Most people who qualified are actually here, about 3-4 have been replaced by people further down the list. However, not many strong people actually tried to qualify, and the favorite to win, hos.lyric, canceled his participation even though he got the paid flight. I don't know why, maybe Egor can answer. EDIT: Bayan says that he and a few other people (I don't remember who) answered the invitation e-mail too late, so they could not come.

However, we should note that this isn't Google Codejam, where you would get $100 per day for food, a comfortable trip and more. They sent us here on the cheapest airline they could find, we didn't even get free water on the plane. I spent about 40 Euro on food and 10 Euro on water during the trip because the only place to buy them are overpriced airport restaurants (1.20 for a half liter of water), Bayan is not reimbursing this. I think that explains why the competition consists of low-reds and oranges instead of tourist and Petr.

EDIT: My answer to your question turned into a review of the contest, so I'll go on reviewing. The tasks were amazing, miles above any other contest I've done. Absolutely clean, no tedious implementation, just algorithms and math. Every task is unique and has some sort of idea behind it. I don't know who the problemsetters are, but they should make more contests.

The contest system worked correctly this time, with no complications.

The food they offer us is passable. Not the delicious IOI 2011 level, not the horrible SWERC 2013 level, just passable. There is some traditional Iranian salad with fruit and cabbage which is great, I'm still trying to figure out its name.

The contest room was absolutely overflowing with cameras and the contestants were swarmed with interview demands, it was never this extreme at another contest I've been at. I hope I can find a video of my interviews somewhere, can Bayan help me with this?

We're being offered sightseeing excursions, I missed the one yesterday because I needed to sleep after having a sleepless night on the plane, I'll see if today's excursion is good.

EDIT: The excursion took us to a traditional Iranian restaurant, where we sat on the floor eating traditional food. It seems that traditional Iranian food consists of green sludge, yellow sludge and brown sludge. It looks disgusting and tastes delicious. The brown sludge goes well with yogurt. After that, we got kebab for the third time in 2 days. Kebab is a staple food here, and I can say good things about a country where the staple food is meat. This changes the food rating from "passable" to "good".

Eating on the floor is interesting: It allows you to sit closer to each other in a nice circle and move around more easily, which makes socialising easier. It's a bit uncomfortable, though.

Some Bayan staff members work as a sort of tour guide for us, answering our stupid questions about Iran and Islam. They seem to be comfortable even with slightly intrusive questions, I thank them for that.

EDIT: Today, we had ice cream and fast food — the fast food was things like patty sandwiches and cordon bleu. It tasted alright, but we seem to be in a big hurry for the closing ceremony, I had to eat some food on the bus because I didn't get enough time to finish it in the restaurant. We were also in a park which had some exercise equipment, it's better than the hotel gym (park has a pullup bar, hotel gym has useless cardio machines). There were extreme amounts of extremely cute stray cats, but only one of them wanted to be cuddled. Strangely, people fed meat to these stray cats, and at least one of them was not castrated, this confuses me.

The reason they're not published yet is that they froze the judging & scoreboard yesterday, So no one knows whether the solution which they sumbmitted in the last 30 minutes are correct or not. So the site is still closed untill the final ceremony tonight. After that they will open the contest for practice at their website.

thanks