Back to School '16

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It's that time of the (school) year again, and to celebrate, we present the Back to School '16 contest! Get back into your tip top programming shape.

The problem writers of this contest are atarw, aurpine, and d.

Back to School '16 will be a 4 hour virtual contest, which will allow contestants to participate in any 4 hour window between Friday September 16, 3 PM EDT and Sunday September 18, 11:59 PM EDT. Of course, it is forbidden to use two accounts to participate, and it is also forbidden to discuss the problems and/or their solutions with other people during the entire contest period.

Due to the large contest time window, we will be using a pretest/systest format in order to prevent cheating. On problems 5-8, when you submit, you will receive your result on some of the test data, called preliminary tests (pretests). After the contest, we will rejudge all solutions on the complete set of test data, and that will determine your final score. Note that getting AC on pretests does not ensure that you will pass system testing.

The pretests may be weak, so be sure to check the correctness and complexity of your solutions! In particular, non-AC submissions on the pretests will likely result in a score of 0 on the systests.

This contest will be rated for contestants with at least one submission.


Before the contest date, you may wish to check out the tips and help pages.

The contest consists of 8 questions with a wide range of difficulties, and you can get partial marks for partial solutions in the form of subtasks. If you cannot solve a problem fully, we encourage you to go for these partial marks. The difficulty of a problem may be anywhere from CCC Junior to CCO level. You will have 4 hours to complete the contest. After the contest window begins, you may begin at any time. Your personal timer will start counting down, and you will be able to submit until 4 hours from when you started, or until the hard deadline (September 18, 11:59 PM EDT), whichever comes first.

After joining the contest, you proceed to the Problems tab to begin. You can also go to Users if you wish to see the rankings.

We have listed below some advice as well as contest strategies:

  • Start from the beginning. Ties will be broken by the sum of times used to solve the problems starting from the beginning of the contest. The last submission time of your highest score will be used.

  • Remove all extra debugging code and/or input prompts from your code before submitting. The judge is very strict — most of the time, it requires your output to match exactly.

  • Do not pause program execution at the end. The judging process is automated. You should use stdin / stdout to perform input / output, respectively. It is guaranteed that all the problems will be solvable with C++.

  • Read carefully, and try to attempt all the problems. They may not be as hard as they seem and you may get partial points!

At the end of the contest, you may comment below to appeal a judging verdict. In the case of appeals, the decision(s) of staff is final.



Comments


  • 5
    nathanl3  commented on Sept. 16, 2016, 8:15 p.m. edited

    d says good job!


    • -3
      TypicalToxic  commented on Sept. 17, 2016, 2:41 a.m.

      Tell d I dislike him with a passion.

      fruit.


      • 2
        r3mark  commented on Sept. 17, 2016, 3:00 a.m.

        Done.


  • -6
    imaxblue  commented on Sept. 12, 2016, 10:52 p.m.

    This comment is hidden due to too much negative feedback. Show it anyway.


    • 9
      FatalEagle  commented on Sept. 12, 2016, 11:00 p.m.

      You can always write a contest with the format you want!


  • 4
    Paradox  commented on Sept. 12, 2016, 3:39 p.m.

    Can't wait :P