Cook-Offs are the real test of fortitude, of a programmer. This, because it does not give you long time to plan your move, and by the time you plan your move, your counterparts would have gone far beyond your reach. You need to be quick, and you need to be precise. This miraculous display of speed and accuracy is what makes them such a special occasion for the participants & for us. We have seen some thrilling Cook-Offs in the past, and the May Cook-Off 2014 certainly can be placed among them.
Before we proceed with the blog post & tell you how the contest was, let us thank the individuals responsible for it. The celebrated problem setting panel for the May Cook-Off 2014 featured names, which when you see them, you know an excellent contest is cooking up. The problem set came from the 2014 ACM ICPC world finalist Anudeep Nekkanti, which on its own was a highlight of the contest. Add to that, tester & Russian translator Gerald Agapov, in company with editorialist Praveen Dhinwa and you have the recipe of a contest of highest order. The Mandarin flavor of the problem set came from the pervasive Minako Kojima and Gedi Zheng. Thank you guys, for always being there for us all and delivering such splendid contests, one after another.
The May Cook-Off showed sparks of a great contest right from the first minute, as Gennady Korotkevich cracked ANUUND in his first attempt, in the first minute of the contest. This exemplary display of speed and accuracy, made it clear to all the participants that they have to be on their toes if they have to be any competition to him. This was a true test of talent and pedigree for many claimants of the throne. With the likes of Myongsu Cha, Andy Y.F. Huang, & Kazuhiro Hosaka on the rank tables, it certainly was never going to be a cakewalk for the Cook-Off-pro Gennady as well. Or so we thought. As it turns out, it actually was a cakewalk for Gennady, as it took him only six submissions to crack the five problems and seal the victory. Remember we talked about pace & precision, this exactly is what we were talking about.
While the other participants were busy piling up submissions on Ups and Downs, or trying hard to crack Build the Tree. Gennady was comfortably sitting atop the rank table, may be with a grin. Even the juggernauts like uwi, mugurelionut, ballon_ziq, Fdg, & many others had a tough time cracking all the problems. So, we were not surprised to see the low submission count and were pleased with the outcome on the rank tables.
While the non-Indian rank table had some familiar names going at each other, the Indian rank table was no different either. We had balajiganapath, the popular djdolls, smithinsu, xorfire & many others fighting it out for the top spot in the Indian table.
Let us take tour-de-rank-tables, to meet our winners and know who stood where when the clock struck 12.
We start with the non-Indian rank table:
Now the Indian rank table:
Congratulations to all the winners.
Now, here are the final stats of the contest:
- Total Users: 1570
- Total Submissions: 6266
- Number of distinct users with correct submissions: 1388
- Total users from India: 1349
- Total users not from India: 221
That sums up the May Cook-Off 2014. The contest was a display of some fine artisanship from both, problem setting panel and participants. We hope you enjoyed every bit of it, as we did. To understand the best approach towards cracking those problems & many more to come, we suggest, you go through the editorials of the contest and try them once again in practice section.
With that we draw curtains on the May Cook-off 2014 and move towards yet another delayed blog post for May LunchTime 2014. It was our anniversary LunchTime, so we try and not to delay it any further and will come back soon with all the celebratory details.
Till next time, enjoy the beautiful monsoon around, and send us all your love, feedback, or your any monsoon trip you are planning at [email protected]. We would love to join you. You can also ring us at (022) – 30797709 (On weekdays from 11:00 am to 8:00 pm)
Good-bye everybody.
Regards,
Rudreshwar
Team CodeChef
