One of the most eventful Cook-offs in the recent history of CodeChef comes to an end with gennady once again claiming the top spot. He took an early lead in the contest and maintained it throughout almost the whole of the May Cook-off. lyrically gave gennady a stiff competition, at one time even briefly overtaking him by being the first to solve all five problems of the contest. Not to be outdone, gennady soon solved all the problems successfully and reclaimed the first position on our leader board. Congratulations to both of them! The close fight between the top 2 made for interesting end moments of the contest.

Apart from the obvious excitement over the winners, the May Cook-off was interesting from other aspects too. Fifteen minutes into the contest, we faced a syn-attack on our server. The problem was first noticed when the site pages became slow to respond. However, the good news is that the attack was soon mitigated after being detected. Things went back on track and we wiped the sweat off our brows. Phew! As a direct result of the above mentioned attack, we decided to extend the Cook-off by a good ten minutes keeping in mind the inconvenience that was caused to the participants. This, I am sure, must have come in handy to all those who were competing.

The problems for this Cook-off had been carefully conceived and brewed by Vitaliy Herasymiv. Equal credit goes to our problem tester for the contest, Anton Lunyov, who took the pains to test the problems till moments before the start of the contest to ensure their perfect taste. Without their coordination, the contest problems would have been bland and zest-less. Here’s hoping that they keep more of those coming.

The problems in this contest posed a gamut of varying difficulty levels to the participants. LUCKYSTR was the first of the five to get solved, with the first successful submission for it coming in within the first eight minutes of the contest. It was also the problem with the most successful entries, followed distantly by LUCKYBAL. Of the set, LUCKYCOM proved to be the one that had everyone’s grey cells go into overdrive. The problem only had its first successful entry twenty five minutes before the end of the competition. The guy to crack it first was lyrically followed shortly by gennady. The only other entry for it came from al13n, who just came short of solving all the five problems. Wishing him better luck for the next time. Here are the editorials of the problems for you guys to have a look at. In case of those nagging doubts, feel free to directly talk to the problem setter there.

Coming up next, the stats for the May Cook-off.

Looking at the winners of the May Cook-off, we have:

1.) gennady.korotkevich
2.) lyrically
3.) sereja
4.) mmaxio
5.) fhlasek
6.) al13n
7.) raveman
8.) subscriber
9.) watashi
10.) kenny_horror

At the ninth position on the board we have a female debutant, watashi. Congratulations to her for featuring in the Global top 10 on her first attempt at a Cook-off. We are looking forward to future participation from her. As far as the Indians go, we have balakrishnan_v at the 24th and manan at the 25th positions respectively.

Our winner of the day, gennady has been on the top of the leader board for quite some time now. With this Cook-off he jumped a healthy 767 points, widening the gap between himself and his close competitor EgorK, who decide to give the contest a miss second time in a row.   I wonder how the rankings would have changed if EgorK had made an appearance. We wish to have him back for the future Cook-offs.

As interesting as the May Cook-off was, we are looking forward to the June Long Contest. Our setters and testers are already working their magic to come up with an interesting and challenging set of problems for you. So, get excited as all will be revealed on 1st June. Till then we wait and be patient.

Don’t forget to send us your feedback. We look forward to it always. The problems from this contest are now available in the practice section for you to have a go at them.

Well, it’s time to bid adieu now. But only till the next time I say Hello! Happy coding till then.

-Ankita

Team CodeChef