Hi guys,
Yes its been a long time coming and its finally here. 
The July 2010 Challenge was once again marred by some unfortunate incidents that has made picking the winners of this contest once again quite a challenge.
A few cases of obvious cheating have been recognized and the concerned individuals have been removed from the winners list. If you feel you have been wrongly accused then please contact us by sending in an email to feedback@codechef.com.
Here are the Top 20 Indian and the top 10 Global winners that we feel are eligible for prize money.
India:
01. Namit D. Shetty - Rs.10000
02. Ankul Garg - Rs.7000
03. Rishikesh Dwivedi - Rs.5000
04. Yash - Rs.4000
05. Surendra Kumar Meena - Rs.3500
06. Vikas - Rs.2500
07. Divyanshu - Rs.2500
08. Sumeet - Rs.2500
09. Ikal - Rs.2500
10. Mahesh Chandra Sharma - Rs.2500
11. Balajiganapathi - Rs.1500
12. Amit Karmakar - Rs.1500
13. Saransh Bansal - Rs.1500
14. Kunal Jain - Rs.1500
15. Anil Kishore - Rs.1500
16. Ravi Villuri - Rs.1000
17. Ravi Kiran - Rs.1000
17. Tasnim khan - Rs.1000
19. Vimal poonia - Rs.1000
20. Abhijith Reddy D - Rs.1000
Global:
01. Tomasz Czajka - $300
02. Gennady Korotkevich - $225
03. ChenGaoyuan - $150
04. Dmytro Dzhulgakov - $100
05. Oleg - $75
06. Anton Lunyov - $50
07. Adrian Kuegel - $50
08. Tao Zhao - $50
09. Tanaeem - $50
10. Mark Greve - $50
| Length of Contest | Unique Visitors | Unique Participants | Total Number of Submissions | User who have solved at least one problem |
| 10 days | 7826 | 464 | 11079 | 234 |
| Country | Total Participants | Average Score per User |
| IN | 338 | 0.70 |
| Rest of World | 126 | 1.46 |
Congratulations to all of you that won this month and all the best to everybody for the next competition which begins in only 3 days!
If there is anything that you would like to let us know then do comment on this blog post or send in an email to feedback@codechef.com
Cheers,
Basil
P.S. Winners will be contacted shortly.
Hi guys,
The July 2010 Cook-Off, our first ever attempt at a short contest format has now successfully come to an end. This was quite an exciting moment for us and we hope you all had as much fun with it as we did. Successful submissions to the contest started to pour in, in under 30 minutes, proving that we have some highly skilled coders participating on CodeChef.
BLOG POST UPDATE:
Here are the top 20 best performers of the Cook-Off:
Take a look at the contest rankings here: http://www.codechef.com/rankings/COOK01
At the end of the contest the total submissions are as follows:
1) Head Office Building: 10 successful submissions
2) Ripple-Carry Adder: 18 successful submissions
3) The Black and White Knights: 40 successful submissions
Contest Statistics:
| Length of Contest | Unique Participants | Total Number of Submissions | User who have solved at least one problem |
| 2.5 hours | 215 | 884 | 47 |
| Country | Total Participants | Average Score per User |
| IN | 140 | 0.11 |
| Rest of World | 75 | 0.71 |
Congratulations to all of you and thank you all for participating. This short contest format is an experiment that we are running so we would really appreciate all the feedback you can get. if you would like us to have more contests in this format in the future then please let us know.
We would also like to show our appreciation for our contest moderators, problem setters and tester. David Stolp, AnhDQ, Zac Friggstad and Varun Jalan, thank you for all the help in running a smooth contest.
Make sure you all check out the contest problem editorials here.
Winners of the contest will be contacted on Monday.
Cheers,
Basil
Hello all,
We would like to thank everyone who participated in our July contest despite the problem of exposed solutions. It only goes to reinforce our belief that there are those among us who love to solve problems and love to compete, irrespective of the prize money and irrespective of who cheats. You are the guys we built CodeChef for. You rock!
Secondly, we have identified the account TeamCyclone, thanks to our diligent Sysad team. We regret to announce that it belongs to our long-term associate Varun Jalan, and Pratik Tandel. The evidence trail points at Varun Jalan, who, upon questioning, named Pratik.
We have always trusted Varun, had problem-setting contracts with him, and welcomed his counsel regarding CodeChef on occasions. At his request, we revealed the solutions of the problems LCM and HAPPY to him. We view his behavior as a serious breach of trust and contract. We had sponsored Pratik for the ACM ICPC finals. We are disappointed that in a misguided attempt, they have tried to undermine our efforts to run the last few contests.
We have spoken to both of them, and they have acknowledged their involvement. They have admitted the error of their ways. We do not want to take any action against them, in the hope that they will not repeat such a gross mistake. Since this is also a legal matter, our legal team will be investigating the issue fully and will be deciding on a course of action to safeguard Codechef’s interests in the long-term.
Meanwhile lets put these events behind us and look forward to having a great time! We are excited at the launch of our new short contest format.
Cheers,
The Codechef Team.
—-
PS – We harbor no grudges against anyone. If anything we feel disappointed. We hope both Varun and Pratik see the demerits of their actions and use their potential for the benefit of the community going forward.
—-
Blog Updated: The acceptance and apology mails sent to us after we spoke to them:
Varun says:
“HI all,
This is to formally apologise for being involved in the Stefan incident. I am sorry for my actions.
I was a part of the idea all along. Pratik had created the codechef/fb accounts, however I had login details for them. For the problem LCM, Pratik had asked me help on a similar problem that he discussed with a friend. I did now know immediately how to solve it. So I asked Anup for a solution to the LCM problem, and on seeing it, I could explain Pratik the solution then. I have not posted the solutions to the problems myself, but have been aware of it in collaboration with Pratik all along.
I would like to conclude by mentioning my motives in being behind it, which were clearly not monetary gain. With the particular format of the contest, cheating in the contests is rampant. Without strong motivation to learn, its easy to get carried away by small monetary gains and make easy and fast money. In my opinion, spending 10 days on 4-5 problems is not exactly the best way for a beginner to learn. That is not the way I learnt, but its my mistake in trying to force my ideology on anyone. I am sincerely sorry for my actions, and assert that they will not repeat. I m aware of the amount of damage it has caused to Codechef’s reputation and am sincerely sorry for it.
-Varun”
Prateek says: “I, Pratik Tandel, admit to being an accomplice to Varun Jalan in the public disclosure of solutions to the recent monthly contests on Codechef. The reason for my actions it that I strongly resented the fact that many used unfair means to win in contests. Very little or too lenient action was taken against them. They used to come back the next month and cheat in better ways. This was the main reason for the deplorable actions of mine.
The plans for this activity was discussed with Varun and he had agreed and contributed to the ideas. He was aware of the login credentials of all accounts created for this purpose. He had also helped with some of the harder problems.
I strongly regret the outcomes that this actions of ours have caused. After my discussion with Anup and Bhavin, I have been convinced that my misguided actions have undone a lot of hard work put in by many people working on the Codechef team and the problem-setters. After discussions I have concluded that these means do not justify the reasons that I have stated. I apologize to the community for any inconvenience caused, and I understand that it must be a very hard time for all of you. I hope that you will forgive me over a course of time, for these wrong actions.”
Dear Codecheffers,
We created CodeChef to encourage you improve your programming skills. Competing and interacting with programmers all over the world is an exciting way to get better. After finishing a contest, it’s fascinating to compare your work with others. Doing so helps you learn how to make your code better in the future. On the other hand, copying someone else’s work teaches you next to nothing.
That’s why it’s so disheartening to find out that one of our contest participants has been publishing answers before the contests are over. In addition, this programmer has put up instructions for how to mask your answers. Actions like these undermine the integrity of our contests. Not only do they make CodeChef unfair, but they make contests less fun.
The participant who’s giving away the answers, “Stefan Kyznetsov,” apparently thinks that all code should be open source — even our contests. However, “open source” does not mean the same as “Piracy.” While touting “open source,” Stefan is actually promoting plagiarism.
Furthermore, he is attempting to discourage people from learning by participating in contests. He doesn’t think that people can or should learn by solving problems. He thinks our contest prizes are a waste of money. He feels that by “hiding” our code for 10 days before we reveal our solution, we oppose the very concept of open source. How he has come to this last conclusion is beyond us. CodeChef is a not-for-profit, educational organization designed to challenge people to get better at programming. Our platform is free and open to anyone in the world.
We know there are lots of you out there who love CodeChef. If you’re game, we strongly encourage all of you to help us solve this problem.
Here’s our first step:
Tell Everyone Who Stefan Is and How to Contact Him.
If you know who Stefan is or how to contact him, let everyone know. Tell everyone his name, email addresses, chat IDs, phone numbers, IP addresses, and any other contact info you have. If you’re uncomfortable telling everyone, then just tell us anonymously by emailing feedback@codechef.com. We promise we won’t reveal your identity.
Once we know how to contact Stefan, we would ask everyone on CodeChef to explain to him why you oppose his actions.
We have some contact info about Stefan, but we’re not sure how reliable it is.
Again, we really don’t know if “Stefan Kyznetsov” is a real name or whether any of our information about him is reliable. If you have any other solutions, we encourage you to submit them in the comments section below.
One Last Thing:
To build real software, you need to be creative, resilient, and smart. Copiers who can’t create original solutions won’t build the next generation of software. They may snatch a few dollars here and there, leeching off other people’s hard work. But they won’t get any better and they certainly won’t build anything great.
In other words, find your own solutions. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time.
Now put on your WHITE HAT and help us solve this problem!
~ Team CodeChef.
We would love to introduce to you our Programmer of the Month for July – Akhil Ravidas! He has been a part of the CodeChef scene since March of 2009 and has solved over 30 of our contest problems since then. He was also part of Counter Gambit, the team that came third in the CodeChef Campus SnackDown and represented India in the ACM ICPC world finals in harbin, China this year! And yes, he has even been a problem setter for two of our previous contests.
Let’s find out what our programmer from NIT Trichy has to say!
Name: Akhil Ravidas
Age: 21
Institute: National Institute of Technology, Trichy [Graduated]
Userid: akhilravidas
Twitter ID: akhilravidas
How/When did you start programming?
I started programming in my high school. But back then, I programmed in Visual Basic which was mostly drawing forms. I started competing in competitive programming contests from the second year of my college.
What do you do when you’re not programming?
My free time hobbies vary a lot. I finished my college last month and I am currently staying at a beautiful place in Kerala. So for now, I roam around in the nearby areas and click pics.
What do you like most about CodeChef?
I like the challenge problem idea of codechef. It brings in a much needed variation from the other programming contests.
How many hours a day do you program?It again varies a lot depending upon my other work. These days I’m on my computer most of the time, though the hours spent in ‘productive’ programming would be much lower than the total hours spent with my comp.
What’s your favourite book and why?
My favourite book is “Fooled by randomness” by Taleb. It is an brilliant and insightful read about role of chance and relation to skills.
If you could eat dinner with any famous person (past or present), who would it be and what dish would you have?
I have a very long list of people from almost every century whom I’d like to dine with. It will be very hard to choose one person. But then again, if there is a guarantee, I could try harder 
Dish: Not too particular about it.
What are your plans for the future?
I am at home until fall. I look forward to working on something exciting and challenging. My long term future goal is to create a really awesome product.
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