Banana Pancakes,
We are pleased to announce that prizes for the July Algorithm Contest will be available for participants in the US.

What’s the July contest format?
The contest will begin on July 1st at 15:00 IST and end on July 13th at 15:00 IST. Although this is longer then the last 10 day contest, we wanted to give you that extra weekend. The contest will have 6 to 8 problems with one challenge problem (identical in format to our June and May contests).

Will participants in India and US be competing against each other?
…only in spirit. The contest problems and format will be exactly the same for all participants. The rankings will be combined, but the top 5 scorers in India will receive prizes and the top 5 scorers in the US will receive prizes.

blahbity blahbity blah, tell me about the Prizes already
Aright aright, here is the tentative prize breakdown (please note this is subject to change and will be finalized by July 1st).

US:
1st – $700
2nd – $400
3rd – $250
4th – $125
5th – $75

India:
1st – Rs. 35,000
2nd – Rs. 20,000
3rd – Rs. 12,500
4th – Rs. 6,250
5th – Rs. 3,750

What happens if there is a tie?
In the unlikely event of a tie, we will split the prize money across the participants. For instance if the 3rd and 4th place US participants tie, they will each receive ($250 + $125) / 2 = $187.50.

Wait a second I’m from [insert country that isn't US or India] does that mean I can’t participate?
Sure you can participate, though unfortunately you can’t win the cash prizes. If you make it to the top of the leaderboard we will be sending you some sweet CodeChef merchandise (we’ve got some dope new t-shirts in the works). We are exploring the idea of expanding into other geographies and will let you know as soon as we do.

Are you making any other new changes soon?
Yes, you will be seeing some big changes to the site in the next few weeks, we’ve received a lot of feedback in terms of how we can improve the site and are working on developing CodeChef 2.0. We will show you a sneak-peak of some of these new features soon.

A lot of people have complained that a 10-day contest it too long. Worry not CodeCheffers, next month we will also hold a shorter contest.

Anything else you want to tell us about?
Oh yeah, we also launched DesignChef last week, a non-profit, online graphic and user experience design competition. Check it out!

Best of luck to everyone! If you have any suggestions, questions or feedback please let us know on Twitter, Facebook, our Forums by posting your comments here.

Cheers,
El Chefarino

Banana Splits,
This past week we were lucky enough to meet the winners of our March Challenge and personally deliver their prizes. Earlier in the week Bhavin (Directi’s CEO) was in Hyderabad and met up with Anshuman Singh and Ajay Somani (both from IIIT Hyderabad):

Anshuman, Bhavin and Ajay

Prateek Karandikar was nice enough to come into our Bangalore office to pick up his prize:

Prateek and his Nokia 5800

Congratulations once again.  Our April Challenge starts on April 1st at 15:00 IST.  Best of luck to everyone!

Cheers,
The Chef

Butter Rotis,
We are excited to announce our 3rd competition – The April CodeChef Challenge – which will run from April 1st 15:00 IST to April 15th 15:00 IST.  As discussed, all code submissions from the April contest will be available after the contest is over.  We have also extended the number of prizes from 3 to 5 including:

1. Cannon EOS 1000D camera
2. Bose Companion 5 Multimedia System
3. Nintendo Wii
4. 32 GB Pen Drive
5. LED Binary Watch

If you come in 1st place, you can choose any of the prizes, if you come in 2nd place you can choose any of the prizes from 2nd place down (i.e. not the Canon camera), 3rd place nets you any of the prizes from 3rd-5th, etc…

The format of the contest will stay the same as our March competition:

• Contest problems will become visible on April 1st at 15:00 IST.
• The contest will consist of 6 problems of varying difficulty.
• You will receive one point for solving a problem (passing all test cases – no partial credit), regardless of the level of difficulty of that problem.
• You can submit solutions as many times as you’d like, there are no penalties for incorrect submissions.
• Each contest will have one min/max tie breaker problem (i.e. Place the mines!), where the best solution will receive one point and all other solutions will receive a fraction based how close they come to the best solution.
• In the unlikely case of an overall tie (including the same score on the tie-breaker) a winner will be randomly chosen from the top scorers.

We are considering ways to improve the scoring and format of future contests based on feedback we have received and our May contest might have some changes.  As always, feel free to get in touch with us if you have questions or feedback.

Cheers,

The Chef

Kitchenettes,

We’d like to thank the hundreds of users from across India who submitted thousands of solutions for our first contest.   We thought it was really exciting, with lead changes happening right until the end.   Congratulations to our winners:

1. Anshuman Singh – IIIT Hyderabad
2. Ajay Somani – IIIT Hyderabad
3. Prateek Karandikar – Indian Statistical Institute

Now we’d like your help in making CodeChef better.  We understand there were things that could be improved and we’d like to ask you a few questions in preparation for our next contest.

• We’ve heard from many users that we don’t provide enough information when an incorrect solution is submitted.  We are working on improving this.  From a functional standpoint how else can we improve the site?
• We understand there was some confusion as to when the contest was ending, as well as who will be receiving what prizes, in the next contest this will be made more clear.  Any other information we should have provided?
• In regards to the contest, was the format (5 questions with a tie-breaker) appropriate?  Was 2 weeks too long?
• Which problems did you enjoy more or less and why?

Feel free to comment below or send an e-mail to feedback@codechef.com with your responses.

This Friday and Saturday night we will be hosting IIT Roorkee’s Insomnia on CodeChef.   Full details will be announced tomorrow.  We will be back on April 1st, with another CodeChef contest.

Cheers,

The Chef

Greasy Spoons,

Hrishikesh Terdalkar from Chennai Mathematical Institute and winner of the TechFest Challenge, was nice enough to send us some photos of him and his new Nintendo Wii:

If you are a student and would like CodeChef to host a programming competition on your campus, check out our CodeChef Campus Chapters.

Happy coding!

Tatertots,
We’re pleased to announce the prizes for our first contest. Lucky winners will get an Asus Eee Netbook (probably the coolest thing we’ve ever seen), iPod touch (for your jailbreaking and modding pleasure), or a Nokia 5800 (you know you want it). We’re also giving away a ton of CodeChef t-shirts.

If you have any ideas for prizes for the next contest, let us know at prizes[at]codechef.com