Hello Codeforces,

Manthan, Codefest 16 will take place on Friday 26th February, 2016 10:35PM IST with a duration of 2.5 hours. The round is rated and consists of 8 problems.

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering is conducting Codefest from 25th-28th February. Manthan( मंथन in Hindi, meaning Brainstorming), the algorithmic programming contest under the banner of Codefest, is being held as a special Codeforces round. The round follows regular Codeforces rules. The prizes for Manthan are being sponsored by Walmart Labs.

The round is prepared by One_touch_finish, mkrjn99, FoolForCS, IITianUG and code_note.

We express our heartiest thanks to GlebsHP and AlexFetisov for their help in preparing the contest and MikeMirzayanov for the awesome Codeforces and Polygon platforms!

Prizes:

Don't forget to register for Manthan at our website also to be eligible for prizes.

Overall 1st place: ₹25,000 Overall 2nd place: ₹15,000 Overall 3rd place: ₹10,000

1st place in India: ₹15,000

1st place in IIT(BHU) Varanasi: ₹4,000 1st place in freshman year, IIT(BHU) Varanasi: ₹1,000

About Codefest: Citrix presents Codefest is the annual coding festival of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT (BHU) Varanasi, which is held online and is open to participation by all! Register on the Codefest website now! Free .tech domain for everyone who registers on the Codefest Website. Total prizes worth ₹450,000/- up for grabs with events covering domains from Math, Machine Learning Cryptography and Capture The Flag style competitions. Go to the Codefest website to find out more!

Update: The editorials have been posted: http://codeforces.com/blog/entry/43392

From 26 of March to 2 of April 2016 the Moscow Pre-Finals ACM ICPC Workshop is going to be held at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Registration form.

The event is an international student training camp that is aimed at preparing competitive programming teams to ACM ICPC World Finals 2016 and contests of the next season. The schedule features six training days and with daily contests, problem analyses, lectures, upsolving time, evening sports and other leisure activities, and one free day. The official language is English.

The Workshop will be based on the one and a half divisions scheme. (similar to the scheme of Moscow International Workshop ACM ICPC). The first division is for teams that passed into World Finals and for teams with the same level, the second one — for teams willing to practice for the future season.

The participation fee is 19000 rubles per participant for Russian students or $360 per participant for non-Russian students. This cost includes the curriculum, meals and accomodation at the MIPT campus, as well as the sports and travel programme for weekends.

Participants and teams that are willing to take part in the training need to pass the preliminary registration until 1 March, 2016. For any occuring questions, leave messages on the organizing committee email: [email protected].

Information site: http://it-edu.mipt.ru/ru/spring_training_2016. The Workshop is organized by the universities MIPT and ITMO.

Hello, Codeforces!

I have the pleasure to invite you to the round #343 which is going to take place on Saturday! This round is consisted of 5 problems and you have 2 hours (as usual) to solve them.

The problemsetters are Mohammad Amin Vahedinia (Me) (MrNull), Daneshvar Amrollahi (dkjsfkhg) and Alireza Tofighi (ATofighi). We would also like to thank Alireza Tofighi (ATofighi) and Ali Asadi (aliasadiiii) for testing this round and Ali Bahjati (LiTi) for helping us preparing this round.

We thank Gleb Evstropov (GlebsHP) for his help in preparing the contest, Maria Belova (Delinur) for translating the statements into Russian, and, of course, MikeMirzayanov for unique Codeforces and Polygon platforms.

This contest's Hero is Famile Door and his friends who are preparing his birthday party!

UPDATE 1: Scoring Distribution is 500 — 1000 — 1750 — 2000 — 2500

UPDATE 2: Editorial is ready HERE

UPDATE 3: System Testing is finished you can see the standings here: standings

Congrats to the div2 Winners:

1. rakhashov.maksat

2. DarthMaul

3. TakeTheAegisIDontNeedIt

4. ykaya

5. abcdef6199

Also congrats to the div1 Winners:

1. Um_nik

2. anta

3. Nerevar

4. kmjp

5. vintage_Vlad_Makeev

Best of luck to everyone!

Hello, Codeforces!

Educational Codeforces Round 8 will take place on 19 February 2016 at 18:00 MSK for the first and the second divisions. You can read about educational rounds here and here. I hope that the high density of contests on Codeforces will not startle you and you will participate in ER8.

<The phrase about simple problems is added in the end>

The round will be unrated for all users and it will be held with extented ACM ICPC rules. You will have two hours to solve six problems. After that you will have one day to hack any solution you want. You will have access to copy any solution and test it locally.

If you have ideas for some problems or maybe already prepared problems that you can't use in rounds or official competitions, you can write to me.

It seems that it is harder to invent interesting simple problems (like A and B) than difficult ones. So don't be afraid to suggest interesting simple or very simple tasks.

</The phrase about simple problems is added in the end>

This time (for the first time) the problemset was totally suggested by Codeforces users. The problem А suggested by user unprost. The problem B was taken form the problems sent by Bayram Berdiyev bayram, Allanur Shiriyev Allanur, Bekmyrat Atayev Bekmyrat.A. The problem D suggested by Kareem Mohamed Kareem_Mohamed (but I made it more difficult to make it more interesting for you :-)). The problem E sent Ali Ahmadi Kuzey. The problems C and F are suggested by Kamil Debowski Errichto.

Thanks a lot to them and all others who are sending the problems or just ideas of the problems!

This time the problems wasn't prepared only by me (Edvard Davtyan). Thanks a lot to Kamil Debowski Errichto who not only suggested the problems C and F, but also prepared them. Thanks to Maria Belova Delinur for checking the English statements. Also thanks a lot to Ali Ahmadi Kuzey who helped me with testing of some problems.

A few words about the problems: A) Easy problem with the long statement; B) I hope you will not write hard solution; C) It's interesting; D) It's a little technical, but contains very useful technique; E) I like this problem; F) Very cool problem if you will not solve during the contest I recommend to solve it in practice.

Good luck and have fun!

UPD1: The first phase of the contest finished. Hacks started. The editorial is ready.

By the reason that all the problems of Errichto are about a bears, below you can see the illustration for the problem C (it seems Limak is the leftmost):

Hello, Codeforces!

“Experimental Educational Round: VolBIT Formulas Blitz” will take place on February 18, 2016 at 18:00 MSK. This time the problemset is recommended for Div.2 participants.

The round will be unrated for all users and it will be held according to the standard ACM-ICPC rules. You will have 180 minutes (three hours) to solve 18 problems. There will be no open hacks phase after the round.

Our main target audience is beginners and Div. 2 members. All offered problems can be solved without conditional constructs and without loops. Only formulas are required. Assignments and functions can be used to reduce code duplication.

The topics of the problems are:

• combinatorics
• geometry
• game theory
• sequences
• other

The round is created as a part of Vologda BIT event, also as part of this event “Contest programming from zero in Java” webinars were held devoted to the topics listed above. Recordings of the webinars are available on YouTube (in Russian).

The round was prepared by me, Fyodor Menshikov mfv, Igor Andrianov igand and Oleg Strekalovsky OSt. Special thanks to Maria Belova Delinur for bugfixing the English statements and of course to MikeMirzayanov for Codeforces platform and Polygon. Polygon made our checkers and tests for this contest better.

UPD: The editorial is complete.

Hello,

As you might remember, CodeCraft 2016 was held online on the university's platform on 12th Feb 2016(find announcement, results). CodeCraft is an 5 hours ACM-ICPC style contest for individuals which is organised every year by IIIT Hyderabad. We don't have resources to keep our platform online for whole year, so we think GYM contest is a good option to create an archive and help people train better.

I invite you to GYM Replay of the contest to be held on 21st Feb 2016 1400 MSK in GYM. There will be 12 problems and duration 5.5 hours(as was original contest).

There are some really interesting problems in contest. In general, all participants would be able to find something that captivates their interest. For a better gradient, the level is a letter higher than last years contest. Also, you'll be able to compete with ghost participants(i.e. participants who actually participated in original contest).

Detailed editorials will be uploaded once the GYM contest is over.

Good luck and have fun!

UPD: Editorial

Hello everyone! The first round of the 8VC Venture Cup will be held on Saturday, February 13th at 12:35PM EST. ecnerwala and I are the problem setters. We want to thank GlebsHP for his help in preparing the contest, Delinur for translating the problems, and MikeMirzayanov for creating the Codeforces platform

The contest is for competitors in both divisions and contains seven problems. The scoring distribution is as follows:

500 — 750 — 1000 — 1500 — 2000 — 2500 — 3000

The contest will be slightly longer than usual — two and a half hours. The top 200 contestants will advance to the final round, and the top 20 local finishers will be invited to Woodside, CA to compete onsite. Good luck!

UPD: System testing is now over. Congratulations to the top contestants:

1. Petr
2. jqdai0815
3. ilyakor
4. bmerry
5. Errichto

The top 200 contestants will advance to the final round in two weeks. Congratulations!

The editorial can be found here.

Hey Codeforces!

I’ve worked with Addepar and the broader 8 | family of companies in Silicon Valley throughout 2014 and 2015, and it’s been an excellent experience. I would encourage everyone in the community to learn more about the great work that these companies are doing and I’m happy to announce that 8 | Partners will be hosting the 8 | VC VentureCup on Codeforces! It’ll be a fun contest and I’ve worked on the problems along with a few competitive programmers in our network. The contest will begin on February 13 and consist of two rounds.

ABOUT 8 | PARTNERS

8 | Partners, which consists of Joe Lonsdale (co-founder of Palantir) and his core team from Formation | 8, is a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that invests in industry-transforming technology companies. The team's investment portfolio includes companies such as those featured below, and a host of other top technology platforms that leverage modern algorithms and data science to power their core business processes.

SELECT 8 | FEATURED COMPANIES

If you’re interested in job opportunities with these companies or others in the 8VC portfolio, contact us below!

THE CONTEST

The contest will occur in two rounds:

Round 1 is online and takes place on February 13. Round 1 follows regular Codeforces rules and consists of 7 problems. For this round, the complexity of the problems will be comparable to a regular Codeforces round. There are no eligibility restrictions to participate in the round.

Round 2 takes place on February 28, consists of 5 problems, and uses regular Codeforces rules. The complexity of the problems is higher than a regular Codeforces round. We will invite the top 20 local finishers in Round 1 to Woodside, CA to compete in Round 2. In addition, we will invite the top 200 overall finishers to compete online.

PRIZES

• Overall 1st place — $2500
• Overall 2nd place — $1000
• Overall 3rd-5th places — $500 each
• Overall 1-50th place — t-shirts with 8 | VC and company logos
• Local Winner — Dinner with Joe Lonsdale (founder of Palantir, Addepar, & 8 | Partners) and other Silicon Valley technologists
• Local top finishers — Opportunity to meet with leadership from 8 | VC portfolio companies

Good luck!

Hello, Codeforces!

Educational Codeforces Round 7 will take place on 10 February 2016 at 18:00 MSK for the first and second divisions. You can read about educational rounds here and here.

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The round will be unrated for all users and it will be held with extented ACM ICPC rules. You will have two hours to solve six problems. After that you will have one day to hack any solution you want. You will have access to copy any solution and test it locally.

If you have ideas for some problems or maybe already prepared problems that you can't use in rounds or official competitions, you can write to me.

</This paragraph was modified last time>

Thanks a lot to Aleksa Plavsic allllekssssa who suggested the problems D, E and Ivan Popovich NVAL for the problem F. Also thanks to Mohammad Nematollahi Deemo who suggested the problem that was highly simplified and will be under the letter C.

The round was prepared by me, Edvard Davtyan. Thanks a lot to MikeMirzayanov we invented the problems A, B and C together. Also thanks to Maria Belova Delinur for checking the English statements, Aleksa Plavsic allllekssssa and Ivan Popovich for testing the problems.

We tried to make the problems easy but interesting. I think that the problems is mathematized a little. I hope you will enjoy the problems!

Good luck and have fun!

P.S.: The Codeforces Educational Rounds was recognized by Snarknews as the best project in competitive programming in 2015 (the picture below is the prize).

UPD1: The first phase of the contest is ended. You can hack any other solution.

UPD2: The editorial is ready.

UPD3: The round is over, the results is final.