The Big Fat April Challenge 2014

3 min read

April, let us just say is the most competitive time of the year. The exam season had just ended, and the race to the admission window is on. Everyone is ready with their preparations for plethora of entrance exams scheduled ahead for them. The rush to the stationary shops is more frequent, than to the playground. In such a competitive time, it is tough to catch someone taking a breather, or asking them about their summer vacation plans. So, we too refrained ourselves from doing that, and instead added more fuel to the burning competition desire with our April Challenge 2014. How did it go? You ask. We will tell you all through this post.

Our long challenges in general have been all about giving the budding programmers an opportunity to learn and compete with the big guns. The first couple of days of the contest see the sea of new comers trying their hands in the problems served. We see many new names featuring in the rank tables in the wee hours of the contest. However, as the contest moves in the nature of the competition changes and that is when the big guns take over. However, the April Challenge 2014 saw a different start with the first submission coming from vineetpaliwal, on POTATOES inside the first five minutes of the contest. It was quite a fascinating start to the contest and set the tone straight for the coming days.

The April Challenge opened up with seven problems, but as the problem setters worked on the remaining three, the participants enjoyed the seven in hands. POTATOES and CNPIIM was the flavor of choice for the newbies, but the presence of vineetpaliwal, fancycoder, dracowane, xorfire_ and some more recognized names, kept everyone on their toes, which ensures a healthy competition during the contest. In the meantime, our problem setters added the remaining three problems in the contest.

With all ten problems on the table, we were all set for the first weekend of the April Challenge 2014, and so were the participants. Moreover, by the end of it, the contest was well on its course to be one of the biggest CodeChef challenges. Leading the Global and Indian ranks by then were Ri Mun-Chol and Gunjan Sharma respectively. To have new names leading the rank tables always adds an exciting punch to the contest. However, their reign atop was not long, and by the mid way into the contest the big guns in vineetpaliwal and mugurelionut took over the rank tables. Thus began the race to the top among the biggies.

The problems created by Shalini Shah, Lalit Kundu, Dmytro Berezin, Bruno Oliveira, Ilya Malinovsky, Sergey Nagin, Anudeep Nekkanti, A Surya Kiran, Gerald Agapov, and Tiancheng Lou put the participants through an enjoyable test to keep up with the competitive environs around. The problems might have been enjoyable, but they certainly were not a walk in the park for many, as even after the first weekend, there were two problems devoid of any submission. Thanks to our testers Shiplu and Md Mahbubul Hasan, who ensured that the problems cater to the wide spectrum of participants rather than being favorites of only the ones on the rank tables. The additional spices in Mandarin and Russian translation came from the ever-present Gerald Agapov, and xiaodao. The immense hardwork put into by our problem-setting panel was nicely rewarded by the participants through the huge number of submissions made during the ten-day course of the contest. However, while POTATOES saw submissions in excess of 5K, the LMATRIX3 only saw four.  There was a little something for everyone though, and we hope you had your fare share of fun and competitiveness.

Now let us move towards the rank tables to meet our winners.

First, the Non- Indian Top 10:

Now, the Indian top 20:

Now, let us meet our special achievers.

Firstly, the top five non-Indian school students:

Now, the Indian top five school students:

  • neo1tech9_7 of Bharti Public School, New Delhi
  • code_archer of Kendriya Vidyalaya No.1,  Gurgaon
  • japoorv of Delhi Public School,  Indira Nagar
  • zmxncbv of Chashak Gurukul (Homeschooling), Mumbai
  • debjit99 of Hijli High School,  Kharagpur

Finally, the participants with highest scores for challenge problem Sereja and Permutation apart from the winners.

First, the non-Indian top three:

Now, the Indian top three:

Congratulations to all the winners and participants. We hope you enjoyed the contest!

Now, the final figures for the contest:

  • Total Users: 6003
  • Total Submissions: 81796
  • Number of distinct users with correct submissions: 5297
  • Total users from India: 4990
  • Total users not from India: 1013

All those figures put April Challenge 2014 among the biggest long challenges we have had on CodeChef. We hope to have many more of those and to see you all being part of them.

That brings us to the end of this late post for the April Challenge 2014. Nevertheless, before we sign of let us escort you to the desert for the contest in the editorials for the problems of the contest. Therefore, if you had a hard time cracking them up during the contest, these editorials will help you understand the best approach towards solving them and will sharpen your programming skills for the future. So, do go through them thoroughly.

With that, it is time to draw curtains on this April Challenge post and move towards the next posts in line starting from April Cook-Off 2014. We are sorry for putting these posts so late, but trust us we are working on our lethargy and shall be on schedule soon. Until then, kindly be with us.

As always, feel free to get in touch with us for your feedback, suggestions, or any query at [email protected].

You can also reach us at (022) – 30797709 (On weekdays from 11:00 am to 8:00 pm)

Till next time, Good-bye everybody.

Regards,
Rudreshwar
Team CodeChef

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