Hello Codeforces!

I have the pleasure of inviting you to participate in Codeforces Round 960 (Div. 2), which will start on Jul/20/2024 17:35 (Moscow time).

The problems were prepared and authored by wuhudsm.

You will be given 6 problems and 2 hours to solve, one of the problems is divided into two subtasks.

One of the problems may be interactive. So, please refer to the guide on interactive problems if you are unfamiliar with them.

I would like to thank:

• Akulyat for coordinating the round;
• BurnedChicken for the only LGM testing;
• physics0523, liympanda, culver0412, Dominater069, TheScrasse, Andreasyan,satyam343 for GM and IGM testing;
• Error_Yuan, IanISam, Little_Sheep_Yawn, NemanjaSo2005, aufannn, IceKnight1093, and pavlekn for M and IM testing;
• Muhammad-Saram, vikram108, PROELECTRO444, htetgm, n0sk1ll, and AkibAzmain for CM testing;
• kHarsh3715, beyondpluto, larush, AdityaTakkar, Banis,Abhishek_Srivastava, Yugandhar_Master, chromate00, and astilate for Expert testing;
• md_nihal, HexShift, and dazlersan1 for Specialist testing;
• yash_04, and ishaandas1 for the Pupil testing;
• -2.71, and Binary_Thinker for the Newbie testing;
• tibinyte for the Illegal newbie lying face testing;
• MikeMirzayanov for the great Codeforces and Polygon platforms;
• CHATGPT for solving $$$0$$$ problems : ) ;
• And at last but not least, You for participating in the round!

Good luck and have fun!

Score distribution: $$$500 - 1000 - 1500 - 1750 - (2000+750) - 3000$$$

Hello, Codeforces!

I am pleased to invite you to participate in Codeforces Round 959 sponsored by NEAR (Div. 1 + Div. 2), which will be held at Jul/18/2024 17:35 (Moscow time). You will be given 8 problems and 2 hours to solve them. It will be rated for all participants.

The theme of the round is computer games!

Tasks for the round were prepared by EJIC_B_KEDAX, zwezdinv, green_gold_dog, molney, azureglow and Sokol080808.

We would like to thank everyone who assisted in the preparation of this round:

1. Our coordinator 74TrAkToR for his useful advices and help in preparing the tasks!

2. Qwerty1232 for red interest in testing the round.

3. turmax for the red-black testing.

4. makrav, arbuzick, Anonymous_Noob, Hyperbolic for red testing.

5. ivan.alexeev, alenenok, Kihihihi, azureglow, pakhomovee, plagues, IzhtskiyTimofey, FelixArg, XaRDKoDblCH, meowcneil, AndreyPavlov, djm03178, MylnikovNikolay for yellow testing.

6. Mr_Ell, krigare, marzipan, TimVen74, coder8080, MichsSS, PieArmy, tvladm, Vladosiya, bashem for purple testing.

7. Algolagon, PoDuReMaN, zarubin, IgorA, leoper, kovir_aleksey_korroy, Kosya, Vamperox for blue testing.

8. MakGeoKar, viteli for cyan testing.

9. Sonya_2009, ishaandas1 for green testing.

10. MikeMirzayanov for the excellent Codeforces and Polygon systems.

I also congratulate green_gold_dog on his birthday and wish him good luck on IOI.

This round is supported by NEAR!

NEAR was founded in 2017 by Illia Polosukhin, one of the creators of Transformers, and Alex Skidanov as an attempt to build an artificial system capable of solving competitive programming problems. You can read more about that attempt here.

Ultimately, NEAR pivoted into building a blockchain protocol, which it launched in 2020.

This year, NEAR started NEAR.AI, a new lab with a mission to build AI systems that are open and available to everyone, instead of being controlled by a few mega-corporations.

One of the areas of focus is making models capable of reasoning reliably, and for that, competitive programming problems provide a great environment. To help us build it, we invite all members of the Codeforces community with a rating of Specialist or higher (1400+) to help us annotate step-by-step explanations of solutions to competitive programming problems. We want to annotate a very large set of problems of all difficulty levels, and pay relatively high rewards in NEAR per annotation. You can join the system following this: https://codeforces.com/settings/near-connect-account

Thanks to NEAR for providing the following prizes to the contestants:

• 1st place: 512 Ⓝ;
• 2nd and 3rd places: 256 Ⓝ each;
• 4th to 7th places: 128 Ⓝ each;
• and so on;
• 512th to 1023th places: 1 Ⓝ each.

Score distribution: $$$500-1000-1250-2000-2000-2500-2750-3750$$$

Good luck!

UPD: Editorial

UPD2: Congratulations for the winners:

1. tourist

2. ecnerwala

3. orzdevinwang

4. Egor

5. jiangly

Hi.

In Spring semester, I conducted a short course titled “Dynamic Programming” in SPbSU. To complete the course, the students solved many training problems, and also prepared their own problem in Polygon.

For the majority of the students, it was the first problem they authored. Nevertheless, the result looks cute. A couple problems went to local contests. From the remaining ones, I composed two trainings and put them on Codeforces. The trainings are set at the following time:

• first: Dynamic Programming, SPbSU 2024, Training 1, starts on Jul/06/2024 11:30 (Moscow time), duration: 3 hours (statements, results, tutorial)
• second: Dynamic Programming, SPbSU 2024, Training 2, starts on Jul/07/2024 11:30 (Moscow time), duration: 3 hours (statements, results, tutorial)

Each training contains both easy and hard problems. The majority of the problems are intended for training. I think orange participants and below will have enough problems for the duration. The problems go in randomized order.

Good luck!

Hello Codeforces!

I am glad to invite you to Codeforces Round 958 (Div. 2) which will start on Jul/15/2024 17:35 (Moscow time).

The contest will last for 2 hours with 6 tasks for you to solve. The contest will only be rated for those with a rating not higher than 2099, but high-rated competitive programmers are also more than welcome to participate out of competition.

The score distribution is: 500-1000-1000-2000-2500-3500

The contest will be impossible without the help from:

• 244mhq for wonderful coordination.
• gyh20, Dominater069, Um_nik, A_G, omeganot, tkl2006, harsh__h, oursaco, Hori, kostia244, ishaandas1, maomao90, waidenf, Stefan2417, MisterReaper for testing.
• MikeMirzayanov for Codeforces and Polygon.

Good luck and have fun!

Update: editorial

Update: video editorial

Hi everyone!

A week ago, the 2nd edition of the Western European Olympiad in Informatics was held in London, UK, and now we've brought the problems for everyone to solve on Codeforces! The mirror contest will be held on the Codeforces Gym on Sunday $$$14^{\text{th}}$$$ July 2024 at 10am UTC+1 (check your timezone here!).

Please don't participate in the mirror contest if you have participated or seen the problems!

The Western European Olympiad in Informatics is an individual contest for top secondary school students from Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and United Kingdom.

The contest consists of a single day; contestants are given 5 hours to solve 4 problems of various difficulty. Each problem is worth 100 points, distributed into multiple subtasks with different constraints that allow the participant to earn partial scores. For testing, the IOI grading format is used, where the participant receives full feedback about the execution of the solution on all tests during the contest. C++ is the only allowed language in this contest.

We hope you enjoy the contest!

• WEOI 2024 Committee & Contributors

FelixMP hugopm I_love_MikhailRubinchik ScarletS veluca93, Ahmadsm2005 Bakry erekle

Hello, Codeforces! We are pleased to invite you to Codeforces Round 957 (Div. 3), which will be held on Jul/11/2024 17:35 (Moscow time).

The round will be hosted by rules of educational rounds (extended ICPC). You will be offered 7 problems, which I with Noobish_Monk, ErnKor, Kmes and ArSarapkin have prepared for you.

The rules of the third division are:

• The penalty for a wrong submission is 10 minutes.

• 12-hour phase of open hacks after the end of the round (hacks do not give additional points)

• after the end of the open hacking phase, all solutions will be tested on the updated set of tests, and the ratings recalculated.

Reminding you, that only trusted participants of the third division will be included in the official standings table. This is a forced measure for combating unsporting behavior. To qualify as a trusted participant of the third division, you must:

• take part in at least five 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 (or you are a newcomer/unrated), then the round will be rated for you.

We would like to thank everybody, who helped in preparing this round:

• Our coordinators, Gornak40 and Vladosiya for a wonderful coordination!

• MikeMirzayanov for wonderful Polygon and charming Codeforces!

• Vladosiya for deleting the lore in almost all of the problems...

• Our numerous testers: natalina, FairyWinx, Kosya, ErnKor, 74TrAkToR, ArSarapkin, mainyutin, senjougaharin, gaiercop, mikeamir0310, Maksim_Musikhin, Arina77, artimovich.ko, main-scobik, savanzh, petr_davydov, Pronkin_dv, kalita.georgy, kuznetsov.da, s_w_a_n_i_k, Keopint, VolkovMA, kuewa, cry, Harsh_kunwar, Kon567889, dshindov, OAleksa, SajidAbdullah, fishcurry, george_the_piggy, k1sara and many others, who didn't mention their handle.

• Special thanks for KEFedorov, for inviting more than 35 testers.

Good luck!

UPD1 After the end of the round, Shayan will broadcast the solutions, a recording will also be available, but we will also prepare a textual editorial.

UPD2 Video Discussion by Shayan

UPD3 Video of solving the round + Editorial by the "winner" of this round, neal

UPD4 Editorial.

UPD5 Congratulations for the winners:

Official:

1. siiiuuuuuuu

2. shil_pelmen

3. xiojoy

4. _Separation

5. son_and_moon

Official + Unofficial:

1. tourist

2. neal

3. Dominater069

4. abc864197532

5. hitonanode

Hello, Codeforces!

NJACK — the Computer Science Club of IIT Patna is excited to invite you to Codeforces Round #956 (Div. 2) and ByteRace 2024 under Celesta — the annual Techno-Management Fest of IIT Patna.

The contest will take place on Jul/07/2024 17:35 (Moscow time). This round will be rated for participants with rating lower than 2100.

Many thanks to all the people who made this round possible:

• The problems were authored and prepared by AwakeAnay, ShivanshJ, TimeWarp101, DC17, BlazingDragon, Swap-nil, Pew_Pew. and me.
• Special thanks to ScarletS for coordinating the round (and not killing me)!
• A big shoutout and thankyou to Alexdat2000 for providing the Russian translations.
• Thanks 2.0 to ScarletS for having improved the experience of other CF users over the years.
• Special mention to mayankfrost and quantau for their guidance and moral support.
• A_G, Andreasyan, maomao90, CSQ31, fishy15, eggag32, MateoCV, Evirir, bananasaur, satyam343, jat.arc2004, chromate00, hashman, Nishant_K, Ali_cs7, Patel45, Newtech66, CIXTEEN, braman, 7oSkaaa, Edward4762, LucaLucaM, waidenf, yoyo0869, priyanshu.p and ishaandas1 for testing and providing detailed feedback that improved the quality and balance of the round significantly.
• Our lord and saviour MikeMirzayanov for great systems Codeforces and Polygon.

You will have 2 hours 15 minutes to solve 7 problems.

UPD: Scoring Distribution: 500 — 1000 — 1250 — 1750 — 2000 — 2500 — 3000

UPD: Editorial

UPD: Congratulations to the winners!

Top 5 (Div 2):
1. _worst_
2. Shirayuki_Noa
3. cynNYCal
4. cocae
5. _furina

Top 5 (Div 1):
1. neal
2. jiangly
3. BurnedChicken
4. turmax
5. Sugar_fan

About Celesta

Celesta is the annual Techno-Management Fest of IIT Patna. Celesta conducts a variety of events in various technical domains. Some of these are open and free for all, with exciting prizes and goodies for the winners!

You can head over to our website and check it out for yourself!

We have had the 2023 edition of ByteRace hosted on Codeforces too. Feel free to have a look: Codeforces Round 845 (Div. 2) and ByteRace 2023

Good luck!

Hi, Codeforces!

We are pleased to invite you to EPIC Institute of Technology Round Summer 2024 (Div. 1 + Div. 2), which will be held on Jun/30/2024 17:35 (Moscow time). You will be given 8 problems, two of which are divided into two subtasks, and you will have 3 hours to solve them. The round will be rated for everyone.

At least one of the problems will be interactive, so please read the guide for interactive problems if you are not familiar with it.

We would like to thank:

• errorgorn for coordinating the round.
• Geothermal, turmax, noimi, SomethingNew, feecIe6418, Endagorion, glebustim, zeliboba, thanhchauns2, zengminghao, mwen, cristi_tanase, milind0110, CSQ31, Evirir, AkiLotus, htetgm, TrendBattles, GreatEagle, chromate00, Valenz, Vamperox, priyanshu.p, DOCUTEE, Tran_Thi_Thanh_Van, and tibinyte for testing the round and providing useful feedback.
• MikeMirzayanov for Codeforces and Polygon.

We hope you'll like the problemset!

UPD: The score distribution is 250 — 750 — 1000 — 1500 — 1750 — (2000 — 500) — (3000 — 2000) — 5000

UPD2: Editorial

UPD3: Congratulations to the winners!

1. Radewoosh
2. ecnerwala
3. tourist
4. Benq
5. gamegame
6. ksun48
7. maroonrk
8. JoesSR_
9. Maksim1744
10. ugly2333

And now, a few words from today's sponsor!

About EPIC Institute of Technology

EPIC Institute of Technology is an innovative educational project, driven by the Deltix team under the EPAM Systems umbrella. As part of EPIC — EPAM Product Innovation Center, we aim to cultivate the brightest minds and prepare them for a future in cutting-edge technology projects.

Why EPIC:

EPIC Institute of Technology is an accelerator for the best talents. Our students will acquire hands-on experience in one of the selected major programs, all of which are highly demanded right now on top projects, together with the fundamental knowledge, so indispensable for real professionals. Successful graduates will have a unique chance to jumpstart their career on the most challenging and interesting EPAM projects worldwide. You will join the community of intelligent and driven individuals and have an honor to work with and learn from them.

Here are the answers to the most common questions:

How much does education cost?

EPIC Institute of Technology is completely free. There are no fees to register for exams, tuition fees or any other hidden liabilities. The only restriction for getting into EPIC Institute of Technology is age. You must be older than 18 years old to become a student.

How is the educational process organized?

Each program lasts exactly one year. The academic year consists of two semesters. Courses in the first semester are the same for all programs. Courses in the second semester depend on the selected major program.

During the semester, students complete homework assignments and take 2 exams—a midterm and a final. The final grade a student gets for each training course depends on the quality of completed assignments and participation in practical classes.

How will the classes be held?

Lectures will be pre-recorded and available for self-study. Practical classes will be held at the specified time according to the provided schedule. Also, students will have an access to a Discord server, where they can discuss topics of academic interest with teachers and other students.

In what language will I study?

All programs are in English.

How can I apply?

The admissions process is as follows:

1. Fill out the form on the website.

2. Take part in one of the entrance exams that will be held in our Codeforces group. You can also find past exam breakdowns there, which may help you in your preparation. Exam dates will be announced later, so stay tuned to the announcement channel and our LinkedIn group.

3. If you successfully pass the exam, you will receive an invitation email.

What will happen after graduation?

All EPIC Institute of Technology graduates will get a diploma and the best students will be offered to join, either as an intern or a full-time position, one of the hot EPAM projects where skills acquired at EPIC Institute of Technology will be demanded.

Please visit our website to learn more about EPIC Institute of Technology and the available programs. If you have any questions, you can quickly ask them in our chat.

Hello Codeforces!

The series of Educational Rounds continues thanks to the support of the Neapolis University Pafos.

On Jun/27/2024 17:35 (Moscow time) Educational Codeforces Round 167 (Rated for Div. 2) will start.

This round will be rated for the participants with rating lower than 2100. It will be held on extended ICPC rules. The penalty for each incorrect submission until the submission with a full solution is 10 minutes. 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 6 or 7 problems and 2 hours to solve them.

The problems were invented and prepared by Adilbek adedalic Dalabaev, Ivan BledDest Androsov, Maksim Neon Mescheryakov, Roman Roms Glazov and me. Also, huge thanks to Mike MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov for great systems Polygon and Codeforces.

Good luck to all the participants!

UPD: Editorial is out

Hello, Codeforces!

It's been a long journey, and I'm finally pleased to invite you to participate in our Codeforces Round 955 (Div. 2, with prizes from NEAR!), which will take place on Jun/25/2024 17:35 (Moscow time).

This round will be rated for all participants with a rating is below 2100. Participants with higher ratings can participate out of competition.

During the round, you will need to solve 6 problems. You will have 2 hours to solve them.

The problems for the round were prepared by nik1998, egor4444ik, iamdimonis and me.

We sincerely thank everyone who provided invaluable assistance in preparing this round:

• Our insightful coordinator 74TrAkToR for excellent communication, helpful advice and assistance in problem preparation!
• Kolychestiy for improving one of the problems.
• EJIC_B_KEDAX, A_G, zwezdinv, Dominater069, culver0412, TheScrasse for red testing.
• Kolychestiy, CSQ31, exhausted, azureglow, harsh__h, meowcneil for yellow testing.
• onlytrall, veleboks, zarubin, robotolev, TimVen74, Vladosiya for purple testing.
• Alenochka, LightSky, Chugunov_Alexander, slash0t, PoDuReMaN, katzi, Vamperox, redpanda for blue testing.
• Matrosk1n, bessarab, dariasaligina, GRIVA_, viteli, dazlersan1 for cyan testing.
• Kirillar2, Sonya_2009, dan00ile for green testing.
• venlesN for gray testing.
• MikeMirzayanov for the wonderful Codeforces and Polygon systems.

We are pleased to announce that NEAR has supported the round!

NEAR was founded in 2017 by Illia Polosukhin, one of the creators of Transformers, and Alex Skidanov as an attempt to build an artificial system capable of solving competitive programming problems. You can read more about that attempt here.

Ultimately, NEAR pivoted into building a blockchain protocol, which it launched in 2020.

This year, NEAR started NEAR.AI, a new lab with a mission to build AI systems that are open and available to everyone, instead of being controlled by a few mega-corporations.

One of the areas of focus is making models capable of reasoning reliably, and for that, competitive programming problems provide a great environment. To help us build it, we invite all the Russian-speaking members of the Codeforces community with a rating of Specialist or higher (1400+) to help us annotate step-by-step explanations of solutions to competitive programming problems. We want to annotate a very large set of problems of all difficulty levels, and pay relatively high rewards in NEAR per annotation. Don't speak Russian but speak English? Stay tuned here, we will be launching the same project for English-speaking people very soon, and will likely sponsor another round when it happens.

The round also features prizes in NEAR. Participants who rank in the top 16 will receive Ⓝ 16 each. The next 32 participants in the overall ranking (including unofficial participants) will receive Ⓝ 8 each. The following 64 participants will receive Ⓝ 4 each; the subsequent 128 participants will receive Ⓝ 2 each, and finally, the next 256 participants will receive Ⓝ 1 each.

Additionally, 64 random participants from the top 4096 in the overall ranking will each receive Ⓝ 4.

Score distribution: $$$500\,—\,1000\,—\,1000\,—\,1750\,—\,2500\,—\,3000$$$

Wishing everyone good luck and high ratings!

UPD: Let's continue the series of announcements with a photo of the authors :)

UPD 2: Editorial!

UPD 3: Congratulations to the winners!

Div 1:

1. tourist

2. jiangly

3. SSerxhs

4. kizen

5. potato167

Div 2:

1. lunchbox

2. _JiaY19_

3. gxy001

4. _DongY19_

5. Muelsyse_sep005

UPD 4: Wonderful video analysis of A-E tasks. Thank you, Shayan!