, Maksim Ne0n25 Mescheryakov and Ivan BledDest Androsov for help in round preparation and testing the round.

Good luck!

UPD: Also great thanks to the testers uwi, mareksom and ivan100sic for their invaluable help with the round preparation!

Hello Codeforces!

On Jul/14/2018 17:35 (Moscow time) Educational Codeforces Round 47 will start.

Series of Educational Rounds continue being held as Harbour.Space University initiative! You can read the details about the cooperation between Harbour.Space University and Codeforces in the blog post.

This round will be rated for the participants with rating lower than 2100. It will be held on extented ACM ICPC rules. After the end of the contest you will have 12 hours to hack any solution you want. You will have access to copy any solution and test it locally.

You will be given 7 problems and 2 hours to solve them.

The problems were invented and prepared by Ivan BledDest Androsov, Vladimir Vovuh Petrov, Maksim Ne0n25 Mescheryakov, Aslan ag2cidk Tamaev and me.

Good luck to all participants!

I also have a message from our partner, Harbour.Space University:

Hi Codeforces!

We want to remind everyone that the Hello Barcelona Programming Bootcamp is right around the corner, and we’d love to see you there!

Our boot camp will once again feature the all-time greats Mike MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov, Andrey andrewzta Stankevich, Michael Endagorion Tikhomirov, Gleb GlebsHP Evstropov, Artem VArtem Vasilyev, Ivan ifsmirnov Smirnov and other world renowned Russian coaches to train the participants.

We would also like to extend a welcome to some of the newest teams to join us from Colorado School of Mines, University of British Columbia and Reykjavík University.

Be sure to register before August 1st so everyone has time to get visas if needed, and of course for the Early Bird Discount of 15% or the Loyalty Discount* of 20% off registration for the boot camp!

*The loyalty discount is offered to universities and individual participants that took part in Hello Barcelona Bootcamps and Moscow Workshops ICPC.

Learn more about Barcelona ICPC Bootcamp

You can ask any questions by email: hello@harbour.space

Congratulations to the winners:

Congratulations to the best hackers:

And finally people who were the first to solve each problem:

UPD: The editorial is posted

Hello, everyone!

We are a Death Metal band Skyglow. Recently we released our first album. And since we happen to be sport programmers, we decided to make a Codeforces round in honor of this!

The round will take place on Jul/13/2018 17:35 (Moscow time). There will be five problems for each division, three of them will coincide. The problems were made up by me and SirRembocodina, the contest was also prepared with the help of TeaPot, GrumpyKitten, mingaleg and niyaznigmatul. Thanks to demon1999 and winger for testing, our coordinator arsijo and, of course, MikeMirzayanov for Codeforces and Polygon platforms.

You can listen to the album by following the link:

• https://skyglow.bandcamp.com/album/thousand-years-of-terror

It would be a great help if you repost us, even if you don't listen to this kind of music.

• https://vk.com/skyglowband?w=wall-134984483_323
• https://www.facebook.com/skyglowband/posts/2100310513570956

We will present an album on a CD to every contestant who expresses a wish. (If there are many of such, we will choose several of them with the best result in the round). Write me a private message.

Good luck on the contest!

UPD1. We will present an album on a CD to the top 10 contestants who would like to get one. Just send me a private message before the contest with your address, postal code and full name.

UPD2. Scoring distribution is as follows:
Div2: 500-1000-1500-2000-2500
Div1: 500-1000-1500-2250-2500

UPD3. We are still deciding if we should make this round rated or not. You can share your opinion about the round in the Mike's blog.

UPD4. We decided to sort the participants by the rating change. So the following users will receive a CD:
riela, +332
DongwonShin, +278
Erdenebayar, +176
DOlaBMOon, +148
Muhimin_Osim, +121
ciphereck, +117
Oliveira_medalha_de_ouro, +104
luismo, +94
zubec, +72
yagyanshbhatia, +70

UPD5. Congratulations to winners!

Div1:

1. yosupo
2. Egor
3. fateice
4. Um_nik
5. ksun48
6. wxh010910
7. zemen
8. 768092
9. mareksom
10. mmaxio

Div2:

1. riela
2. Kato_Megumi
3. luis.trivelatto
4. yukuai26
5. Ddaji
6. gls1196
7. TaoSama
8. chenyuqi0215
9. CongLingDanPaiShang3k5
10. Rena_Takeda

UPD6. The editorial was published!

Hello!

This time decided to fill myself in the shoes of the problem writers. It is very exciting! My challenge was to prepare a round in one day. It's really incredible pleasure to surrender to my passion and all day just work on problems!

Despite the fact that in total I've wrote 8 problems, I made it in time. Initially, I prepared 7 problems, but two of them were found to be used before (thank you, 300iq and _kun_ for poining it) and I removed them and wrote a new problem.

Codeforces Round #496 (Div. 3) will start on Jul/09/2018 18:35 (Moscow time). You will be offered 6 problems with expected difficulties to compose an interesting competition for participants with ratings up to 1600. Probably, participants from the Div. 1 not be at all interested by this problems. And for 1600-1899 the problems will be quite easy. However, all of you who wish to take part and have rating 1600 or higher, can register for the round unofficially.

The round will be hosted by rules of educational rounds (extended ACM-ICPC). Thus, during the round, solutions will be judged on preliminary tests, and after the round it will be a 12-hour phase of open hacks. I tried to make strong tests — just like you will be upset if many solutions fail after the contest is over.

You will be given 6 problems and 2 hours to solve them.

Remember that only the trusted participants of the third division will be included in the official standings table. As it is written by link, this is a compulsory measure for combating unsporting behavior. To qualify as a trusted participants of the third division, you must:

• take part in at least two rated rounds (and solve at least one problem in each of them),
• do not have a point of 1900 or higher in the rating.

Regardless of whether you are a trusted participant of the third division or not, if your rating is less than 1600, then the round will be rated for you.

Many thanks to the testers: kevinsogo, 300iq, _kun_, arsijo and adedalic. You really helped to make this round!

Good luck!

UPD 1: The round is over. Thank you for participation!

Official Top-5 (trusted only)

• poteryan_i_ne_naiden
• AKfun
• qaweqa
• sorry_dahaodl
• liv1n9

Unofficial Top-5 (+ untrusted)

• BigBag
• kmjp
• quailty
• TangentDay
• AeonHQ

UPD 2: The editorial is available by the link.

Microsoft's Quantum Team and Codeforces are excited to invite you to Microsoft Q# Coding Contest — Summer 2018!

The contest will run from July 6 — 9 and will consist of increasingly challenging tasks on introductory topics in quantum computing: superposition, measurement, oracles and simple algorithms. The top 50 ranked participants will receive a Microsoft Quantum T-shirt!

As a reminder, last weekend we help a warmup round with easier tasks which covered the same topics. The results were quite impressive: 167 participants solved all tasks! You can see the tasks here, and the solutions with explanations here.

Several useful reminders:

• The contest is unrated.
• Solutions are accepted in Q# only.
• Participants are ranked according to the number of correctly solved tasks, with penalty time as a tiebreaker.
• The tasks are grouped by topic, and the tasks within one topic are ordered in approximate order of increasing difficulty. If you find a problem too hard, don't forget to check the next problems in this topic and problems from different topics, they might turn out to be easier.
• Unlike the warmup round, you're not allowed to discuss the tasks during the contest.
• By popular demand, we have added Custom Invocation to allow you to run Q# code on Codeforces servers. Here is the signature of the code you should use to run it (note that the namespace and operation name have to match this code exactly):

namespace Solution {
    open Microsoft.Quantum.Primitive;
    open Microsoft.Quantum.Canon;

    // ------------- Operation which is called from C# -------------------
    operation RunQsharp () : Bool
    {
        body
        {
            Message("Hi");
            return true;
        }
    }
}

• For tasks which require you to create a certain quantum state or to implement a unitary transformation, any kind of error gives verdict "Wrong Answer". For tasks which have classical return, I tried to differentiate verdicts "Wrong Answer" (your return value was incorrect) and "Runtime Error" (array index out of bounds, qubits released are not in zero state, oracle called too many times etc.).
• NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Must be 16 years of age or older. Game ends 7/9/18. For details, see Official Rules.

You can find the discussion of the warmup round and pointers to Q#/quantum computing materials here.

For first time Codeforces users:

1. Create user account here.
2. Register for the contest here.
3. Once the contest starts on July 6, access the problems here.

Good luck! We hope you enjoy the contest!

Update. The contest is over. Editorials are published.

Hi everybody!

Summer... It is a wonderful time for traveling, walking with friends, new discoveries and, of course, writing new exciting contests at Codeforces. Thus, I bring to your attention my new Codeforces Round #495 (Div. 2) with interesting tasks that will take place on Jul/05/2018 19:35 (Moscow time). If your rating is less than 2100, this round will be rated for you; otherwise, you can participate out of competition.

I would like to thank Mike MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov for his help with problems preparing and for Codeforces and Polygon platforms. Also, Ildar 300iq Gainullin, Dmitry _kun_ Sayutin, Daniil danya.smelskiy Smelskiy, Chin-Chia eddy1021 Hsu, and Kevin ksun48 Sun for the problems testing.

You will be given 6 problems and 2 hours to solve them. Scoring distribution will be announced later.

In this round, you will have to help Sonya with her daily problems. Good luck!

UPD. Scoring 500-1000-1500-2000-2500-3000.

UPD. Congratulations to winners!!!!

Hello!

Codeforces Round #494 (Div. 3) will start on July 3 (Tuesday) at 14:35 (UTC). You will be offered 6 problems with expected difficulties to compose an interesting competition for participants with ratings up to 1600. Probably, participants from the first division will not be at all interested by this problems. And for 1600-1899 the problems will be too easy. However, all of you who wish to take part and have rating 1600 or higher, can register for the round unofficially.

The round will be hosted by rules of educational rounds (extended ACM-ICPC). Thus, during the round, solutions will be judged on preliminary tests, and after the round it will be a 12-hour phase of open hacks. I tried to make strong tests — just like you will be upset if many solutions fail after the contest is over.

You will be given 6 problems and 2 hours to solve them.

Remember that only the trusted participants of the third division will be included in the official standings table. As it is written by link, this is a compulsory measure for combating unsporting behavior. To qualify as a trusted participants of the third division, you must:

• take part in at least two rated rounds (and solve at least one problem in each of them),
• do not have a point of 1900 or higher in the rating.

Regardless of whether you are a trusted participant of the third division or not, if your rating is less than 1600, then the round will be rated for you.

Thanks to MikeMirzayanov for the platform, help with ideas for problems and for coordination of my work. Thanks to Mikhail PikMike Piklyaev, Maksim Ne0n25 Mescheryakov and Ivan BledDest Androsov for help in round preparation and testing the round.

Good luck!

UPD: Editorial

UPD2:

Congratulations to the winners:

Congratulations to the best hackers:

419 successful hacks and 670 unsuccessful hacks were made in total!

And finally people who were the first to solve each problem:

Hi, codeforces!

I am happy to invite you to the codeforces round #493, which happens at Jul/01/2018 17:05 (Moscow time).

This round writers are — Ildar 300iq Gainullin, Grigory gritukan Reznikov, Mike MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov, and me, _kun_.

Big thanks for people, who tested round — Shiqing cyand1317 Lyu, Andrew GreenGrape Rayskiy, Ivan isaf27 Safonov, Alexey aleks5d Upirvitsky. Also thanks to Mike MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov and Nikolay KAN Kalinin for help with round preparation.

And to Mike MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov for codeforces and polygon systems.

Traditionally, there will be 5 problems for 2 hours. I hope you will enjoy the problemset, good luck and have fun!

Scoring distribution will be published before the round.

UPD: Scoring distribution is as follows:

Div1: 500 1250 1500 2500 3000

Div2: 500 1000 1250 2000 2500

You may also want to check this post for post-contest stream.

UPD2: The editorial was published!

UPD3: Congratulations to winners!

Div1:

1. fjzzq2002
2. ksun48
3. fateice
4. Swistakk
5. Um_nik
6. Petr
7. V--o_o--V
8. eds467
9. LHiC
10. uwi

Div2:

1. kirisamejin
2. liu_runda
3. AntiLeaf
4. Kosai
5. highplay121
6. st-Firdavs
7. traxexeuler
8. paladin
9. kmyiu
10. Maxim

Microsoft's Quantum Team has good news for quantum enthusiasts and coders looking for new challenges. We are excited to announce Microsoft Q# Coding Contest — Summer 2018! By entering the contest, you can hone your quantum coding skills by tackling problems of varying difficulty and implementing solutions in the quantum programming language Q#. Winners will receive a Microsoft Quantum T-shirt!

Quantum computing is a radically different computing paradigm compared to classical computing. Indeed, it is so different that some tasks that are believed to be classically intractable (such as factoring integers, computing discrete logarithms on elliptic curves, or simulating physical systems) can be performed efficiently on a quantum computer. Microsoft recently introduced the Quantum Development Kit which includes Q# — a new programming language to express quantum programs in a way that makes it easier for classical coders to enter the space. Q# integrates into Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code development environments, and is available as a command line tool. Visual Studio Code allows development under Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The contest will run from July 6 — 9 and will consist of increasingly challenging tasks on introductory topics in quantum computing: superposition, measurement, oracles and simple algorithms.

The rules of the contest are:

• The contest will have 12 15 tasks of various complexity levels.
• To solve each task, you will write Q# code to implement the described transformation on the given set of qubits or to analyze the state of a set of qubits. Solutions are accepted in Q# only.
• The solution is correct if it passes all tests from a predefined test set. You will know whether the solution is correct soon after submitting it.
• Participants are ranked according to the number of correctly solved tasks.
• Ties are resolved based on lowest total penalty time for all tasks, which is computed as follows. For each solved task, a penalty is set to the submission time of that task (the time since the start of the contest). An extra penalty of 20 minutes is added for each failed submission on solved tasks (i.e., if you never solve the task, you will not be penalized for trying that task).
• The top 50 ranked participants will receive a Microsoft Quantum T-shirt.
• NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Must be 16 years of age or older. Game ends 7/9/18. For details, see Official Rules.

From June 29 to July 2, we will offer a warmup round with simpler tasks on the topics covered in the main contest. Participation in the warmup round is entirely optional. The warmup round gives you an opportunity to get familiar with the contest environment and submission system beforehand, as well as refresh or learn the basics of quantum computing and Q# programming language. During the warmup round everybody is encouraged to discuss the tasks and the solutions. 24 hours after the start of the warmup round we will publish explanations and solutions to the easiest three problems. Once the warmup round is over, we will publish the editorials on the contest page explaining both the quantum computing logic behind the solution and the Q# implementation.

To start, please refer to Q# installation instructions and language reference.

Quantum computing and Q# materials:

• Run Q# online
• Quantum Computing: Lecture Notes by Ronald de Wolf (first two chapters)
• "Quantum Computation and Quantum Information" by Nielsen & Chuang (part I)
• Introduction to Quantum Oracles
• Quantum computing concepts from Q# documentation
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Quantum Computing and Q# Blog
• Quantum Computation Lecture notes by John Preskill
• Q# Language Quick Reference

For first time Codeforces users:

1. Create user account here.
2. Register for the warmup round here.
3. Register for the contest here.
4. Once the warmup round starts on June 29, access the problems and see additional contest materials here.
5. Once the contest starts on July 6, access the problems here.

Good luck! We hope you enjoy the contest!

Update. Explanations for problems A, D and G of the warmup round are published.

Update. The warmup round is over. Explanations for all problems are published.