Do you already have a New Year's mood?

And we have traditional gifts!

Change Handle Feature

Hurry! Only until the 10th of January, you can change your handle (but only once)! Note that it will be possible to roll back the changes or change the handle again only after a year. Be careful what you wish for.

You can change your handle to the new one which wasn't used before by anybody or which was used by you before. The links to a profile page with old handle would automatically redirect to the actual profile.

This year we have an improvement. If you took part in at least 10 rounds you can request handle of an inactive participant. It means that the participant should have a period of activity on Codeforces of at most 90 days, this period should be in 2015 or earlier. The inactive participant can’t have posted comments, messages and so on. It can't take part in more than 2 contests. It will be automatically renamed and informed by email. If you can’t change handle to others, it means that some requirement doesn't meet. Please do not ask me to do something with it. I'm not Santa Claus.

Talking about handles I always reminisce the following story. Once a user wrote me the message: "Please change my handle from I_love_Valya to I_love_Sveta, as I no longer love Valya ..."

New Year's Masquerade of Colors and Ranks

Traditional magical tab has appeared in the profile setting. Happy New Year!

The end of the December is fast approaching and it is time for the best last contest of the year! The Good Bye 2018 round will take place on Sunday, December 30, 2018 at 14:35 UTC.

As the people who already engaged in discussions about the ultimate problem suspect, I am the problem writer. As such, I'd like to thank to:

• arsijo and KAN for the round coordination and one of the problems,
• AlexFetisov, cyand1317, Errichto, Jeel_Vaishnav, Lewin, misof, winger for testing and invaluable suggestions,
• MikeMirzayanov and everyone involved in building and running Codeforces and Polygon platform.

The round will last for 2:30 hours and you will be given 8 problems for both divisions. There will be an interactive problem.

You have the last opportunity to reach Your rating goals for 2018. Good luck!

UPD: The top 3 participants eligible for ICPC 2019/20 season can win a great prize.

UPD2: The scoring distribution is 500-1000-1750-2250-3000-3000-3750-4000.

UPD3: Round is finished. I hope you enjoyed the contest! I am really sorry for the duck-up in problem G. I'll share more details once the important things (systest, editorial ...) are taken care of. The systest might be slightly delayed because of that.

UPD4: Editorial

UPD5: We apologize for the issue with problem G. We are still investigating this issue. Verdicts “Idleness limit exceeded” may be changed to other. We will write a full report about it later.

UPD6: The results are final, rating will be recalculated shortly. Congratulations to the winners:

1. tourist
2. eatmore
3. Um_nik
4. ecnerwala
5. Radewoosh

UPD7: Some more information about problem G

Hello, Codeforces!

Happy Holidays from us at Harbour.Space University, and good luck on the Good Bye 2018 round This year’s Final Round has a special prize — as you might know, we’ve prepared a new installment to the “Hello! Programming Bootcamps”...this time, our destination is the pearl of the Middle East — Muscat, Oman.

So, as a special prize for this Final Codeforces Round, the top 3 participants, who are also eligible for ICPC 2019/2020 season, will be invited to form a team and join us in Oman for the 2019 “Hello Muscat!” Programming Bootcamp in 9 — 15 of March — sponsored with their participation fees, accommodation, and meals for the entire duration of the bootcamp (except flights)!

Registering to the the round you will be asked to confirm your eligibility for ICPC 2019/2020 season and your wish to get the prize.

About the Hello Muscat! Programming Bootcamp.

We are inviting all of you to join us during 9 — 15 March, 2019 in Muscat, the capital of Oman, for an intense 6 days of programming! As always, we can’t wait to see all of you learn, practice and compete on the international stage, smoothing your road towards the April World Finals in Porto.

How it works: “Hello Muscat!” Programming Bootcamp will run in parallel with the traditional Moscow pre-Finals ICPC Workshop — both Bootcamps’ contests will be identical, and contestants will be able to see their position in the General Leaderboard. Every day both camps will be competing simultaneously, 3,965 kilometers from each other!

World’s greatest coaches will come to Muscat!

MIKE MikeMirzayanov MIRZAYANOV — Founder & CEO of Codeforces, Coach of the ICPC World Champion Team 2006, Topcoder Open Finalist 2006, Google Code Jam Finalist: 2005-2006
FILIPP DPR-pavlin RUKHOVICH — ICPC World Finals 2014, KPI-Open – 2013 Winner
ARTEM VArtem VASILYEV — ICPC 2014 Bronze Medalist, ICPC 2015 World Champion, ITMO University
IVAN ifsmirnov SMIRNOV — Google Code Jam Finalist, ICPC Gold Medal, Silver medal

Visa in Oman

Citizens of almost all countries may obtain a single or multiple entry eVisa valid for 30 days online or receive visa on arrival in Oman.

For more information about the bootcamp, please refer to the “Hello Muscat!” page, here!

Again, best of luck with the contest, and we hope to see you in Oman!

Hello Codeforces!

On Dec/28/2018 17:35 (Moscow time) Educational Codeforces Round 57 (Rated for Div. 2) will start.

Series of Educational Rounds continue being held as Harbour.Space University initiative! You can read the details about the cooperation between Harbour.Space University and Codeforces in the blog post.

This round will be rated for the participants with rating lower than 2100. It will be held on extented ACM ICPC rules. The penalty for each incorrect submission until the submission with a full solution is 10 minutes. After the end of the contest you will have 12 hours to hack any solution you want. You will have access to copy any solution and test it locally.

You will be given 7 problems and 2 hours to solve them.

The problems were invented and prepared by Roman Roms Glazov, Adilbek adedalic Dalabaev, Vladimir vovuh Petrov, Ivan BledDest Androsov, Soroush Tabesh Soroush and me.

Good luck to all participants!

Congratulations to the winners:

69 successful hacks and 296 unsuccessful hacks were made in total! The table doesn't look that interesting this time, so I won't include it.

And finally people who were the first to solve each problem:

UPD: Editorial is out

My session is almost done and holidays are just around the corner. It means that it's time for another one contest! Happy New Year to all of you!

<copy-pasted-part>

Hello!

Codeforces Round 529 (Div. 3) will start at Dec/27/2018 17:35 (Moscow time). You will be offered 6 or 7 problems with expected difficulties to compose an interesting competition for participants with ratings up to 1600. Probably, participants from the first division will not be at all interested by this problems. And for 1600-1899 the problems will be too easy. However, all of you who wish to take part and have rating 1600 or higher, can register for the round unofficially.

The round will be hosted by rules of educational rounds (extended ACM-ICPC). Thus, during the round, solutions will be judged on preliminary tests, and after the round it will be a 12-hour phase of open hacks. I tried to make strong tests — just like you will be upset if many solutions fail after the contest is over.

You will be given 6 or 7 problems and 2 hours to solve them.

Note that the penalty for the wrong submission in this round (and the following Div. 3 rounds) is 10 minutes.

Remember that only the trusted participants of the third division will be included in the official standings table. As it is written by link, this is a compulsory measure for combating unsporting behavior. To qualify as a trusted participants of the third division, you must:

• take part in at least two rated rounds (and solve at least one problem in each of them),
• do not have a point of 1900 or higher in the rating.

Regardless of whether you are a trusted participant of the third division or not, if your rating is less than 1600, then the round will be rated for you.

Thanks to MikeMirzayanov for the platform, help with ideas for problems and for coordination of my work. Thanks to my good friends Mikhail awoo Piklyaev, Maksim Neon Mescheryakov and Ivan BledDest Androsov for help in round preparation and testing the round.

Good luck!

I also would like to say that participants who will submit wrong solutions on purpose and hack them afterwards (example) will not be shown in the hacking leaders table.

</copy-pasted-part>

UPD: After the contest, you can discuss the problems in the community Discord server. Maybe I will take part in the discussion.

UPD2: Editorial is published!

UPD3: I forgot to thank my friend Roman Roms Glazov for helping me with testing the round!

UPD4:

Congratulations to the winners:

Congratulations to the best hackers:

549 successful hacks and 540 unsuccessful hacks were made in total!

And finally people who were the first to solve each problem:

Hello everyone!

Good news — Russian AI Cup 2018 has started! This competition is being held seventh time, and this time we hav a sport game in football/Rocket League style. Task is simple — score more goals than your opponent!

Try yourself in creating an artificial intelligence, it's simple and fun. Go to Russian AI Cup site and enter the battle. Good luck!

This time we also allow you to try the game out by playing it it the browser

Hi all!

This weekend, at Dec/23/2018 16:35 (Moscow time) we will hold Codeforces Round 528. It is based on problems of Technocup 2019 Elimination Round 4 that will be held at the same time.

Technocup is a major olympiad for Russian-speaking high-school students, so if you fall into this category, please register at Technocup 2019 website and take part in the Elimination Round.

Div. 1 and Div.2 editions are open and rated for everyone. Register and enjoy the contests!

The round was prepared by Roms, Neon, BledDest, adedalic, awoo, isaf27, Endagorion with coordinator's help from 300iq.

Have fun!

Hello.

On December 23rd at 07:00 UTC we are hosting the second elimination round of our olympiad for high school students. More information on olympiad's website. The rules are IOI-like. Round will last for 5 hours, and consist of 5 problems to solve.

Live standings

We hosted the first round Innopolis Open, First elimination round, 2018-2019 on December 1st. Those, who already advanced to the final round, can skip the round, but certainly can participate if they want.

We can discuss problems after the round here.

Good luck all!

I'm in the middle of the session but I'm still trying to prepare Div. 3 rounds.

<copy-pasted-part>

Hello!

Codeforces Round 527 (Div. 3) will start at Dec/18/2018 17:35 (Moscow time). You will be offered 6 or 7 problems with expected difficulties to compose an interesting competition for participants with ratings up to 1600. Probably, participants from the first division will not be at all interested by this problems. And for 1600-1899 the problems will be too easy. However, all of you who wish to take part and have rating 1600 or higher, can register for the round unofficially.

The round will be hosted by rules of educational rounds (extended ACM-ICPC). Thus, during the round, solutions will be judged on preliminary tests, and after the round it will be a 12-hour phase of open hacks. I tried to make strong tests — just like you will be upset if many solutions fail after the contest is over.

You will be given 6 or 7 problems and 2 hours to solve them.

Note that the penalty for the wrong submission in this round (and the following Div. 3 rounds) is 10 minutes.

Remember that only the trusted participants of the third division will be included in the official standings table. As it is written by link, this is a compulsory measure for combating unsporting behavior. To qualify as a trusted participants of the third division, you must:

• take part in at least two rated rounds (and solve at least one problem in each of them),
• do not have a point of 1900 or higher in the rating.

Regardless of whether you are a trusted participant of the third division or not, if your rating is less than 1600, then the round will be rated for you.

Thanks to MikeMirzayanov for the platform, help with ideas for problems and for coordination of my work. Thanks to my good friends Mikhail awoo Piklyaev, Maksim Neon Mescheryakov and Ivan BledDest Androsov for help in round preparation and testing the round.

Good luck!

I also would like to say that participants who will submit wrong solutions on purpose and hack them afterwards (example) will not be shown in the hacking leaders table.

</copy-pasted-part>

UPD: I also would like to thank Roman Roms Glazov, Farkhod Farhod Khakimiyon and Alex hohomu Poon for help with testing the round.

UPD2:

Congratulations to the winners:

Congratulations to the best hackers:

796 successful hacks and 2063 unsuccessful hacks were made in total!

And finally people who were the first to solve each problem:

UPD3: Editorial is published!

Hi!

I'm glad to invite you to participate in Avito Cool Challenge 2018 which starts on Dec/16/2018 17:35 (Moscow time). The round will be rated to participants of both divisons.

The problem setters are TLE, sunset, fateice, yanQval and quailty.

We would like to thank:

• cdkrot and 300iq for coordinating and helping us with the round.
• Lewin, Ashishgup, winger, AlexFetisov, vintage_Vlad_Makeev and isaf27 for testing the round and giving advice.
• choutii for playing a crucial role in the contest. (you'll see.)
• MikeMirzayanov for awesome Codeforces and Polygon.
• Avito for generously sponsoring this round.

This round is conducted on the initiative and support of Avito. Avito.ru is a Russian classified advertisements website with sections devoted to general good for sale, jobs, real estate, personals, cars for sale, and services. Avito.ru is the most popular classifieds site in Russia and is the third biggest classifieds site in the world after Craigslist and the Chinese website 58.com.

Avito presents nice gifts for participants. Top 30 participants and also 10 random participants with places 31-130 will be awarded with a special T-shirt.

You will be given 8 problems and 2.5 hours to solve them. As usual, the score distribution will be revealed shortly before the contest.

This is the first contest on Codeforces for most of us. Hope to see you participating! Good luck!

There will be an interactive problem in the round. If you have never solved interactive problems before, please read this.

UPD: The scoring distribution is standard 500-1000-1500-2000-2500-3000-3500-4000.

UPD: Congratulations to winners!

• tourist
• LHiC
• xyz111
• mnbvmar
• V--o_o--V

Also, you can find the list of T-shirt receivers here.

UPD: Editorial