Hello CodeForces! This year again, I'd like to invite you to the online mirror of an open championship of Switzerland called the Helvetic Coding Contest. A mirror was also held last year — see here: Helvetic Coding Contest 2016 online mirror (teams, unrated)

The Helvetic Coding Contest is a yearly contest held at the EPFL in Lausanne by the PolyProg association. The contest itself took place on April the 1st, but the online mirror is scheduled on Sunday, 28th of May, 11:05 Moscow time. The duration is 4:30.

Rules:

• you can participate in teams or individually (1-3 people),

• standard ACM-ICPC rules (no hacking),

• the contest is not rated,

• if you have participated in the onsite contest, please do not participate in the mirror.

You will help us find the cow Heidi and participate in some April-Fools-Day confusion. The contest will feature 5 series of 3 related tasks with increasing difficulty (easy/medium/hard). Sometimes it may be the case that a solution for the hard version solves all of them, but usually not. We think that the problemset is diverse and interesting, and while the contest is ACM-style, you will find that some problems are not so standard. Most easy&medium problems are even solvable in Python, so you can also recommend this contest to your newbie friends :)

Acknowledgments: the problems were set by Christian Kauth, boba5551, meret, DamianS and myself. Thanks also go out to people who helped with the statements and testing: maksay, Michalina Pacholska (who also draws the cows), Benjamin Schubert, Aleksa Stanković, Ruofan Zhou; Tatiana_S for Russian translations and KAN for CodeForces coordination, as well as everyone involved in the actual onsite contest, who are too many to name here. We also thank the sponsors Open Systems and AdNovum. Lastly, thanks to MikeMirzayanov for CodeForces and Polygon (which was used to prepare the problems).

Finally, in a bit of autopromotion, note that you can use Hightail to automatically test your solutions :) Good luck!

After-contest UPDATE:

>>> Editorial <<<

Feel free to ask questions in this topic.

Thanks to everyone who participated! We hope you have enjoyed the problems. Congratulations to the winners:

1. ★SweeT DiscoverY★: dotorya, zigui, cki86201 (solved all problems!)

2. japan-cookie: sigma425, sugim48, yosupo (solved all problems!)

3. HSE Bluebell: Um_nik, Kronecker

4. Veteran: I_love_Hoang_Yen, chemthan, RR_PPAP

5. m(_ _)m: tmt514, Shik, dreamoon

6. never red: abyssmall, gongy, gendelpiekel

7. rng_58

8. (｀・ω・´): FizzyDavid, OhWeOnFire

The winners of the onsite contest (Petr Team) also solved all problems.

See you again next year!

Hello everyone!

27 May, 12:35 MSK new codeforces round takes place for participants from the second division. Participants from the first division can participate out of competition. Round consists from 5 problems, and you will be given 2 hours to solve them. Pay attention on round start time.

The problems will be almost the same as on Open Olympiad of Mozyr State Pedagogical University, which takes part parallel to the round. The full problem set would be in codeforces gym soon. I am also going to tell you about the Olympiad a bit later.

• The problemsetters are: me (Vladislav Vishnevski), Valery Kameko (Valerich) and Yury Shilyaev (hloya_ygrt).
• The testers are: Alex Kernozhitsky (alex256), Arseniy Kolosov (KArs) and Ilya Klimko (klinchuh).
• The coordinator of the round was Alexey Vistyazh (netman).
• Alex Dryapko was reading the statements (sdryapko).
• And of course, the round would be impossible without Mike Mirzayanov (MikeMirzayanov), author of polygon and codeforces systems.

Thanks everyone for contribution you did to the setting of the round.

The main character of the round is Vladik, who loves to solve problems and himself.

Good luck to everyone! :)

UPD 500-1000-1500-2000-2500

UPD Editorial.

ACM-ICPC World Finals 2017 will begin on May 24, 2017 at 15:00 (UTC). This event is the main event of the year in the world of sports programming!

This year ICPC Regional participation included 46,381 of the finest students and faculty in computing disciplines from 2,948 universities in 103 countries on six continents. A record 50,145 students and 5,073 coaches competed in ICPC and ICPC-assisted competitions this year, setting new records in participation.

Codeforces wishes the teams to show a vivid and interesting contest contest. We wish to find beautiful solutions, write without bugs and enjoy many accepted problems!

Links:

• Current results
• Official website of the championship
• ICPC News (photo, video about the Finals)
• ICPC Live (broadcast and not only)

Hello, Codeforces!

The ACM-ICPC World Finals 2017 event is running now. Tomorrow will be the main contest. During these days the directorate of ACM-ICPC shared some news.

• Let me remind you that this season (2016-2017) is last, when the general sponsor of the championship is IBM. For 20 years, IBM has supported ACM-ICPC, investing millions of dollars annually. Thank you, IBM! At the moment, the model is actively being worked out, when there will be not one general sponsor, but there will be a fund in which several companies will participate. At the opening ceremony the Sport Programming Foundation was mentioned. I believe this Foundation will be the main one for the future seasons of the championship. However, these are not yet close plans.

  It was announced that the next three years the general sponsor of ACM-ICPC will be JetBrains! This is amazing news. Particularly pleased that this is actually a Russian company, and its executive director Maxim Shafirov coached the team of St. Petersburg State University, which became the world champion in 2000! I'm sure that the wonderful development environment from JetBrains in the future finals of the championship will await us as a pleasant bonus.

• There is a reform of the qualifying stages of the championship. For example, now Rissian+ regional contest (NEERC) is not part of the European Regionals, but is a separate league of the Northern Eurasia. In general, eight leagues (read, super-regions) were singled out: Europe, Northern Eurasia, North America, Latin and South America, two leagues in Asia, Africa and probably Australia and Oceania. It is planned that each league will have its own separate finals with medals and the top 12 teams from each league will receive a ticket to the World Finals. While these are still distant plans, but the first steps have already been taken. Discusses its quota on the number of participations in the league finals (3 times).

• Unfortunately, this year a significant part of the teams did not receive a visa at all (5 teams) and a dozen more could not arrive completely because of the visa problems of one of the participants. Saratov State University, apparently, is among them. It was announced the decision to invite to the next Wold Finals without any selections and quota accounting for 5 teams that could not come this year. In addition, it is proposed to give a +1 year to participate (without taking into account any other requirements) to all teams that could not arrive completely.

• The next Finals will be held in Beijing, and a year later — in Kochi (India).

Such news.

Hello CodeForces Community!

I’d like to invite you to participate in CodeChef’s global annual onsite programming contest SnackDown 2017 Qualifier which starts day after tomorrow i.e. 20th May, 2017. This time there are no restrictions on team formation (except max size of two). So, that leaves us with no reason to not take part in the contest. I am certain you will enjoy not only the exciting finale setup but also the brilliant problems.

Registrations:

You can register in a team of two or can go solo into the contest. The Online Qualifier starts at 20th May,2017.

If you are yet to register, you can do so here: https://www.codechef.com/snackdown/2017

Prizes:

Along with the cash prizes for Global Winners, there are special prizes for Best School Team, Best Girls team and Best Indian Team (the total cash prizes are worth $20,500). The winning team shall win a whooping cash prize of $10,000. Top 300 Teams In the Elimination Round will get a cool SnackDown t-shirt. Every team member of the qualifying teams for the elimination round will get a domain name from Radix registry. Certificate of Participation-All the teams advancing from the Qualifiers to further rounds will receive a digital certificate of Participation from CodeChef.

Previous Years:

Last years star-studded final was won by pattern_avoid team (Gennady Korotkevich and Borys Minaiev).

Sponsorship for onsite round:

Travel expenses of the top 25 teams: Top 15 teams will be entitled for an all expense paid trip to Mumbai. The top 15 Indian teams that arrive at the finale will be entitled for an all expense paid trip to Mumbai. (Provided that they do qualify for the onsite finale. The top 10 teams are guaranteed an entry. The next 5 Indian teams have to be in top 100 of the Elimination round to be eligible for onsite finale. See rule 4 above under Onsite Finale).

For more elaborate rules click here.

Also, taking into consideration the previous discussions regarding the timing of online elimination round of the contest, the organizers had done a poll beforehand, so as to satisfy time demands by more contestants.

I hope you like the new timings and that will enjoy the contest till the very end. That will be all from my side for now. See you all at the contest. Regards, Ciao, Siba Prasad Tripathy (manvscode)

Hello everyone!

This Saturday May 20, 21:05 MSK rated Codeforces Round #415 takes place.

As for our previous round 384, the problems were set by Kiril kefaa Gulin and Yura hloya_ygrt Shilyaev. And this time Daniil Melnik Melnichenko joined us! Many thanks to coordinator Alex netman Vistyazh for help in preparations of the round, and also to Mike MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov for Codeforces and Polygon systems.

While everyone is waiting for second half of "SKAM" series season, we offer you to solve problems, main characters of which would be stunning girl Noora and well-known to you from 794F - Leha and security system hacker Leha!

As always, participants of both divisions will be given 5 problems and 2 hours to solve them. Scoring will be announced before the round.

We hope you'll like our round! I wish everyone good luck and high rating!

UPD: Please pay attention that round was rescheduled.

UPD2: Scoring in each division is standart 500 — 1000 — 1500 — 2000 — 2500

UPD3: We are extremely sorry about the issue with problem C, but since it affected not many participants, round remains rated. At the same time, we can remove your unnecessary submissions and if you were affected, we can make round unrated for you. Please contact KAN with this question.

UPD4: Congratulations to the winners! Editorial will be posted tomorrow.

Div1:

1. Radewoosh

2. izrak

3. mnbvmar

4. ershov.stanislav

5. V--o_o--V

6. Um_nik

7. Arterm

Div2:

1. polygonia

2. Delsin

3. utsav.delhi2

4. Cypi

5. altruist

6. Anachor

7. shadowatyy

UPD5: Editorial is available http://codeforces.com/blog/entry/52099.

Hello Codeforces!

On May 15, 18:05 MSK will be held Educational Codeforces Round 21.

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

The round will be unrated for all users and will be held on extented ACM ICPC rules. After the end of the contest you will have one day 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 30 minutes to solve them. We hope that everyone will find something interesting in this contest.

The round was prepared by Mikhail PikMike Piklyaev, Mikhail MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov and me.

Here is message from Igor Maksimov, Harbour.Space University.

I want to make an announcement of the upcoming 2nd Hello Barcelona ACM-ICPC Bootcamp that will take place in Barcelona from the 27th of September until the 4th of October 2017, in collaboration with Moscow Workshops ACM ICPC, is an opportunity for teams of different levels to prepare for successful participation in ACM ICPC.

The Bootcamp will be split in two divisions:

• Division A. Designed to prepare students to excel and win medals in the next ACM-ICPC World Finals.
• Division B. Division B. Designed to help teams prepare for the next season of ACM ICPC Regionals and international competitions. This is an appropriate introduction for teams and students new to the world of ACM ICPC and competitive programming competitions in general. The Division B curriculum features thematic lectures and contests.

Harbour.space University introduce the video about the 1st ACM-ICPC Programming Bootcamp held in February, 2017.

Take a part of the upcoming 2nd Hello Barcelona ACM-ICPC Bootcamp that will take place in Barcelona from the 27th of September until the 5th of October 2017.

More information →

Good luck to everyone!

UPD: Editorial is out.

Ready, steady, go!

It's time to find out who the top 50 participants to compete in the Final Round of Russian Code Cup 2017 are. We invite everyone qualified to take part in the Elimination Round this Sunday, May 14, 2017 at 13-00 Moscow Time. Round length is 2 hours. We invite you to russiancodecup.ru, and wish you good luck!