Hello CodeForces Community!
I would like to invite you to take part in August Challenge 2017 (https://www.codechef.com/AUG17). The contest promises to deliver on an interesting set of algorithmic problems with something for all. As always, the long contests will start on first Friday of every month and last for 10 days. This ensures that two weekends are covered. Joining me on the problem setting panel, we have:
- Problem Setters: PraveenDhinwa (Praveen Dhinwa), kingofnumbers (Hasan Jaddouh), arjunarul (Arjun Arul), AlexandruValeanu (Alexandru Valeanu), naksh9619_ (Naksh Arora)
- Testers: Xsquare (Prateek Gupta), kingofnumbers (Hasan Jaddouh), Denis Anischenko (altruist)
- Editorialist: Pepe.Chess (Hussain Kara Fallah)
- Russian Translator: CherryTree (Sergey Kulik)
- Vietnamese Translator: VNOI Team
- Mandarin Translator: huzecong (Hu Zecong)
I hope you will enjoy solving the problems. Please give your feedback on the problem set in the comments below after the contest.
Contest Details:
Time: 4th August 2017 (1500 hrs) to 14th August 2017 (1500 hrs). (Indian Standard Time — +5:30 GMT) — Check your timezone.
Details: https://www.codechef.com/AUG17
Registration: You just need to have a CodeChef handle to participate. For all those, who are interested and do not have a CodeChef handle, are requested to register in order to participate.
Prizes: * Top 10 global and top 20 Indian winners get 300 Laddus each, with which the winners can claim cool CodeChef goodies. To know more about Laddus, check here: https://www.codechef.com/laddu and to know more about New Prize Categories, check here: https://blog.codechef.com/2017/03/03/new-goodies-new-categories-new-prizes-every-contest/. (For those who have not yet got their previous winning, please send an email to winners@codechef.com)
Good Luck! Hope to see you participating!!
Nevermind. Misread the blog title.
I think it is considered as cheating :s
And why do you think so? The other solutions I have checked are also along similar lines so I don't see your point.
You are not allowed to share your code or give hints...
Oh its not from this contest...
Oops, really sorry, I thought this was the blog for July Circuits which concluded recently.
I see only 8 problems added to the contest at the time of writing this (and no challenge/approximation problem). Are you going to add the remaining 2 problems (up to 10, like in previous contests), or are these 8 problems all of them?
No, they always have 10 problems. Sometimes the problems are added little late but Quantity of 10 is fixed as far as I know.
The challenge problem is uploaded now. I am really sorry that it took longer than expected to add it to the contest.
Is there any reason why they always postpone uploading the full problem set and the translation in Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Vietnamese??
There are many factors which lead to delay of some problems, one of them is the lack of proposals that codechef team receive which lead to difficulty of finding suitable problems and that will lead to late start of preparation and testing.
Anyway, the challenge problem is already up and the last problem should be ready soon
If you don't mind, can you share how many problem proposals CodeChef team gets on average for every long contest ? I have always been curious about this.
Also, can someone at green level send a proposal for a problem, (If he has an idea about the problem but doesn't know how to rigorously set test cases or doesn't know an efficient solution for it) ?
Thank you in advance
In my opinion, can't "setting test cases" is OK (anyway, you have to know corner cases and set them by yourself), but if you want to send problem to contest, you must know its AC solution...
BTW, I have some problems and I want to see them in some contest :) Let's wait answer from admins
I don't have an idea on quantity of proposals.
as far as I know, it's okay to propose idea of a problem without preparing it, but you should at least provide constraints for this problem and describe a solution that would pass those constraints. furthermore, not preparing the problem will lower your compensation.
Thanks for your reply. I've always admired your problems.
The last problem is live now!
The challenge problem really challenges the reading capability. How many years it took to write this problem?
It has 10614 characters in it :D
Probably the longest problem description ever.
You seem very excellent reader that you could also count number of characters while reading :)
There is a small apology disguised as a constraint. You must check it! Also, I am sorry that there was no potato for the long post.
On a much serious note, writing a statement this long is not the hard part. The hard part is explaining what you mean and making sure that all constraints are clearly specified.
what to do if i found a test case for which a problem is failing but my submission got accepted. (aug codechef long contest) , should i comment on problem page or what.
This happens sometimes as the test cases aren't always perfect. You can inform about it by creating a post on discuss.codechef.com.
Can you change limit of total amount of submissions in approximate problem ?
I made only 200 and I do not have right for more :D
On contest page it is written 500.
The limit has been changed to 500 submissions. We are sorry for missing it from the "about page". Usually, the limit is only 200 submissions. We will discuss whether we should increase this limit to more or not.
Thanks for changing ( I expect extra laddus for finding bug :P ).
Definately 200 submissions are too much and you do not need to put bigger amount, but when it is written 500 on leading page, I do not see reason why I wouldn't use all of them :D
@AlexandruValeanu Usually I enjoy in solving approximate problems ( for example I believe I made 500+ submissions on Bubble cup competition on approximate task and I know it is not normal :D ). I could have the same score with much smaller amount of submissions, but I am not compiling my code locally when I can make so many attempts.
Only 200? I admire your perseverance.
When we can expect final results ?
I gave maximum this round, it was really interesting to me !
Tasks were nice, generally I like all of them :) For approximate task I saw that codes of other participants are very long ( 1500 lines, 1200 lines, etc ) . I have only 250 ( same amount of lines as amount of submissions :D ).
I think it will be updated soon. The full tests of the challenge problem are over it seems. I see everybody's score being changed on the problem page.
Yeah I notice it now :)
I stay short for big prize, but It was enough from me :)
Congratulation to the winners !
Congratulations for top 5! 0.828 with only 250 lines is quite an accomplishment and you should be proud of it.
I'd like to invite you to explain your approach (and any suggestions or opinions about the problem) here. The final editorial will also contain some strategies used by contestants.
Thanks !
For sure this is one of my best contests, and I hope it won't be last :)
I have shared my approache, it has a lot of common things with editorial.
I have also shared my approach in the editorial. Link But I could get only 49.82 points without backing up any data and around 38.7 points with backing up data (Due to some faults while implementing raid)
Thank you for sharing!