Hi everybody!

Glad to tell you that tomorrow on 9:05 UTC there will be Codeforces Round #345. The round is formed of the first day of X Moscow Open Olympiad problemset with several additional problems created for this round. This round is brought to you by the scientific committee of Moscow Programming Olympiads controlled by GlebsHP, romanandreev and your humble servant, and also with a great help of fcspartakm who helped us make a complete problemset of our problems.

The round will be conducted under the standard Codeforces rules, you will be given 5 problems for 2 hours. Yes, this round is rated :)

Note that because of holding the main onsite round system testing and upsolving will be available no earlier than 12:35 UTC. Also we would like to ask you to not discuss problems in comments during the time between the end of the round and the end of the onsite competition. All comments with discussions will be removed and the most active violators will be punished. Thanks for your understanding.

UPD Sorry, the round start was moved to 9:25 UTC. It is not easy to run onsite round and Codeforces Round simultaneously!

UPD2 You may discuss the solutions! System testing will be run shortly.

UPD3 The editorial has finally appeared: http://mirror.codeforces.com/blog/entry/43677 Sorry for the delay!

Hello, Codeforces!

We are glad to invite all of you to test out our new Online Judge platform at csacademy.com. We're a Romanian based start-up that focuses on online education. Up until this point we've been working on creating a new environment for competitive programming contests.

Our first beta round took place in January and it was an IOI-style contest of medium difficulty. You can have fun solving the problems in our archive. Pay attention though, it is necessary to have an account in order to solve any problems on our website. You can connect via Facebook or Google+, or you can simply create a new account by providing a valid email address. Once you have an account you can choose a username, but all Codeforces handles are already reserved (so no tourist for the locals :D). We have created for you the possibility of connecting your Codeforces user here. Once connected, your Codeforces handle becomes available, otherwise it stays reserved for an indefinite amount of time.

Our second beta round will take place on Friday, Mar/04/2016 17:00 (UTC). If you want to take part in this round you need to register before the contest begins. Just like the previous round, the difficulty will be moderate (similar to a Codeforces Div. 2). You will have to solve 6 problems in 2 hours and 30 minutes.

This time around the format of the round will be different:

• There will be full feedback throughout the entire contest.
• Tasks will not have partial scoring, so you need to pass all test cases for a solution to count (ACM-ICPC-style).
• Tasks will have dynamic score. According to the number of users that solve a problem the score will vary between 100 and 1000.
• Besides the score, each user will also get a penalty that is going to be used as a tiebreaker. The penalty is computed taking into account the minute of the last accepted problem and the number of wrong submissions (only submissions for accepted tasks count).

More about our platform:

• For the best user experience we recommend using Google Chrome. We are still in beta and we didn't have time to check if everything works on other browsers.
• We currently support C++14, Java8, Python2 and Python3. We recommend using only C++ and Java for a contest, as the time limits are not calibrated for Python.
• We have a pretty cool online editor. We use it ourselves, so give it a try ;)

If you find any bugs please email us at contact@csacademy.com

People currently involved with CS Academy include:

• Mikester
• AndreiNet
• alex.velea
• Kira96
• gheorghemihai
• wefgef
• mihaic
• vladb

Don't forget to like us on Facebook, VK and follow us on Twitter.

EDIT: The editorial is ready. Congratulations to all the users and we hope you had a great time. Beta round 3 is around the corner, keep your fingers crossed!

EDIT2: We're hosting Beta Round #3.

Hello, Codeforces!

My name is Ivan Udovin, and I would like to say, that the Codeforces Round #344 will be held on Thursday (March 3, 2016 at 19:35). This is our first round, but it doesn’t mean that problems will be boring and not interesting. The problemsetters of this round are me (wilcot) and Ilya Kheifets (xfce8888). Thanks a lot to Alex Vistyazh (netman) and unknown person (he don’t want to be added in the announcement) for testing our round. Also I’d like to thank Fedor Korobeynikov (Mediocrity) for his awesome idea for task E.

We thank Gleb Evstropov (GlebsHP) for his help in preparing the contest, Maria Belova (Delinur) for translating the statements into English, and, of course, Codeforces team and Mike Mirzayanov for unique Codeforces and Polygon platforms.

This round consists of five problems. Main heroes of this round: Blake — the owner of the "Blake Technologies" company, and Chris — an employee of this company, and others.

Scoring distribution: 500, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500.

Good luck, have fun.

PS. Editorial is ready.

PPS. Congratulations to the winners:

Div. 2:

1. lovelive

2. Murtazo.Ali

3. chychmek

4. chrome

5. Batman

Div. 1:

1. Um_nik

2. chffy

3. natsugiri

4. ershov.stanislav

5. AndreiNet

Hello, Codeforces!

Today is the first day of the spring and it's great!

Educational Codeforces Round 9 will take place on 01 march 2016 at 18:00 MSK for the first and the second divisions. You can read about educational rounds here and here. I should again notice the high density of contests and championships.

<This time it wasn't changed>

The round will be unrated for all users and it will be held with extented ACM ICPC rules. You will have two hours to solve six problems. After that you will have one day to hack any solution you want. You will have access to copy any solution and test it locally.

If you have ideas for some problems or maybe already prepared problems that you can't use in rounds or official competitions, you can write to me.

It seems that it is harder to invent interesting simple problems (like A and B) than difficult ones. So don't be afraid to suggest interesting simple or very simple tasks.

</This time it wasn't changed>

The problemset again was totally suggested by Codeforces users. The problem А again was suggested by user unprost (be ready to see a long problem statement). The problem D suggested by Denis Bezrukov pitfall. Alexey Chesnokov CleRIC sent the problem E a long ago. The problems B, C and F was suggested by Lewin Gan Lewin.

Thanks a lot to them and all others who are sending the problems or just ideas of the problems!

The problems was prepared by me (Edvard Davtyan). Thanks to Maria Belova Delinur for checking the English statements. The problems was tested by the same users who suggested them: unprost, Alexey Chesnokov CleRIC and Lewin Gan Lewin. Thanks a lot to all of them!

I hope you will enjoy the problems!

Good luck and have fun!

UPD1: The first part of the contest is finished. You can hack solutions.

UPD2: There are some technical problems. The phase of open hacks will be opened later (several hours).

UPD3: Editorial is ready.

UPD4: The contest is finished. We will start system testing in a few minutes.

UPD5: TOP3 of hackers:

P_Nyagolov — 31 hacks

khadaev — 27 hacks

halyavin — 23 hacks

Hi all!

VeeRoute Marathon starts today: it is a programming competition that is organized by VeeRoute and lasts from February 29 to March 14. We have already posted information about the Marathon here on Codeforces, and now we would like to tell more about its organizer.

VeeRoute is a Russian IT-company that develops solutions for logistics optimization. Even though VeeRoute is a young company, its growth has been very rapid: the staff has doubled in the last few months, and the company is preparing to enter the international markets. There are two offices: in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. VeeRoute is a very attractive workplace for talented and ambitious programmers, because everyday tasks there are challenging and interesting, and the development department is headed by Andrey Lopatin, a two-time world champion in programming.

VeeRoute’s ambition is to become a world leader in the field of IT solutions for logistics optimization. Every day logistics becomes more and more complex, and the key to new challenges is automatization of logistics processes and its management in real time. VeeRoute follows these trends by creating its own Scheduling & Dispatching platform.

If you get excited about challenging and interesting programming problems, if you are good with algorithms and data structures, then VeeRoute Marathon is for you! Register here: http://mirror.codeforces.com/contests/636.

Participants will have to solve a certain optimization problem, similar to those solved by VeeRoute team daily. Do your best and draw VeeRoute’s attention to your talent! VeeRoute is trying to make the world a better place, and looking for individuals who share the same goals and vision.

Good luck and have a nice contest!

Hi all!

From February 29 to March 14, a contest supported by company VeeRoute will be held on Codeforces. VeeRoute is a young and ambitious IT company which specializes in automation of transportation logistics.

Participants will have to solve a certain optimization problem as best as they can. The problem is similar to the ones that are being solved by VeeRoute daily. As the competition format is very different from a standard Codeforces round, the contest will be unrated.

Participants

We invite everyone who is fond of interesting programming challenges and well-versed in algorithms and data structures. The contest is for individuals. There are no restrictions on age or division.

Prizes

After the final testing is over, the winners will be announced, and the following prizes will be awarded:

• I place — iPhone 6S or Nexus 6P at the winner’s choice.
• II place — any mechanical keyboard by Das Keyboard.
• III place — any board game of the Ticket to Ride series.

Additionally, top 30 contestants will receive a T-shirt with the sponsor’s logo.

Good luck and have a nice contest!

Hello everyone!

The final round of the 8VC Venture Cup will be held on Feb/28/2016 18:10 (UTC). ecnerwala and I are the problem setters. We want to thank GlebsHP and vnovakovski for help in preparing the contest, stella_marine for fixing the statements, and MikeMirzayanov for creating the Codeforces platform.

The contest is by invitation only to the top 200 contestants and top local contestants from Round 1 and contains six problems. We will also hold rated, out-of-contest participation for both div1 and div2 contestants — all three groups will feature slightly different problemsets. Local contestants will compete onsite in Silicon Valley. OpenGov, one of the featured 8 | VC companies, has been generous to host this competition at their offices; see more details about this awesome company below:

OpenGov transforms the way the world analyzes and allocates public money. With more than 700 government customers across 45 states in a rapidly expanding network, OpenGov is the market leader in cloud-based financial intelligence, budgeting, and transparency for government. The OpenGov platform transforms government financial data into intuitive, interactive visualizations for both internal government users and citizens.

ABOUT 8 | PARTNERS

8 | Partners, which consists of Joe Lonsdale (co-founder of Palantir) and his core team from Formation | 8, is a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that invests in industry-transforming technology companies. The team's investment portfolio includes companies such as those featured below, and a host of other top technology platforms that leverage modern algorithms and data science to power their core business processes. If you are interested to connect, please take a look at http://www.codeforces.com/8vc/apply.

PRIZES

• Overall 1st place — $2500
• Overall 2nd place — $1000
• Overall 3rd-5th places — $500 each
• Overall 1-50th place — t-shirts with 8 | VC and company logos
• Local Winner — Dinner with Joe Lonsdale (founder of Palantir, Addepar, & 8 | Partners) and other Silicon Valley technologists
• Local top finishers — Opportunity to meet with leadership from 8 | VC portfolio companies

The scoring distribution will be standard for all three divisions: 500 — 1000 — 1500 — 2000 — 2500 — 3000

Good luck!

UPD: Due to onsite awards presentation, we will hold final system testing until around one hour after the end of the contest.

Congratulations to the top overall contestants:

1. tourist
2. Egor
3. ikatanic
4. enot110
5. DemiGuo

As well as the top onsite contestants:

1. winger
2. waterfalls
3. KADR

Editorial can be found here.

Thanks for participating!