We all have a preconceived notion about any competition where the big guns are going up against each others. It becomes easy for everyone to predict the outcome of the contest and more often than not, those prediction comes close to the actual result, if not all true. However, as soon as even a single big name goes missing from the participant table, the slot atop the rank table opens up for almost every participant. That is what happened with our October Challenge 2013. As soon as it was revealed that ACRush, djdolls, and mugurelionut will be on the problem setting bench, there was a sense of relief among the participants. And they all were set to give a shot at the top slot. However, the brawny kgcstar, was still there along with other seasoned campaigners including anton_lunyov, kevinsogo, stzgd, and others to ensure a stiff competitiveness in the air. And with that began our October Challenge 2013.
The October Challenge 2013 had a special flavor added to it in the form of Mandarin translations for all the problem statement. This made it the first multilingual contest of CodeChef, and for our native Mandarin speaking friends, made it easy to understand the problem statements. The Mandarin translation came from Minako Kojima, so a big thanks to her. The contest opened to an action packed weekend, with Lira getting help from all quarters. While Helping Lira made life easy for the participants, Three-Degree-Bounded Maximum Cost Subtree, Fibonacci Number, and Kamehameha were putting the participants to a tough-yet-exciting test. And it’s good to see that they all came out with flying colors.
But who came on top? let’s see the rank tables and find out.
First, the global winners.
And the Indian winners:
- xorfire
- pulkit
- adurysk
- n2n_
- praneethiitr
- thecodegame
- sameer47
- sanchit_h
- vineetpaliwal
- piyushkumar
- anudeep2011
- ankitgarg_888
- kapish_04
- abhay26
- vaibhavbahl
- viv001
- manish05
- code_note
- aag_rock
- pusshapgl
Now, let’s move on to our special winners.
Firstly, the young brigade from schools:
Global:
- sy2006 of Zhenhai High School, China
- ufozgg of Fuzhou No.1 High School
- darinflar of Advanced Educational Scientific Center of M.V.Lomonosov
- ivan100sicc Nis
- ydc123 of Yali Middle School, China
Indian:
- pandeyarvind70 of Indian School Oman, Muscat
- yashkumar18 of Delhi Public School, Gandhinagar
- meteora of Chashak Gurukul (Homeschooling)
- desperately of Holy Mission Senior Secondary School, Muzaffarpur
- xylon97 of St. Columba’s School
And now, the top three Global and Indian users having highest scores other than the winners.
Global:
Indian:
The very first weekend of the contest made it apparent that everyone is going all out to sharpen their programming skills ahead of the impending ACM ICPC regionals, and by the end of the contest we had the numbers reflecting that. Here are those figures for you.
- Total Users: 4381
- Total Submissions: 62616
- Number of distinct users with correct submissions: 3599
- Total users from India: 3679
- Total users not from India: 702
With ACM ICPC just around the corner, it was great to see the number of participants go up in the final stages of the contest. But the real spice was added in the beginning of the contest in the form if the challenge problem scoring changes, which meant that even after the contest is over, there will be not a clear winner until the submissions of the Challenge Problem are being re-judged. This kept a lot of people on the edge of their seats even after the contest was over, including us. Though, the rank table did not changed drastically after the re-judging, but we did saw some shuffle of positions atop. Did you observed any change in your position in the rank chart? Do share it with us. Also let us know what you think of the changes that were brought into effect from October Challenge.
With problem setting panel featuring Tom Chen, Bruno Oliveira, Ivan Zdomsky, Kaushik Iska, Mugurel Ionut Andreica, Sergey Nagin, TianCheng Lou and Vitaliy Herasymiv the problem setters bench for the October Challenge had some real masters of the craft penning down the problems for the contest. The testing of all those problems was done by ShangJingbo, who ensured that the problem set is balanced enough to test the participants and to let them enjoy the contest the fullest. The elaborate editorials came from Ajay Kumar Verma, who has all the expertise required to draft well understandable editorials. In the end all their efforts were appreciated and accepted with lots of love from participants all over the globe.
That sums up the tale of the October Challenge 2013, which saw some twists in rules, some new names in the rank tables, and most importantly gave everyone fun and exciting competition. We will be back with the tale of October Mega-Cook-Off 2013. But till then, why don’t you tell us what you thought of the October Challenge?
So, send us any feedback, suggestion, or query you might have in the back of your mind at [email protected].
Also, coming your way is the ACM ICPC Asia-Kharagpur Site First Round Online Contest 2013, we hope you are ready for it.
But till the next big blast, it’s adios from everyone here at CodeChef. 🙂
Regards,
Rudreshwar
Team CodeChef
