Post June contests showers..

5 min read

There are more reasons than just rains, behind the delay of this post. But, we wouldn’t get into those. Let’s just say, we took a prolonged “Lunch” break. But, now that we’ve taken a breather, let’s pen down the story of the two June contests. We’d begin with June Challenge 2013.

The June Challenge began with the first showers of the season and while, we personally, weren’t monsoon-ready, we had all things in place for the contest. So, no pouring from the roof there. The flavorous problem set was cooked by TianCheng Lou, Vivek Hamirwasia, Vitaliy Herasymiv, Imran Sunny, Shanjingbo, Sergey Kulik, Anton Lunyov, Jay Pandya, Manish Kumar and Vamsi Kavala. The testing for the problems was done by Hiroto Sekido and Tuan Anh. Who doesn’t enjoy sizzling feast in the rains.

The problem setting panel this time around had debutant TianCheng Lou aka ACRush, who has a huge repute in the global programming fraternity. So, we were thrilled to have him aboard. And keeping up with his stature, he delivered the brilliant “To Challenge or Not” problem, which contrary to its name, did challenge the participants. The debut of ACRush as the problem setter meant that participants would not have to compete with him. But that’s just one big programmer less. There are plenty of them out there.

And it became apparent from the very first day of the contest. From the land of North Korea, we saw another rising star in kutengine making it to the top, right on the very first day in his very first long challenge. Yes, he too was making his debut. So, we had two roaring debuts in the June Challenge. Kutengine, announced his arrival at the big stage by being among the very few ones who had solved all the ten problems in the early days of the contest. And accompanying him in that league were the biggies like mugurelionut, evgentu, simplex_au, EgorK and his own country mate scli. While, that was the initial blast in the international rank charts, our Indian rank list too saw some thunder and lightning in the competition between vineetpaliwal, sharatiitr and anunay_arunav. However, the top spot was firmly held by the Indian juggernaut djdolls. And that sight changed only for a short duration when vineetpaliwal took the top spot.

After the initial blast, kutengine’s stay at the top was cut short, as mugurelionut triumphed him at the top. Just as expected by some of the fellow CodeCheffers. The topping and tumbling continued as we moved into the contest. The submissions were pouring in like the monsoon rains as the participants were enjoying the problems. The Lapindromes was the early favorite as we witnessed initial flood of submissions onto it. But it was Collecting Magical Berries, Count Special Matrices, and Just Some Permutations 3, which gave sleepless nights to many.

In the latter half of the contest, the weak test cases of Two k-Convex Polygons left participants tumbling over it. We received handful of complaints. And we acted accordingly. Our problem setting panel was made aware of it and looking at the severity of the problem they came to the consensus of re-judging all the solutions of TKCONVEX. Thus on the very last day of the contest the submissions were re-judged, but it seemed that the damage was done and it upset you guys. An an excuse, it wasn’t deliberate and it also is tough to avoid.

All this added some spice of the contest as the race to the pinnacle of rank charts was getting intense. The seventh day of the contest brought yet another interesting turn of events as we saw two new names (at the top of the charts) in evgentu and simplex_au claiming the first and second spot respectively. It has been quite a while since we had someone from Russia claiming the top spot. And hence we were excited. But, it became even more enticing as mugurelionut was just on their tails patiently waiting to make a move. But, contrary to popular expectations it was not mugurelionut who triumphed the two Russian to the top. It was the debutant kutengine, who after the initial blast, rejoined the party with a bang. He passed the top three and emerged victorious at the end of the June Challenge 2013. It wouldn’t be exaggeration if we call it one of the finest debuts of all time on CodeChef. So, a big round of applause to “kutengine”.

Now, let’s look at the final standings for the contest.

Top Ten Global Winners:

Now, onto the Indian rank charts:

Special mention to the top three participants with highest scores for the challenge problem “To Challenge or not”, except for the winners.

Top three Indian contenders:

Top three Global participants:

High five to all the winners.

Our winners came from the thousands who participated in the contest and made it a success. So a big thanks to everyone for joining us in our June Challenge. Here are the final stats of the contest.

  • Total Users: 3776
  • Total Submissions: 71744
  • Number of distinct users with correct submissions: 3400
  • Total users from India: 3097
  • Total users not from India: 679

That concludes the June Challenge 2013 in entirety. The editorials of the contest have been published, go savor them now here.

Now, let’s move towards the June Cook-Off 2013. As always, we were expectant of a contest high on competition and filled with fun. And considering the star cast, featuring Tuan Anh as problem setter and Pradeep Mathias doubling as editorialist and tester, our expectations were rather realistic.

The Cook-Off began calmly with no flurry of submissions in the first few minutes of the contest. Apparently, the users were nicely deceived by the problem statements. We had the largest problem statement for the easiest one, while the toughest one had the shortest. It wasn’t a deliberate move, but turned out interesting. But after the few minutes of silence in the submission charts, we got our first accepted submission on ATTIC by azneye, which got things rolling. ATTIC might have seen the first submission, but it wasn’t the problem to receive the maximum attention in the first leg of the contest. In fact, it was ALETHIO, which was finding all the love of the participants with maximum attempts turning into AC.

The first hour of the Cook-Off went out rather calmly with glimpses of some serious fight for the top spot. We saw four different names appearing on the top at different instances. With that it became apparent that the contest is nicely poised and could bring anyone atop the rank tables.

While some participants were mislead by the length of the problem statements, we saw some others who stumbled on to the toughest problem TRANSFIG as their first. This took away a lot of their valuable time. Even in the final 20 minutes of the Cook-Off we had very few users who successfully cracked all the five problems. And those very few individuals battled till the very last to etch their name as the winner. But it was raveman, who edged passed the brawny competitors like dzhulgakov, anton_lunyov, and  artem_rakhov conquered the fortress of June Cook-Off 2013.

Here are the final standings of the contest:

For India the glory was brought home by:

Congratulations to all the winners, and participants who battled till the very last in the June Cook-Off 2013 in search of glory.

Here are final figures for the contest:

  • Total Users: 1095
  • Total Submissions: 4755
  • Number of distinct users with correct submissions: 874
  • Total users from India: 906
  • Total users not from India: 189

As soon as the June Cook-Off 2013 got over, the problems were moved to the practice section and the editorials were published as well. Oh yes, that’s true. If you haven’t checked the editorials already, go enjoy them now here.

All being said, now it’s your turn to let us know your thoughts, suggestions, and feedback about the two June contests. So, do send them our way at “[email protected].”

In our next post we will be talking about the inaugural “LunchTime,” which we hope you all enjoyed.

Till then, enjoy the monsoon, with our July Challenge 2013 featuring Roman Furko, Jay Pandya, Sergey Nagin, Vinayak Garg, Hiroto Sekido, Vitalij Kozhukhivskij, Vamsi Kavala, Ivan Zdomsky, and Kaushik Iska as problem setters. We have Roman Furko and Sergey Nagin making their debut as CodeChef problem setter, so a big round of applause for them. The problem testing and editorials comes from Shilp Gupta.

Regards,
Rudreshwar
Team CodeChef

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