Bonjour,

How quickly does time fly by? Seems only yesterday that the 3rd Anniversary edition of our Long Contest started and every one here was in a celebration mood (as depicted in these pics). Unfortunately, time has brought us again to the end of another appetizing March Long Contest. As most of us know this was a special contest which saw us foray in the 4th year of our successful en-devour.

We cannot give any prizes for guessing the winner, as we have tie!! Yes, and its a coincidence that we have a 3-way tie for our 3rd anniversary contest . The 1st place is shared by ACRush, hirosegolf and snapdragon with perfect 10 points. They were the only participants who could finish up our entire meal of 10 problems. lepetrandr is some distance away at 4th. Well done guys. Your guys deserve the top spot.

The Indian rank list is devoid of any tie and we have a clear winner in rudradevbasak. kiranjot and shadow follow him in 2nd and 3rd place respectively. Congratulations to all of them.

Here are the top ten Global/top twenty Indian winners and their positions:

Global:

1.) ACRush
1.) hirosegolf
1.) snapdragon
4.) lepetrandr
5.) acube
6.) ushsh
7.) skorknure
8.) tanzaku
9.) emkjp
10.) enot

Indian:

1.) rudradevbasak
2.) kiranjot
3.) shadow
4.) dudechandan123
5.) Idiotsid
6.) gultus
7.) ashish_massand
8.) shettynamit
9.) sunny816.iitr
10.) rizwanhudda
10.) sharatiitr
10.) smithinsu
13.) digo
14.) chetan_ug2k10
14.) diamondfist
14.) mischievous_me
14.) shubhanshu
14.) suh_ash2008
14.) viv001
20.) ashish.pant
20.) mcsharma1990
20.) pradeep_chf
20.) rishabhm

Congratulations to each and everyone.

The contest was a success, with slightly lower participation than the previous February Long Contest in terms of numbers. But we are not loosing our sleep over it, as long as you guys enjoyed and relished the problem set laid out for you.Do let us know what you think. I believe the this will be made up in the next contest.

The people without whom the problem set would not be possible: Hiroto Sekido, Duc, Shilp Gupta, Nikhil Garg, Sergey Kulik, Vamsi Kavala, Vitaliy Herasymiv. Let us reserve some applaud for them. Not to forget our ever-diligent problem tester Anton Lunyov. This guy has been extremely professional in his testing duties. He has been consistently testing out our Long Contest problem-set in spite of his internship duties in one of the top web company. A big applause for him. Our setters have also prepared the editorials for those who found the going tough in the contest. You can read them here.

A short mention for the Challenge problem TOMJERRY, which took some time to be ‘contest-ready’. The problem was originally authored by Duc who had to leave it halfway due to his professional commitments. The problem was taken up by Shilp Gupta, who, I bet, had to spent some sleepless nights to come up with solid proof test cases for the problem. And the nights were prolonged by some continuous invalidation of those cases by the wily Anton! And the time zone difference between them certainly did not help either’s sleep. Thanks a lot Shilp and Anton. You are amazing!

Now for the contest statistics:

We have been quite satisfied with way Short Contest Ratings are turning up and it breathes some stiff competition in the contest as well. There was no doubt amongst us, here at CodeChef, that our Long Contest Ratings should also be based on the ELO Rating. And, so as we had promised we have enabled ELO ratings for our Long Contest ratings calculation and it is live now. You can check your new Long Contest Rating here. What this implies is that you will be able to hold on to the your spot only if you are consistent.

So what are you guys waiting for? Sharpen up your skills for our next Long Contest coming up on 1st of April.

For those who wish to see the old archived Long Contest ratings, you can view them here.

For our new users you can read more about the implementation of our rating system here.

We have also launched a newly revamped forums section a là stackoverflow style. We already have a few questions on the forums and more waiting to be asked. We are also planning to put up frequently emailed questions up on the forums. So keep watching that space.

That’s all from our side. Do keep pouring in your feedback at feedback@codechef.com. Next, we have our March Short Contest(COOK20) coming up. The problems are undergoing stringent testing as I write this post. The banner for the short contest will be posted soon. Do let us know if you like it. We have EgorK trailing Gennady by a narrow margin in the Short Contest ratings. Will he dis-mantle Gennady from the top spot? Don’t miss the action

-Regards,
Tojo