Greetings Codeforces!

First things first, we would like to thank everyone who participated in the previous nine Kotlin Heroes competitions: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5: ICPC Round, Episode 6, Episode 7, Episode 8, Episode 9, and Episode 10.

Kotlin Heroes is a great way to play around with Kotlin’s features, learn something new, and practice using the language by solving fun problems. It is great for programmers of any level!

We invite you to join the practice round, where you can improve your algorithmic problem-solving skills and complete training problems. In this round, all the solutions are open and you can request hints if you’re stuck.

Watch tourist and ecnerwala tackle the Kotlin Heroes practice round challenges at the ICPC World Finals in Astana.

Here are some things you can do to help you refresh your knowledge of Kotlin and learn more about competitive programming while you practice:

• Review our Kotlin solutions for the Advent of Code algorithmic puzzles.
• Read our competitive programming tutorial.
• Watch the videos from our Kotlin in Competitive Programming YouTube playlist.
• Look at the problems from the previous practice rounds.

On September 30, 2024, the real challenge begins! Kotlin Heroes: Episode 11 will last 2 hours 30 minutes and will feature a set of problems ranging from simple ones, which are designed to be solvable by anyone, to some really tricky ones for seasoned competitive programmers.

Note that the usage of AI-based tools during the main contest is strictly limited. To find out the guidelines for proper AI use, what is allowed and what is prohibited, please read the post "Rule Restricting the use of AI". Improper use of AI tools during the main contest may result in disqualification.

Using automatic translation tools (including but not limited to neural networks and AI) to convert code written in other programming languages to Kotlin goes against the spirit of the competition, so it is also strictly prohibited.

Prizes:

The top three winners will receive cash prizes of $512, $256, and $128 (or rewards of equivalent value), respectively. The top 50 participants will win a Kotlin Heroes T-shirt and an exclusive Kotlin sticker, and all competitors who solve at least one problem will be entered into a raffle for one of 50 Kotlin Heroes T-shirts.

Please note that we are not able to ship prizes to any country, state, province, or territory subject to comprehensive OFAC sanctions, including Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, or the Crimea, Donetsk, or Luhansk regions. To see the list of sanctioned countries and regions, please visit this page.

Best of luck to everyone!

Greetings Codeforces!

First things first, we would like to thank everyone who participated in the previous nine Kotlin Heroes competitions: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5: ICPC Round, Episode 6, Episode 7, Episode 8 and Episode 9.

Kotlin Heroes is a great way to play around with Kotlin’s features, learn something new, and practice using the language by solving fun problems. It is great for programmers of any level!

We invite you to join the practice round, where you can improve your algorithmic problem-solving skills and complete training problems. In this round, all the solutions are open and you can request hints if you’re stuck.

Here are some things you can do to help you refresh your knowledge of Kotlin and learn more about competitive programming while you practice:

• Review our Kotlin solutions for the Advent of Code algorithmic puzzles.
• Read our competitive programming tutorial.
• Watch the videos from our Kotlin in Competitive Programming YouTube playlist.
• Look at the problems from the previous practice rounds.

On May 13, 2024, the real challenge begins! Kotlin Heroes: Episode 10 will last 2 hours 30 minutes and will feature a set of problems ranging from simple ones, which are designed to be solvable by anyone, to some really tricky ones for seasoned competitive programmers.

You can solve Codeforces challenges directly from your JetBrains IDE using its smart features. Just enable the JetBrains Academy plugin and follow the instructions in the Getting started with Codeforces guide.

Prizes:

The top three winners will receive cash prizes of $512, $256, and $128 (or rewards of equivalent value), respectively. The top 50 participants will win a Kotlin Heroes T-shirt and an exclusive Kotlin sticker, and all competitors who solve at least one problem will be entered into a raffle for one of 50 Kotlin Heroes T-shirts.

Please note that we are not able to ship prizes to any country, state, province, or territory subject to comprehensive OFAC sanctions, including Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, or the Crimea, Donetsk, or Luhansk regions. To see the list of sanctioned countries and regions, please visit this page.

Best of luck to everyone!

Greetings Codeforces!

We are thrilled to announce the return of Kotlin Heroes! As we resume this competition, we're eager both to welcome back some familiar names and meet new participants. Let's make Kotlin Heroes: Episode 9 an occasion to remember!

We would like to thank everyone who participated in the previous eight Kotlin Heroes competitions: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5: ICPC Round, Episode 6, Episode 7, and Episode 8.

Kotlin Heroes is a great way to play around with Kotlin’s features, learn something new, and practice using the language by solving fun problems. It is great for programmers of any level!

We invite you to join the practice round, where you can hone your algorithmic problem-solving skills and complete training problems. In this round, all the solutions are open and you can request hints if you’re stuck.

Here are some things you can do to help you refresh your knowledge of Kotlin and learn more about competitive programming while you practice:

• Review our Kotlin solutions for the Advent of Code algorithmic puzzles.
• Read our competitive programming tutorial.
• Watch the videos from our Kotlin in Competitive Programming YouTube playlist.
• Look at the problems from the previous practice rounds.

On December 11, 2023, the real challenge begins! Kotlin Heroes: Episode 9 will last 2 hours 30 minutes and will feature a set of problems ranging from simple ones, which are designed to be solvable by anyone, to some really tricky ones for seasoned competitive programmers.

You can solve Codeforces challenges directly from your JetBrains IDE using its smart features. Just enable the JetBrains Academy plugin and follow the instructions in the Getting started with Codeforces guide.

Prizes:

The top three winners will receive cash prizes of $512, $256, and $128 (or rewards of equivalent value), respectively. The top 50 participants will win a Kotlin Heroes T-shirt and an exclusive Kotlin sticker, and all competitors who solve at least one problem will be entered into a raffle for one of 50 Kotlin Heroes T-shirts.

Please note that we are not able to ship prizes to any country, state, province, or territory subject to comprehensive OFAC sanctions, including Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, or the Crimea, Donetsk, or Luhansk regions. To see the list of sanctioned countries and regions, please visit this page.

Best of luck to everyone!

UPD: The round tutorial has been published at the following link: https://mirror.codeforces.com/blog/entry/123261.

Hello, Codeforces!

First and foremost, we would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who entered and submitted their answers to the seven Kotlin Heroes competitions which were held previously: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5: ICPC Round, Episode 6, and Episode 7.

Ready to challenge yourself to do better? The Kotlin Heroes: Episode 8 competition will be hosted on the Codeforces platform on 07.10.2021 17:35 (Московское время). The contest will last 2 hours 30 minutes and will feature a set of problems from simple ones, designed to be solvable by anyone, to hard ones, to make it interesting for seasoned competitive programmers.

Prizes:

Top three winners will get prizes of $512, $256, and $128 respectively, top 50 will win a Kotlin Heroes t-shirt and an exclusive Kotlin sticker, competitors solving at least one problem will enter into a draw for one of 50 Kotlin Heroes t-shirts.

Registration is already open and available via the link. It will be available until the end of the round.

The round will again be held in accordance with a set of slightly modified ICPC rules:

• The round is unrated.
• The contest will have 10 problems of various levels of complexity.
• You are only allowed to use Kotlin to solve these problems.
• Participants are ranked according to the number of correctly solved problems. Ties are resolved based on the lowest total penalty time for all problems, which is computed as follows. For each solved problem, a penalty is set to the submission time of that problem (the time since the start of the contest). An extra penalty of 10 minutes is added for each failed submission on solved problems (i. e., if you never solve the problem, you will not be penalized for trying that problem). If two participants solved the same number of problems and scored the same penalty, then those of them who had previously made the last successful submission will be given an advantage in the distribution of prizes and gifts.

If you are still new to Kotlin we have prepared a tutorial on competitive programming in Kotlin and Kotlin Heroes: Practice 8, where you can try to solve a few simple problems in Kotlin. The practice round is available by the link.

And last but not the least: two-time ICPC World Champion and winner of four previous Kotlin Heroes episodes Gennady tourist Korotkevich will be featured in a livecoding session, conducted by JetBrains, where he is going to show how to solve the problems from the Practice round, so you can learn how to use Kotlin in contests from the most famous competitive programmer in the world. The JetBrains Presentation and livecoding session from Gennady will be streamed on ICPC Live and Kotlin YouTube channel. The stream starts at 10 a. m. on the 2nd of October, Moscow time (UTC+3), you can join the stream by the link.

We wish you luck and hope you enjoy Kotlin.

Hello, Codeforces!

First and foremost, we would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who entered and submitted their answers to the five Kotlin Heroes competitions which were held previously: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5: ICPC Round, and Episode 6.

Ready to challenge yourself to do better? The Kotlin Heroes: Episode 7 competition will be hosted on the Codeforces platform on Jun/29/2021 17:35 (Moscow time). The contest will last 2 hours 30 minutes and will feature a set of problems from simple ones, designed to be solvable by anyone, to hard ones, to make it interesting for seasoned competitive programmers.

Prizes:

Top three winners will get prizes of $512, $256, and $128 respectively, top 50 will win a Kotlin Heroes t-shirt and an exclusive Kotlin sticker, competitors solving at least one problem will enter into a draw for one of 50 Kotlin Heroes t-shirts.

Registration is already open and available via the link. It will be available until the end of the round.

The round will again be held in accordance with a set of slightly modified ICPC rules:

• The round is unrated.
• The contest will have 9 problems of various levels of complexity.
• You are only allowed to use Kotlin to solve these problems.
• Participants are ranked according to the number of correctly solved problems. Ties are resolved based on the lowest total penalty time for all problems, which is computed as follows. For each solved problem, a penalty is set to the submission time of that problem (the time since the start of the contest). An extra penalty of 10 minutes is added for each failed submission on solved problems (i. e., if you never solve the problem, you will not be penalized for trying that problem). If two participants solved the same number of problems and scored the same penalty, then those of them who had previously made the last successful submission will be given an advantage in the distribution of prizes and gifts.

If you are still new to Kotlin we have prepared a tutorial on competitive programming in Kotlin and Kotlin Heroes: Practice 7, where you can try to solve a few simple problems in Kotlin. The practice round is available by the link.

We wish you luck and hope you enjoy Kotlin.

Hello Codeforces!

The sixth round of the Kotlin Heroes series recently finished! All the rounds are available to be used for practice here: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5: ICPC Round and Episode 6). Thanks to everyone who participated – you inspire us to work even harder on the problems for the next round, and we think you’re really going to like them!

Congratulations to the top three contestants:

1. tourist
2. Egor
3. Tlatoani

A Kotlin Heroes t-shirt and exclusive Kotlin stickers will be presented to:

1. tourist
2. Egor
3. Tlatoani
4. eatmore
5. uwi
6. Benq
7. Geothermal
8. TadijaSebez
9. JettyOller
10. Maksim1744
11. pashka
12. Sugar_fan
13. dalt
14. galen_colin
15. tabr
16. SYury
17. natsugiri
18. Golovanov399
19. Spheniscine
20. taran_1407
21. Ra16bit
22. Aidos
23. yudedako
24. nuip
25. knightL
26. golikovnik
27. wifiiii
28. Fortin
29. majk
30. WiwiHo
31. Bench0310
32. wu_qing
33. Kuyan
34. Nikitosh
35. cjtoribio
36. receed
37. vadimmm
38. SecondThread
39. LeoPro
40. rapira
41. -14
42. nhho
43. PavelKunyavskiy
44. abc864197532
45. tatyam
46. Heart_Blue
47. Ji_Kuai
48. darnley
49. Potassium
50. 353cerega

These participants also won branded t-shirts:

1. polingram
2. Prateek
3. rotavirus
4. linjek
5. pr3pony
6. ostroumov
7. harshrajani460
8. xiaowuc1
9. arvindf232
10. illyakr
11. Jetman
12. Leksiq
13. IceKnight1093
14. procrastinate7
15. man.yasakov
16. Viktor36
17. matvey.kazakov
18. cmplx-xyttmt
19. SourabhYelluru
20. daisy_2000
21. stanm
22. cristian1997
23. SerVB
24. aaronsms
25. chick_magnet
26. Ditmarscehen
27. My_password_is_qwerty123
28. Misha_Help
29. sohsoh
30. igla
31. ans_human
32. mystic777
33. __RANI
34. CM_when
35. MissNick
36. MrArpit
37. penad
38. XAXAEBATb
39. son8bon
40. RandYan
41. adimiclaus15
42. babkabass
43. KKT_89
44. nishuz
45. BMking
46. KEKWait
47. Kerpoo
48. pineapple_pasta
49. GlobalElite
50. aka2910

We will contact the winners soon to coordinate the delivery of your prizes!

Special thanks goes to SecondThread for streaming the solutions of the entire practice round. Check out this wonderful tutorial: https://mirror.codeforces.com/stream/203

If you are still new to Kotlin but want to give it your all in the next round, take a look at Basic Kotlin (solve Koans), Kotlin Playground, this tutorial, and these videos on competitive programming in Kotlin.

We wish you all the best and hope you enjoy coding with Kotlin!

Hello, Codeforces!

First and foremost, we would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who entered and submitted their answers to the five Kotlin Heroes competitions which were held previously: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, and Episode 5: ICPC Round.

Ready to challenge yourself to do better? The Kotlin Heroes: Episode 6 competition will be hosted on the Codeforces platform on 09.03.2021 17:35 (Московское время). The contest will last 2 hours 30 minutes and will feature a set of problems from simple ones, designed to be solvable by anyone, to hard ones, to make it interesting for seasoned competitive programmers.

Prizes:

Top three winners will get prizes of $512, $256, and $128 respectively, top 50 will win a Kotlin Heroes t-shirt and an exclusive Kotlin sticker, competitors solving at least one problem will enter into a draw for one of 50 Kotlin Heroes t-shirts.

Registration is already open and available via the link. It will be available until the end of the round.

The round will again be held in accordance with a set of slightly modified ICPC rules:

• The round is unrated.
• The contest will have 9 problems of various levels of complexity.
• You are only allowed to use Kotlin to solve these problems.
• Participants are ranked according to the number of correctly solved problems. Ties are resolved based on the lowest total penalty time for all problems, which is computed as follows. For each solved problem, a penalty is set to the submission time of that problem (the time since the start of the contest). An extra penalty of 10 minutes is added for each failed submission on solved problems (i. e., if you never solve the problem, you will not be penalized for trying that problem). If two participants solved the same number of problems and scored the same penalty, then those of them who had previously made the last successful submission will be given an advantage in the distribution of prizes and gifts.

If you are still new to Kotlin we have prepared a tutorial on competitive programming in Kotlin and Kotlin Heroes: Practice 6, where you can try to solve a few simple problems in Kotlin. The practice round is available by the link.

We wish you luck and hope you enjoy Kotlin.

Hello Codeforces!

One of the most memorable Kotlin rounds of this year took place just recently. More than 6.7 thousand participants have registered for it. We thank everyone for your interest in Kotlin! Everyone who took part in this round will receive a link to download a personalized online certificate within the next two weeks. Work on this has already started.

Our warm congratulations to the winners of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, who receive cash prizes:

1. tourist
2. Benq
3. Geothermal

A Kotlin Heroes t-shirt and exclusive Kotlin stickers will be presented to:

And also these participants won branded T-shirts:

Finally, the last, but not least, gift for today: ICPC-experience, an invitation to the Moscow World Finals 2021, all-inclusive on-site (hotel, meals, ceremonies, and swag, are included; visa, flights, transportation to the contest location is not).

And a special recognition prize from the ICPC goes to tourist.

If you are still new to Kotlin you could look into a tutorial on competitive programming in Kotlin and watch these videos on competitive programming in Kotlin. Also, all the previous Kotlin Heroes Rounds are available for practice here: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4 and Episode 5: ICPC Round.

We wish you all the best and hope you enjoy Kotlin.

Hello, Codeforces!

First and foremost, we would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who entered and submitted their answers to the first, second, third, and fourth Kotlin Heroes competitions which were held previously: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3 and Episode 4.

Ready to challenge yourself to do better? The Kotlin Heroes 5: ICPC Round competition will be hosted on the Codeforces platform on Nov/12/2020 17:35 (Moscow time). The contest will last 2 hours 30 minutes and will feature a set of problems from simple ones, designed to be solvable by anyone, to hard ones, to make it interesting for seasoned competitive programmers.

Prizes:

Top three winners will get prizes of $512, $256, and $128 respectively, top 50 will win a Kotlin Heroes t-shirt and an exclusive Kotlin sticker, competitors solving at least one problem will enter into a draw for one of 50 Kotlin Heroes t-shirts.

Everyone who takes part in this round will get an electronic Participation Certificate.

There is also a special recognition prize from the ICPC: ICPC- experience, an invitation to the Moscow World Finals 2021, all-inclusive on-site (hotel, meals, ceremonies, and swag, are included; visa, flights, transportation to the contest location is not).

Registration is already open and available via the link. It will be available until the end of the round.

The round will again be held in accordance with a set of slightly modified ICPC rules:

• The round is unrated.
• The contest will have 9 problems of various levels of complexity.
• You are only allowed to use Kotlin to solve these problems.
• Participants are ranked according to the number of correctly solved problems. Ties are resolved based on the lowest total penalty time for all problems, which is computed as follows. For each solved problem, a penalty is set to the submission time of that problem (the time since the start of the contest). An extra penalty of 10 minutes is added for each failed submission on solved problems (i. e., if you never solve the problem, you will not be penalized for trying that problem). If two participants solved the same number of problems and scored the same penalty, then those of them who had previously made the last successful submission will be given an advantage in the distribution of prizes and gifts.

If you are still new to Kotlin we have prepared a tutorial on competitive programming in Kotlin and Kotlin Heroes 5: ICPC Round (Practice), where you can try to solve a few simple problems in Kotlin. All the solutions are open, which means that you can look at the solution even if you haven't solved the problem yet. The practice round is available by the link.

We wish you luck and hope you enjoy Kotlin.

UPD: The editorial can be found here.

Hello, Codeforces!

First and foremost, we would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who entered and submitted their answers to the first, second and third Kotlin Heroes competitions which were held previously. Congratulations to the top 3 winners:

Episode 1

1. Petr
2. ecnerwala
3. eatmore

Episode 2

1. tourist
2. eatmore
3. Benq

Episode 3

1. Egor
2. tourist
3. Benq

Ready to challenge yourself to do better? The fourth "Kotlin Heroes" competition will be hosted on the Codeforces platform on May/29/2020 17:35 (Moscow time). The contest will last 2 hours 30 minutes and will feature a set of problems from simple ones, designed to be solvable by anyone, to hard ones, to make it interesting for seasoned competitive programmers. Top three winners will get prizes of $512, $256, and $128 respectively, top 50 will win a Kotlin Heroes t-shirt and an exclusive Kotlin sticker, competitors solving at least one problem will enter into a draw for one of 50 Kotlin Heroes t-shirts.

Registration is already open and available via the link. It will be available until the end of the round.

The round will again be held in accordance with a set of slightly modified ICPC rules:

• The round is unrated.
• The contest will have 9 problems of various levels of complexity.
• You are only allowed to use Kotlin to solve these problems.
• Participants are ranked according to the number of correctly solved problems. Ties are resolved based on the lowest total penalty time for all problems, which is computed as follows. For each solved problem, a penalty is set to the submission time of that problem (the time since the start of the contest). An extra penalty of 10 minutes is added for each failed submission on solved problems (i.e., if you never solve the problem, you will not be penalized for trying that problem). If two participants solved the same number of problems and scored the same penalty, then those of them who had previously made the last successful submission will be given an advantage in the distribution of prizes and gifts.

If you are still new to Kotlin we have prepared a tutorial on competitive programming in Kotlin and a practice round, where you can try to solve a few simple problems in Kotlin. All the solutions are open, which means that you can look at the solution even if you haven't solved the problem yet. The practice round is available by the link.

We wish you luck and hope you enjoy Kotlin.

UPD: The editorial can be found here. Thank you for participation! I hope you enjoyed the problems.

Hello, Codeforces!

First and foremost, we would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who entered and submitted their answers to the first and second Kotlin Heroes competitions which was held previously. Congratulations to the top 3 winners:

Episode 1

1. Petr
2. ecnerwala
3. eatmore

Episode 2

1. tourist
2. eatmore
3. Benq

Ready to challenge yourself to do better? The third "Kotlin Heroes" competition will be hosted on the Codeforces platform on Feb/27/2020 16:35 (Moscow time). The contest will last 2 hours 30 minutes and will feature a set of problems from simple ones, designed to be solvable by anyone, to hard ones, to make it interesting for seasoned competitive programmers. Top three winners will get prizes of $512, $256, and $128 respectively, top 50 will win a Kotlin Heroes t-shirt and an exclusive Kotlin badge, competitors solving at least one problem will enter into a draw for one of 50 Kotlin Heroes t-shirts.

The round will again be held in accordance with a set of slightly modified ICPC rules:

• The round is unrated.
• The contest will have 6-10 problems of various levels of complexity.
• You are only allowed to use Kotlin to solve these problems.
• Participants are ranked according to the number of correctly solved problems. Ties are resolved based on the lowest total penalty time for all problems, which is computed as follows. For each solved problem, a penalty is set to the submission time of that problem (the time since the start of the contest). An extra penalty of 10 minutes is added for each failed submission on solved problems (i.e., if you never solve the problem, you will not be penalized for trying that problem). If two participants solved the same number of problems and scored the same penalty, then those of them who had previously made the last successful submission will be given an advantage in the distribution of prizes and gifts.

Registration is already open and available via the link. It will be available until the end of the round.

If you are still new to Kotlin we have prepared a tutorial on competitive programming in Kotlin and a practice round, where you can try to solve a few simple problems in Kotlin. All the solutions are open, which means that you can look at the solution even if you haven't solved the problem yet. The practice round is available by the link.

We wish you luck and hope you enjoy Kotlin.

Hello, Codeforces!

First and foremost, we would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who entered and submitted their answers to the first Kotlin Heroes competition which was held back in May. Congratulations to the top 3 winners Petr, ecnerwala, and eatmore on their incredible achievement, especially considering they were up against 4,500 other registrants from over 63 countries. We’d also like to give a shout out to tourist for being the only other person, outside of the top 3, to manage to solve every problem set from this round. Well done all of you!

Ready to challenge yourself to do better? The second "Kotlin Heroes" competition will be hosted on the Codeforces platform on the 7th of September, 2019, at 14:35 UTC (17:35 MSK, 07:35 PDT, 22:35 CST). The contest will last 2 hours 30 minutes and will feature a set of problems from simple ones, designed to be solvable by anyone, to hard ones, to make it interesting for seasoned competitive programmers. Top three winners will get prizes of $512, $256, and $128 respectively, top 50 will win a Kotlin Heroes t-shirt and an exclusive Kotlin badge, competitors solving at least one problem will enter into a draw for one of 50 Kotlin Heroes t-shirts.

The round will again be held in accordance with a set of slightly modified ICPC rules:

• The round is unrated.
• The contest will have 6-10 problems of various levels of complexity.
• You are only allowed to use Kotlin to solve these problems.
• Participants are ranked according to the number of correctly solved problems. Ties are resolved based on the lowest total penalty time for all problems, which is computed as follows. For each solved problem, a penalty is set to the submission time of that problem (the time since the start of the contest). An extra penalty of 10 minutes is added for each failed submission on solved problems (i.e., if you never solve the problem, you will not be penalized for trying that problem). If two participants solved the same number of problems and scored the same penalty, then those of them who had previously made the last successful submission will be given an advantage in the distribution of prizes and gifts.

Registration is already open and available via the link. It will be available until the end of the round.

If you are still new to Kotlin we have prepared a tutorial on competitive programming in Kotlin and a practice round, where you can try to solve a few simple problems in Kotlin. All the solutions are open, which means that you can look at the solution even if you haven't solved the problem yet. The practice round is available by the link.

We wish you luck and hope you enjoy Kotlin.

UPD: Thank you for the participation. The editorials are published.

Hello, Codeforces!

We are happy to announce that in partnership with Codeforces to promote Kotlin programming language we are launching a series of "Kotlin Heroes" programming contests.

Kotlin programming language was introduced by JetBrains in 2011 and reached its first stable version 1.0 in 2016. The current language version is 1.3.31. The language is focused on solving the needs of application developers in various domains. Kotlin is a statically typed language that is designed for writing concise code, with less ceremony and more substance in it, and to scale from applications of just a few lines long to multi-million-lines projects.

While not being specifically designed for competitive programming, it incidentally fits well in this domain, reducing the typical amount boilerplate that a programmer needs to write and read while working with the code almost to the level offered by dynamically-typed scripting languages, while having tooling and performance of a statically-typed language.

The first "Kotlin Heroes" competition will be hosted at Codeforces platform on May/28/2019 17:35 (Moscow time). The contest will last 2 hours 30 minutes and will feature a set of problems from simple ones, designed to be solvable by anyone, to hard ones, to make it interesting for seasoned competitive programmers. Top three winners will get prizes of $512, $256, and $128 respectively, top 50 will win a Kotlin Heroes t-shirt and an exclusive Kotlin badge, competitors solving at least one problem will enter into a draw for one of 50 Kotlin Heroes t-shirts.

The round is held in accordance with slightly modified ICPC rules:

• The round is unrated.
• The contest will have 6-10 problems of various levels of complexity.
• You are only allowed to use Kotlin to solve these problems.
• Participants are ranked according to the number of correctly solved problems.
• Ties are resolved based on the lowest total penalty time for all problems, which is computed as follows. For each solved problem, a penalty is set to the submission time of that problem (the time since the start of the contest). An extra penalty of 10 minutes is added for each failed submission on solved problems (i.e., if you never solve the problem, you will not be penalized for trying that problem).

Registration is already open and available via the link. It will be available until the end of the round.

To help you get familiar with Kotlin we have prepared a tutorial on competitive programming in Kotlin and a practice round, where you can try to solve a few simple problems in Kotlin. All solutions are open, it means that you can look at a solution even if you haven't solved a problem yet. The practice round is available by the link.

We wish you luck and hope you enjoy Kotlin.

UPD 1: Many thanks to the testers elizarov, Benq, cdkrot, nhho, ksun48. Also KAN helped a lot with suggestions to the problems. And to all the participants warm greetings from authors MikeMirzayanov, vovuh, adedalic and pashka — they invented and prepared the problems for you!