August Cook-Off 2013, was supposed to be yet another fast paced, action packed Cook-Off, that we have been observing for past few months. However, in no way was it like any of them. August Cook-Off kept us all on the edge of our seats for different reasons every time.
Before we take you through the entire course of the contest, let us thank the people behind the nicely balanced and enticing problem set of August Cook-Off. Our problem setter rustinpiece, setting up problems that appealed every participant equally and problem tester Rubanenko, who ensured that the problems are testing enough for the participants. And finally, the editorialist utkarsh_lath, who wrote the easy to understand and elaborate editorials. Without these gentlemen we would not have had such a great contest.
The preparations for the contest were all in place and we were all good to go. But a lot of aspiring participants from different parts of the world were ready as well. The contest opened up amid great anticipation among the participants, causing a sudden increase in load on our servers and crashing them within the first five minutes of the contest. Now, we have experienced such incidents in the past, but nothing in recent past. So, just like you all, we were also balled over. And, it took us 25 minutes to get the servers up and running as usual. And once we came back, everything went smooth from there onwards.
To give everyone a fair shot at the problems, we increased the contest duration by 25 minutes. And, what a contest it was since then. After the high participation of August Challenge, the August Cook-Off also got lots of love from the participants and saw highest participation for any Cook-Off. But among all those participants who secured the top ten slots in the rank tables, let us tell you.
The global top ten winners are:
Now, the top five Indian users:
Congratulations to all the winners. 🙂
Some other useful stats for the August Cook-Off are as follows:
- Total Users: 1774
- Total Submissions: 6532
- Number of distinct users with correct submissions: 1485
- Total users from India: 1547
- Total users not from India: 227
The bump in the beginning of the contest did upset the participants initially, but by the end, the contest got its fair share of love from the participants and eventually turned out to be one of the best Cook-Offs we had on CodeChef in terms of participation. We hope you too have enjoyed the contest as much as we did. And if there is still some problem that is still bugging you about the contest or if you want to find out the best approach about any problem, go check out the editorials for the contest here. You even might find a better approach towards the solution to the problems.
That concludes the story of the August Cook-Off 2013. If you have any suggestion or feedback about the contest or in general, feel free to send them to us at “[email protected]”.
Till next time, TA TA from CodeChef.
See you at the contests.
Regards,
Rudreshwar,
Team CodeChef
It looks like 1547 Indians, battled 227 foreigners, and not one Indian made the top ten?? Is that correct? If not, you should make your numbers clearer. From your data, it appears that India really sucks at programming.