1st of January, every year, perhaps is the most inspiring day of the year. Everyone is pumped up about the blank slate of 365 days, in front of them. While some want to get in shape “this year”, there are others resolving to read a book every month, start eating healthy, complete their projects, and what not. It’s a strange situation to be in. Simply because, it’s not the first time and it certainly will not be the last time. So, the best way to describe it is “New Year discombobulation”. But it’s long gone now. We are almost 20 days into the New Year and if you still have your resolutions intact “Kudos to you”, if not, “What’s the matter with you?” get your act together.
The good thing is that, you are not alone facing the “New Year discombobulation” we have been there too. This year though we tried to keep our resolutions to ourselves and keep things simple. And with 2016 starting on a Friday, what better way to start the year than the first long challenge of the year, the January Challenge 2016. So, amid the sleepy eyes, and the mildly aching heads we sat down to serve the first course of the year 2016 prepared with lots of love and discipline by Praveen Dhinwa, Dmytro Berezin, Amit Pandey, Vitalii Kozhukhivskyi, Abhra Dasupta, Sergey Nagin, Maksym Bevza, Pavel Sheftelevich, Ke Bi, and Vasya Antoniuk.
It was a little Christmas gift for all you programming enthusiasts from our problem setting panel, who worked all through the holiday season to make the contest happen. Joining these gentlemen on the panel was our testers Misha Chorniy and Vasya Antoniuk, our translators Sergey Kulik (Russian), Team VNOI (Vietnamese) & Hu Zecong (Mandarin), and the language verifier for the contest Rahul Arora. A Very Happy New Year gentlemen and to you all.
Now, let us take you through the events of the first 10 days of the year. It was 1st of January 2016, the spirits were high. Everyone wanted to start the New Year on a happy note, and it came first for sandeep9, who was the first person to crack CHMKTRPS and thus became registered the first AC for the year 2016 in our first challenge of the year. Now, the long challenges traditionally have always been about slow and sure submission flow on all the problems alike. And the fact that it was 1st of January slowed it further down. Inside the first half an hour of the contest we got only 100 submissions. Although what was interesting here was the fact that 7 out of the 10 problems saw at least 1 submission inside the first 30 mins of the contest. And that clearly was a sign of good things to come in the later stages of the contest.
The first weekend of January Challenge 2016 did not bring too much of action. Thanks to the big New Year’s parties, neither rank table, nor the submission flow saw any major spike. However, the picture started changing from Monday. Although, the big popular and familiar names were missing from the rank table, there were quite a few promising ones occupying their slots and holding on to them. And as the cherry on the top, we had Olesya Golub topping the women rank table. We were longing for the Women rank table to feature few names and to get it in the first long challenge of the year was utterly pleasing. We hope that number to go further up in coming long challenges. Now, without further adieu, let us introduce you to the winners of the January Challenge 2016.
As always, we start with ladies.
Top 10 Women Participants (in top 100 participants of the contest):
Now, the ROW top 10:
The Indian top 20:
Top 3 Scorers for Challenge problem (except the winners):
ROW:
Indian:
Now, let’s meet the young brains from Schools.
Top 5 School Students from ROW:
Top 5 School Students from India:
Congratulations to you all on your performances and for a great contest.
Let’s have a look at the final stats for the contest:
Now, for the final segment of the blog we would like to take you to the editorials for January Challenge 2016. Written by Praveen Dhinwa, these editorials will help you get over your doubts or queries regarding the contest problems or any aspect of it. So, do have a look at them.
That brings us to the end of this tale of years’ first long challenge. We hope you enjoyed it. If you have any further queries or concerns feel free to catch us at: feedback@codechef.com
You can also dial us at: (022) – 30797709
That’ll be all from us here at CodeChef.
See you at the contests.
Sayonara.
Rudreshwar
Team CodeChef
Hello World!
It’s a bright sunny day here in Chennai and brighter are the smiles on our young ACM ICPC 2015 – 2016 World Finals aspirants. It’s the final of the three ACM ICPC India regionals here at Hindustan University, Chennai. The blokes look in good spirit after a good night’s sleep and lots of fun activities they partook with team CodeChef last night. If the initial spirit is something to go by, we all are in for a crunchy 5 hour programming battle for that coveted slot for the world finals. The stage is set, and the curtain rises at 10:00 AM IST. So, grab your bowl of cereals and get ready for the live action as we bring it to you straight from Chennai.
9:45 AM: 15 minutes to the contest start. The teams have settled in and are eager to shoot down them problems.
9:50 AM: The gamut of expressions and feels that you get by looking at the participants few minutes before the contest are bemusing. You just don’t know who’s going to come on top after the contest.
10:00 AM: The contest has been delayed by 30 minutes. The contest will now start at 10:30 AM IST.
10:05 AM: The cause for delay is “INCORRECT PROBLEM CODEs” on the printed problem statements. It has been resolved now, and we are looking good.
10:10 AM IST: While we wait for the contest to start, send your predictions on who you think will win here at Chennai. We are running a contest on our Facebook and Twitter streams. The correct prediction wins a cool goodie. So, check that out and send in your guesses.
10:29 AM IST: Just one minute for the contest to start. hold on to your seats folks.
10:30 AM IST: Update: The contest has been further delayed by 30 minutes. We hope this is the final delay.
10:38 AM IST: Update: The contest has been scheduled to start at 11:00 AM IST and will end at 16:00 PM IST.
10:45 AM IST: While we wait for the contest to start, here are few glimpses of the contest arena for you.
10:52 AM IST: The ACM-ICPC Asia-Chennai Onsite Mirror Contest 2015 has been rescheduled for 12:30 PM IST.
10:58 AM IST: 2 minutes to the contest. Are you guys ready?
11:00 AM IST: The final ACM ICPC 2015 – 2016 India Regional is on its way at Hindustan University. Follow the live rank list here.
11:05 AM IST: After 5 mins we have 4 teams with 1 solved problem each.
11:07 AM IST: And we now have 11 teams with 1 problem each.
11:09 AM IST: The problems named after some of the brightest programmers from schools in India will decide which Indian college will go to World Finals. Interesting, it is.
11:15 AM IST: Update: The ACM-ICPC Asia-Chennai Onsite Mirror Contest 2015 has been rescheduled for 11:30 AM IST.
11:25 AM IST: 109 Teams have cracked the at least 1 problem. And only 1 team have got the penalty. Amazing stuff.
11:26 AM IST: Team Instincts of Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Chennai leads the rank table with two solved problems in their kitty.
11:29 AM IST: Team DAFruitSalad of DAIICT, Gandhinagar takes over team Instincts at the top of the table.
Team DAFruitSalad of DAIICT, Gandhinagar
11:30 AM IST: The ACM-ICPC Asia-Chennai Onsite Mirror Contest 2015 has been served.
11:35 AM IST: Team shockers of Indian Institute of Technology Madras bags their 3rd. Not so shocking, is it?
11:40 AM IST: Team Instincts of Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Chennai regains the lead atop the rank table.
Team Instincts of Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Chennai
11:45 AM IST: All top 10 teams have solved three problems.
11:46 AM IST: The absence of some heavy weights in top 10 is kind of amazing. What do you think?
11:54 AM IST: The calmness on the rank table is severely alarming. What’s cooking there Chennai?
12:02 PM IST: Team Tianhe_3 of Birla Institute of Technology & Science Pilani, Pilani Campus solves their 4th and moves at 1st place on rank table.
12:09 PM IST: The problem statements features three familiar names from the programming fraternity. Do you know who they are?
12:12 PM IST: A lot of teams have shown their love for balloons by solving “Malvika is peculiar about color of balloons” first. however, not many are ready to take the voyage to the Sun with King Animesh.
12:20 PM IST: Team Encore of IIT, Bombay moves into top 3 with 4 solved problems. We now have three teams with 4 solved problems. Other than Encore and Tianhe_3, we have team Divide&Conquer of IIT, Delhi enjoying the weather atop the rank table.
12:25 PM IST: Team Divide&Conquer from IIT Delhi is at Rank 3 having solved 4 problems. Leading just ahead is Team Encore at Rank 2.
12:30 PM IST: There are 4 teams with 4 problems solved now as Team One_LastTime of IIIT Delhi has moved up to Rank 3. Things are starting to speed up now!
12:42 PM IST: The elves have spoken as Fractal_Elves of DTU solved their 4th problem and moved to 2nd place in the rank list. Team Tianhe_3 has still not budged from top place!
12:46 PM IST: Rank 1 has been taken over by Encore of IIT Bombay as they solved their 5th problem and are the only team to do so as of now! As the top ranks remain vaguely the same, contendors like TarjanHorse and 11Coders are also inching upwards!
12:59 PM IST: There is a lot that goes behind every single contest we host. And to tell you the story behind the Chennai regionals, here are the sleepy eyes of our Dev team.
Team CodeChef at ACM ICPC 2015 - 2016 Chennai Regionals
01:13 PM IST: As we approach the half way mark into the contest, the action on the rank table is starting to heat up. Team Greed_for_Speed of Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad moves on to second spot with 5 solved problems to their name.
01:47 PM IST: IIT Roorkee Team 11Coders make it to Rank 2 with 5 problems under their belt.
01:53 PM IST: Encore cracks the 6th and strengthens their position atop the rank table.
02:21 PM IST: Team 11Coders of IIT, Roorkee closes in on Team Encore, as they cracks their 6th problem. This is going to be interesting.
11coders of IIT Roorkee
02:44 PM IST: WOAH! As we approach towards the final hour of the hugely popular team Heuristics of IIIT, Hyderabad jumps onto second place with 4 consecutive ACs. Now, that’s the pinch of excitement you need just before the ranklist freezes. Put on your thinking hats, will ya?
02:48 PM IST: Within 20 mins Heuristics of IIIT, Hyderabad have jumped 35 positions to reach 2nd place from 37th, where they were.
Team Heuristics of IIIT Hyderabad
3:00 PM IST: The curtain has fallen on the Rank List as the last hour of the contest sets in. Nobody knows what the outcome might be and the frozen Rank table looks even more intimidating. We saw steadily improving performances, strong footholds on the top spot and huge leaps from lower ranks into the limelight. Chennai Regionals were a delight to watch for everyone, we are sure. But the final verdict only time will tell if we will be pleasantly surprised or completely shocked! All the best teams, it was an ever entertaining fight. watch this space for more to come.
04:00 PM IST: The ACM ICPC 2015 – 2016 Chennai Regional has concluded. The teams will now have a small break, before gathering for the problem discussion and the closing ceremony, where we will meet the winning teams. So, keep your fingers crossed and keep watching this space.
05:35 PM IST: It’s result time here at Hindustan University Chennai. Drum Rolls!
05:35 PM IST: 2nd Runner Up is team Greed_for_Speed of Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad.
Greed_for_Speed of Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad
05:40 PM IST: 1st Runner Up is team 11Coders of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.
11Coders of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
05:45 PM IST: And finally, the Winner of ACM ICPC 2015 – 2016 Chennai Regional is team Encore of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
Team Encore of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
05:46 PM IST: Here are the winning teams posing for the shutterbugs.
ACM ICPC 2015 - 2016 Winning Teams
05:46 PM IST05:49 PM IST: And that will be all from us here at ACM ICPC 2015 – 2016 Chennai Regionals. A big round of applause for all the teams for their tremendous performance. We wish the teams representing India at the ACM ICPC 2015 – 2016 World Finals at Prince of Songkla University Phuket, Thailand all the Very Best. Go For Gold
05:52 PM IST: Also a big shout out to all the volunteers and committee members for putting up such a great contest. We hope you enjoyed our coverage of the final India regionals. We hope to see you soon, in a different city with a different contest.
05:54 PM IST: It’s time for us to sign off, but before we do that a huge round of applause for our dev team, operations team for their rigorous efforts to ensure a smooth contest.
That’s all for now. It’s me Rudreshwar with my fellow team members Rhuta and Chanukya signing off.
See you at the contests.
Sayonara.
Regards,
Rudreshwar
Team CodeChef
P.S: The rank list for the contest is live for everyone, you can check it here.
The floods in Chennai that engulfed the city have passed and the city is coming out from its state of disarray and wreckage. Our empathies are with all those it affected. The spirit of the individuals and organizations that helped out during Chennai’s time of need was truly inspiring.
As everything came to a halt, the ICPC regionals were naturally rescheduled. In the aftermath of the floods, the Chennai ICPC Regionals will now be held on the 23rd of January and undoubtedly, enormous efforts were put in to resurrect this contest. Team CodeChef will visit the regional site to support the teams, help out with registrations, and most importantly see the contest go superbly for everyone.
The CodeChef kitchen is already emptying once again as we leave for the Regionals in anticipation of a great contest and a rejuvenated Chennai.
We hope that with all the combined efforts going into the contest, the teams will have a good environment to code in, and will make this chance to go to the World Finals really count. That being said, our heartiest congratulations to all the teams for making it to the onsite contest. And all the very best for #ICPC2016 regionals.
That’s all from Team CodeChef for now, we will be in with more news from #ICPC2016 soon. Till then, keep coding!
Regards,
Team CodeChef
Date: 27th December 2015 Time: 11 AM IST Venue: https://www.codechef.com/LTIME31 Event: December Lunchtime 2015
Team A: Distinct Codes (DISTCODE) Ancient Berland Road (ABROADS) Computer Network (EXNETWRK) Buying Seedlings (SEEDLING) Team B: 856 young programming enthusiasts
The challenge began with a flurry of submissions for Distinct Codes that got close to 50% correct submissions ( specifically – 48.66%). Some familiar names kept coming up on the rank tables, case in point kmcode of Omori 7th Junior High School, ptnk131627 of VNU-HCM High School for the Gifted Vietnam and mbrc of South Point High School.
As the young coders raced ahead, they found the Ancient Berland Road to be a tricky terrain. Many slipped, got back up and slipped again as the problem proved a mighty challenger. With 12.99% accuracy on the problem, ABROADS certainly had everyone sweating. Sadly for the coders from Team B it was just a preview of what was to come next.
What’s next you ask? Only the 2nd hardest challenge problem. Computer Network was more like a net of complexity from what our young coders’ submissions told us. Let us throw in some statistics again – what better way is there to show how good a job the problem setters did? 38 submissions with a full score and an accuracy of 5.49% EXNETWRK was the second but last obstacle in the challenge.
Buying Seedlings, is an innocent name for something that has the ferocity of the Terminator. If Jack had bought these instead of the beanstalk beans, he would be in a different kind of hell, even without the giant from his original story. With a total of only 5 full scores, this timid sounding problem painted the submission table red much to the coders’ dismay.
Sitting on the sidelines, watching the challenge go down is interesting to watch, but a huge shout out to our young coders’ enthusiasm that makes us want to host Lunchtime month after month. Another thanks to the following people that make it possible. December Lunchtime: Problem setter & Editorialist: Sergey Kulik Problem Tester: Pavel Sheftelevich Here are some stats to look at: Total users who made a submission: 913 Total Submissions: 4190 Number of distinct users with correct submissions: 856 And now, the winners who braved it all and kept going.
India Winners
ROW Winners
That’s all from December Lunchtime 2015. Watch this space for more contest reports. Until next time then!
Cheers,
Rhuta
Team CodeChef
The road to December Cook-Off 2015 came through the galore of examinations and preparations. Programmers across the globe were busy honing their skills for the busy ACM ICPC season, while trying to keep up with their exams and trying hard to ensure good pointers. To add more chills to that entire setup, we had the winters in its full glory. All in all, it was a thrilling set up for an exciting two and half hour programming contest and we couldn’t have asked for more. But we got more.
The December Cook-Off 2015 was exactly the night before the ACM ICPC 2015 Amritapuri Regionals. While the teams attending the regionals were trying to stay calm before the big contest, there were participants from all over the globe raring to get their hands on the problems of Misha Chorniy. Amid that mixed batch of participants began our COOK65, the last one for the year 2015.
And what a start it was. Just like a big flashy Sunday party, the December Cook-Off started to 98 ACs out of the first 100 submissions in the contest. All this and we were 10 minutes into the contest. What’s even more exciting was the fact that all of those 100 submissions, and the next 100 to follow came on Chef and Subarrays. Perhaps, every who joined the contest that night made their first submission to Chef and Subarrays. Just to have a nice and smooth start to it. It remained the same way until lebron submitted to Chef and Queries. It was also an AC. So, if we have to sum up the first half an hour of the contest it will be like: 2 problems, lots of ACs, very few WAs, and even fewer TLEs and CEs.
As we moved into the contest, the happy start made way for the fury and rage brought onto the participants by Chef and Vectors, Chef and Tree, and Chef and LCS. If you got your hopes high on your performance into the contest after the green ticks you got on the first and second problem, it must not have felt nice trying your hands on those problems. So, do let us know how it was in the comments section below. The immaculate job by our tester Jingbo Shang ensured the right mix of difficulty levels in the problem set. What did you thought of it?
The flow of the submissions in the second half of the contest did slow down, but the intensity of the competition prevailed till the very last moment. notimesea, who made the first submission into the contest, defended his spot atop the rank tables bravely from the challengers in lebron, alex_2008, Ra16bit, and the mighty ACRush. They all had 4 problems in their account and while ACRush cracked all the problems in the first submission, CHEFVEC took two to crack. And with that, he secured the top slot in the contest. And that was our final Cook-Off for the year 2015. We hope you all enjoyed the contest as much as we did putting it up for you.
Now, let us take you through the rank table to introduce you to the winners of COOK65.
We start with the ROW top 10:
The Indian top 5:
Now, the final stats for the contest:
Congratulations to you all on your performance.
Now, let us serve you the editorials for the December Cook-Off 2015, penned by our young editorialist Pushkar Mishra. We are sure you would have tasted them by now, but if you have not, here they are for you once again.
That will be all from us all here. We hope you had a wonderful 2015 and are ready for an exciting 2016 in front of us.
Till next time, adios.
See you at the contests.
Regards,
Rudreshwar
Team CodeChef
December – whether you like it or not is a time for retrospection. Another year is walking into the sunset, leaving behind loads of memories, some to cheer you up, some to fuel you up for the impending challenges, and hopefully, very few to bring you down. And it’s always good to carry the pleasing ones into your heart, when you are looking at a fresh start. With so many good memories from every contest that we had in the year 2015, we sat down to adorn the final challenge of the year, the December Challenge 2015.
The problems for December Challenge 2015 came from Andrii Omelianenko, Dmytro Berezin, Tapas Jain, Misha Chorniy, Praveen Dhinwa, Maksym Bevza, Sergey Nagin, and Fedor Korobeinikov. The problem setters made sure that we had good ten day party, and to make sure that we do, we had Sergey Kulik testing the problems. With those gentlemen taking care of the platter for December Challenge, there was nothing much we could have asked for.
The flavors for the problems came from Team VNOI (Vietnamese) & Hu Zecong (Mandarin), while Rahul Arora verified the languages for the problems and Praveen Dhinwa took care of the proceedings on the problem setting bench. And finally, the mouthwatering editorials were penned by Kevin Atienza. And that concludes our panel of experts for December Challenge. And when the clock hit 3:00 pm IST on 4th December 2015, the battle to triumph the final long challenge of the year began.
Now, blame it on the winters or the cautious play by the participants, the flow of submissions into the contest wasn’t as fluent as some of its predecessors. And even though the contest started with an AC from jtnydv25 on CHEFST, the road wasn’t smooth for all. Problems CHEFST and PLANEDIV kept the participants busy at the beginning, while there were few others who tried their hand on ORACLCS as well. While those three problems kept the users busy, problems like Trip and Palindromes, Misha and Permutation, Sereja and Dividing, and Tanks, were not easy to pass by. But as you know, a good programmer always finds a way. And find they did. Although not as high in numbers as the earlier problems, but we did get submissions on all the problems.
With every submission on a new problem, the picture of the top end of the rank table was getting clear. And when the December Challenge concluded, it became clearer. Or so we thought. As it turned out, there was some issue with the scores of challenge problem Tanks, due to which a lot of users were getting a score of zero. This brought an interesting twist in the tail of December Challenge, and after a thorough investigation, we figured out the issue and fixed it with the help of our engineering team. The fix in the scores changed the entire picture of rank table in terms of change in positions for many users, while a shift outside the rank table for a few. And to introduce you to all those who made the cut let us take you through the rank tables.
We start with the ladies. Sadly, we do not have any lady coder in the top 100 participants of December Challenge 2015. So, their goodies remain unclaimed. But we are sure very soon we will have them taking up all the key positions on the rank table.
Now let’s meet the men, with the ROW 10:
The Indian top 20:
From colleges to schools, let’s meet our young champions from different schools across India.
Now, it’s time for the ROW top 5:
Finally, it’s time to meet our special achievers in users with highest scores for the challenge problem other than the winners.
We start with the Indian top 3:
Now, the ROW top 3:
Let’s give a big round of applauds to all our winners. We hope you all enjoyed competing with them and that are raring to take their places on the rank tables. And to help you with your preparations, here are the editorials from the contest. We are sure you would enjoy them.
Now, before we pull curtains on this final long challenge blog post of the year 2015, let us give you the stats for the contest.
That will be all from the Chef’s kitchen here at CodeChef for the December Challenge 2015. We will soon return with the tale from the freezing two and half hours of the December Cook-Off 2015.
But till then, keep your fingers warm and keep coding.
See you at the contests.
Regards,
Rudreshwar
Team CodeChef
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