Hey, hi Codeforces!

It's mesanu, flamestorm and me and we are very excited to invite you to Codeforces Round 871 (Div. 4)! It starts on May/06/2023 17:35 (Moscow time).

We worked swiftly to tailor the problems for this contest, so we hope you will enjoy them! We tried to make the statements short, epic and concise.

The format of the event will be identical to Div. 3 rounds:

• 5-8 tasks;
• ICPC rules with a penalty of 10 minutes for an incorrect submission;
• 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
• by default, only "trusted" participants are shown in the results table (but the rating will be recalculated for all with initial ratings less than 1400 or you are an unrated participant/newcomer).

We urge participants whose rating is 1400+ not to register new accounts for the purpose of narcissism but to take part unofficially. Please do not spoil the contest for the official participants.

Only trusted participants of the fourth 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 fourth 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 1400 or higher in the rating.

Regardless of whether you are a trusted participant of the fourth division or not, if your rating is less than 1400 (or you are a newcomer/unrated), then the round will be rated for you.

Many thanks to all testers: RedstoneGamer22, tibinyte, sandry24, jampm, haochenkang, qwexd, Vladosiya, _Vanilla_, Phantom_Performer, ScarletS, NintsiChkhaidze, keta_tsimakuridze, Dominater069, Gheal, Bakry!

And thanks to Vladosiya for russian statement translations!

We suggest reading all of the problems and hope you will find them interesting!

Good Luck and have fun!!

Are you ready for it?

UPD: Editorial is out!

Hi, Codeforces!

I am glad to invite you to take part in Codeforces Round #870 (Div. 2), which will take place on May/05/2023 17:35 (Moscow time). The round will be rated for the participants with rating lower than 2100. Participants from the first division are also welcomed to take part out of competition.

You will be given 2 hours to solve 6 problems. All the problems were authored and prepared by me. One of the problems is interactive, please read the guide of interactive problems before the contest.

I would also like to thank:

• Akulyat for excellent coordination and help improving the problems!
• arzhantsev64, InversionSpaces, Aleks5d, PO3OBAR_Bblnb, DanWallgun, Dominater069, AlperenT, Sert, sdl, Daryusz, fishy15 for testing the round and giving valuable feedback.
• Special thanks to Sert for finding a crucial bug in one of the problems!
• MikeMirzayanov for great Codeforces and Polygon platforms!

Scoring: $$$500-1000-1500-2000-2750-3250$$$.

Don't forget to read ALL the problems. I wish you good luck and high ratings!

I tried my best to create some good problems and clear short statements, so I hope you'll enjoy the round and find a problem you like :)

UPD: Editorial

UPD: Winners and First-to-solve

Div1 + Div2

Div2

First-to-solve

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since I set problems for Codeforces competitions, so I hope that you had sufficient opportunity to rest before dealing with my problems again. Oh, no-no, there's nothing to worry about! Probably! I promise!

jeroenodb and adamant (that's me!) are happy to invite you to Codeforces Round 869 (Div. 1) and Codeforces Round 869 (Div. 2) which are going to take place at Apr/29/2023 17:35 (Moscow time). Participants with a rating strictly lower than 1900 will participate in Division 2, while participants with a rating of at least 1900 will participate in Division 1.

All the problems are prepared by us, and we would like to thank:

• dario2994 for rejecting sufficient amount of problems for me to be able to set Oleksandr Kulkov Contest 3, for thorough and dedicated coordination and for suggesting one of the problem ideas for the round.
• izban, gamegame, tfg, fedimser, Endagorion, nor, rivalq, errorgorn, antontrygubO_o, redpanda, Runtime-Terr0r, izhang, Everule, NemanjaSo2005, ak2006, ayhan23, SlavicG, hashman, jqdai0815, willy108, madlogic, LeticiaFCS, tanus_era, nigus, Plurm, mathdude42, SajidZakaria, ace_loves_xq, InternetPerson10, alwyn, -is-this-fft-, DJeniUp and dorijanlendvaj for testing and/or valuable feedback and insights about the problems.
• MikeMirzayanov for Codeforces and Polygon and KAN for all his effort in coordinating coordinators :)

In both divisions, you will have 2 hours and 15 minutes to solve 6 problems.

Score distribution in both divisions: 500 — 1000 — 1250 — 2000 — 2500 — 3000.

Good luck and have fun!

The editorial is out.

Congratulations to the winners!

Div. 1:

1. A_G
2. tourist
3. ecnerwala
4. Rewinding
5. QAQAutoMaton

Div. 2:

1. RGB_ICPC4
2. elizazh
3. lintd
4. -LAP-
5. STOC

Hello!

On Apr/27/2023 17:35 (Moscow time) we will host Codeforces Round 868 (Div. 2).

The problems were written and prepared by Igor_Parfenov.

I would like to thank everyone who made this round possible:

• awoo, madlogic, _Israel_, Vectors_Master, BabaVoss, AlperenT, FzArK, Dominater069, m0t9_, rui_er, aryan12, purp4ever, MaherSefo, Shawerma, maomao90, satyam343, errorgorn, Glemhel for testing the round and providing feedback to the problems
• adedalic, for coordination of the round
• MikeMirzayanov, for Codeforces and Polygon platforms
• All participants

This round will be rated for participants with rating lower than 2100.

You will have 2 hours to solve 6 problems.

Score distribution: 500 — 1000 — 1250 — 2000 — 2000 — 2500.

Good luck!

UPD: Editorial

UPD: Congratulations to the Winners!

Div.2:

1. Low-Deny-Cup

2. psz6

3. BULBULBUL

4. Epyset

5. chenguoyi

Div.1 + Div.2:

1. SSRS_

2. maspy

3. Rubikun

4. heno239

5. Crystally

Hello, Codeforces!

UPD: Challenge is over. You can find results in this post

We are happy to invite you to an exciting online event: ICPC 2023 Online Spring Challenge powered by Huawei, which will start on April 13, 2023, 11:00 UTC.

In this Challenge, you will have a unique chance:

• to compete during 14 days online challenge
• to solve 1 exciting problem prepared by Huawei
• to win amazing prizes from Huawei!

As a special prize, Huawei together with ICPC Foundation will provide the travel trip to the 46th Annual ICPC World Finals in a guest role!

Everyone is welcome to participate. It is an individual competition.

ICPC 2023 Online Spring Challenge powered by Huawei (open to the public):

Start: April 13, 2023 11:00 UTC (UTC+0)
Finish: April 27, 2023 10:59 UTC (UTC+0)

We hope you'll enjoy this complex yet very exciting Challenge!

Problem

This time we’re delighted to provide you with a new challenging problem from Huawei — Buffer Sharing in Multi-Tenant Database Environment, which is prepared by Huawei 2012 Labs and Huawei Cloud Computing.

Nowadays everyone uses databases directly or indirectly. For example, databases of service providers store shopping records, transaction records, or ticket purchase records. During this challenge, you will work with the multi-tenant database, in which a single database instance is divided into multiple virtual sub-databases, serving different tenants of cloud service.

In such databases, different tenants need to be isolated from each other to prevent services from affecting each other. Therefore, buffer is considered as an important resource for management of large amount of data. When the amount of data in the database buffer reaches the maximum value, the database buffer evicts some data from the memory based on the eviction algorithm and loads new data pages from the disk. Your goal is to optimize sharing and isolation of database buffers in the multi-tenant database. While replacement algorithms considered in this contest be one of the core algorithms, we believe there are multiple approaches one can try here, and some crossover of the algorithms will also increase your chances to win!

Prizes

To be eligible for Certificates of Participation and to win prizes you are required to register at https://icpc.global/regionals/finder/Spring-Challenge-2022 by April 26th.

If you are an employee of Huawei, we invite you to participate in a competition in a special corporate scoreboard. To do this, register at the link in the secret Codeforces group. Please note that you must register even if you already have a Codeforces account, as this group has its own separate account system. Good luck!

Challenge Rules and Conditions

By participating in this Challenge, you agree to the Conditions of Participation and Challenge Rules. If you cannot access this document, please email [email protected]

Good luck, we hope this will be fun!

Update, as of April 27

Congratulations to all the participants of the ICPC 2023 Online Spring Challenge powered by Huawei!

As stated in the problem statement, the jury needs to test the latest non-zero score submissions on the final set of tests after the end of the contest. Results will be announced no later than May 1, 2023

If you registered for the Challenge by April 26th and submitted at least one response, an ICPC Certificate of Participation will be posted on your ICPC Challenge Team Record in the “Attachments” section by the end of May.

Update, as of April 29

Please ensure you register on ICPC.global using the same email as your Codeforces account no later than Fri, May 5th in order to be eligible for prizes and a Challenge certificate. If you have already registered on both platforms, please ensure your ICPC profile email matches the email used on Codeforces.

Update, as of May 1

We are glad to announce the completion of the ICPC 2023 Online Spring Challenge powered by Huawei and announce its results. Thank you very much for your interest in the competition. It was exciting for us to follow the results. We hope you enjoyed the challenges.

All tests are done, and we are glad to announce that the results in the Standings are final!

Congratulations to winners! Thanks again for your interest. We will be glad to see you in our future contests.

Hello! Codeforces Round 867 (Div. 3) will start at Apr/24/2023 17:35 (Moscow time). You will be offered 6-8 problems with expected difficulties to compose an interesting competition for participants with ratings up to 1600. However, all of you who wish to take part and have a rating of 1600 or higher, can register for the round unofficially.

The round will be hosted by rules of educational rounds (extended ICPC). Thus, solutions will be judged on preliminary tests during the round, and after the round, it will be a 12-hour phase of open hacks.

You will be given 6-8 problems and 2 hours and 15 minutes to solve them.

Note that the penalty for the wrong submission in this round 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 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, then the round will be rated for you.

Thanks to MikeMirzayanov for the platform, and Vladosiya for coordination of our work. Problems have been created and written by: diskoteka, pavlekn, playerr17, isosto.

We would like to thank: pashka, purplesyringa, Alexdat2000, I.Gleb, Serik2003, TkachDan, maksimb2008, _--, 74TrAkToR, Gornak40, ut-k8g, Rudro25, Jostic11, yorky, tolbi, AhmetKaan, Splatjov, BF_OF_Priety, vrintle, KoT_OsKaR for testing the contest and valuable feedback.

Good luck!

UPD: Editorial

Hello Codeforces!

On Apr/20/2023 17:35 (Moscow time) Educational Codeforces Round 147 (Rated for Div. 2) 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 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 and me. Also, huge thanks to Mike MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov for great systems Polygon and Codeforces.

Good luck to all the participants!

Our friends at Harbour.Space also have a message for you:

Hey Codeforces!

Are you curious about the latest AI advancements and how they impact our world? Do you want to know more about how AI-based methods, especially in Natural Language Processing, are revolutionizing the way we work and interact with technology?

Space.Talks Present: Radoslav Neychev, AI Enthusiast, Researcher, and Machine & Deep Learning Professor.

Radoslav, a top-tier data scientist with extensive experience in Deep Learning and Reinforcement learning techniques, is coming to our Harbour.Space Barcelona Campus to give a talk on this topic. If you can't make it there, you can join the conversation, as we will stream it live on our YouTube channel here.

In this Space.Talk, Radoslav will share his expertise on how AI is changing our everyday lives and why it's important for both technical and non-technical specialists to understand the basics of how AI works. Plus, he'll also answer important questions about AI research and its future implications.

Mark your calendar for Thursday, April 20th, at 12hrs CET, and join us for an engaging conversation. Whether you're an experienced tech expert or just starting to explore the world of coding, this talk is for you!

And remember that we are always looking for the best and brightest! If you want to learn from industry experts like Radoslav, check out the scholarships we are offering and build a brighter future with us!

UPD: Editorial is out

Hello Codeforces!

UPD. I_love_natalia crashed the checker by his maze with $$$10^9$$$ moves. The problem is resolved now and all of the solutions rejudged. Scoring is changed. More info

UPD 2: The official site https://buglab.ru/ was updated. See comment.

UPD 3: The checker has been speeded-up by mfv in $$$2.2$$$ times (in comparison with my checker. The new speed is equal to $$$4$$$ seconds for a $$$10^9$$$ moves in codeforces "Custom Invocation"). Current standings:

1. $$$17\cdot 10^9$$$ — sas4eka;
2. $$$14\cdot 10^9$$$ — I_love_natalia;
3. $$$6.8 \cdot 10^9$$$ — maxplus (on the buglab: $$$11.3 \cdot 10^9$$$).

UPD 4: I updated the checker: now mazes up to $$$42$$$ billions are supported before checker got TL. Time limit of checker on codeforces platform is equal to $$$1$$$ minute. I submitted the maze with number of moves equal to $$$42.015.084.960$$$ and the result has been calculated in 59799 ms. Maybe someone can calculate the answer faster?

I'm happy to invite you to an unofficial mirror of Bug Game. In this game you need to generate a $$$21 \times 31$$$ maze with the maximum number of bug's moves to get out. The bug moves not optimally and you will see a description of algorithm of its movement in the statement of this problem. Based on given algorithm you will be able to create a maze and submit it.

Privacy: your solutions (your mazes) will be visible only for mfv.

Invitation link: click here

Date: April 18, 2023, 00:00 UTC+3

Duration: 2 weeks, then upsolving and virtual participation.

Scoring: if you will be able to generate the maze with $$$X$$$ moves to get out, then your solution will get $$$\frac{x}{10^5}$$$ points.

Official Russian site of Bug Game: click here

Hello, Codeforces!

This Saturday VIII Lipetsk Team Olympiad, a competition for high school students from all over the country, will be held in Lipetsk. Maybe you participated in previous Codeforces rounds based on our problems (rounds 643 and 791).

The round will start at 15.04.2023 12:05 (Московское время) and will last for 2 hours. Please notice the unusual time. Each division will have 6 problems. The round will be held according to the Codeforces rules and will be rated for both divisions.

Problems were proposed and prepared by Um_nik, DishonoredRighteous, FairyWinx, golikovnik, teraqqq, grphil, Kon567889, TeaTime, Tikhon228 and dshindov.

I would like to thank Artyom123 for great round coordination and our testers: Ormlis, bashkort, Umi, I_LOVE_ANTON_DONBASS, Egor.Lifar, iakovlev.zakhar, Mangooste, Siberian, SomethingNew, stepanov.aa, talant, rt3, towrist, Aaeria, Alexdat2000, qxforever, Renatyss, Renedyn, sevlll777, towrist, valerikk, Tiagodfs, wiz_cs, Setsuna, ezraft, Gornak40, HunterXD, kbats183, Nathan_McKane, nik_sn, Nitelike, Tilt, ak2006, KiruxaLight, 9kin.

Of course, I would like to thank all Codeforces team for this beautiful platform!

Scoring distribution will be announced later.

I hope you will enjoy our problems. Wish you good luck and high rating!

UPD: Scoring distribution:

Div.1: 750 – 1250 – 1500 – 2000 – 2750 – 3000

Div.2: 500 – 1000 – 1750 – 2000 – 2500 – 3500

UPD: Winners!

Div 2:

• yy_chen
• dengtingyu12138
• keyurchd_11
• Lyamzin_alexandr
• 39_w_M9

Div 1:

• BurnedChicken
• Radewoosh
• turmax
• yzc2005
• tourist

UPD: Editorial is available here

Hello, Codeforces.

I have implemented automatic translation of problem statements in Polygon (yes, yes, through ChatGPT). Here's an example of how to use it:

• Suppose we have a problem statement only in Russian and we want to have it in English as well.

• Create an empty problem statement in English.

• Go to the bottom of the problem statement and click on "Add automatic translation."

• In the popup window, you can choose the original language for translation (we only have Russian, so there's nothing to choose) and the section of the problem statement to translate (by default, it usually selects the appropriate option — translate everything).

• Click the "Translate" button.

• Wait for ChatGPT to translate the text (it may take up to a couple of minutes).

• When the translation is ready, it will be loaded into the popup window.

• Click "Save Translation."

• Done.

• Remember to proofread the statement yourself. Although it's a quality machine translation, it's still a machine translation.

One useful thing to note is that this method of translation miraculously preserves most of the LaTeX markup.

When using it, remember that the API is not free. I have set quotas, and if they are exceeded, I will have to turn off the feature. I hope this doesn't happen.

There are a few more ideas on how to use ChatGPT for peaceful purposes. Don't go too far.