October Cook-Off 2020 | Tourist Tops The Chart Once Again

3 min read

The October Cook-Off 2020 has just ended, and what a contest it was. We had some truly stunning problems and even better competition in both the Divisions. So without wasting any time, let’s dive straight into the details of the Cook-Off that was. 

The Amazing Problems! 

Division One was assigned six problems to Wade through to get to that revered number one spot. The most popular problem of the lot turned out to be Path-etic Sums. The problem was attempted by over 600 players, and 436 out of these took the green tick home. Another popular problem in this Division was Yet Another Crossover Episode. Nearly 1100 players sent in answers for the problem, but unfortunately, less than 300 were successful. Talking tough problems for this Division, Isomorphic Morphism had all the top coders scratching their heads. By the time the two and a half hours were over, merely 20 players had attempted the problem. Out of the brave 20, only four players – gennady.korotkevich, uwi, ksun48, and errichto were successful. In a surprising turn of events, this Cook-Off saw an unsolved problem in Division One. Problem Ppeerrffeecctt Ssqquuaarreess turned out to be the players’ worst nightmare as no one could crack this code.  

Moving on to Division Two, even here, the players had to Wade through six problems. The crowd favorite in this Division turned out to be Split the Str Ing. Over 10k players sent in submissions for the problem, and 4250+ out of these solved the problem successfully. Another problem that was attempted by a horde of players was Decreasing Srrnmieeda. 10375 participants tried their hand at the problem, and 3465 turned out to be successful in their pursuit of the green tick. On the other end of the spectrum, the toughest problems of the set were The In-XOR-able Task and An Inveractive Problem. The problem In-XOR-able Task saw nearly 500 submissions, but sadly just 8 of these were rewarded with the green tick. Division Two barely escaped having an unsolved problem on the list. About 75 players tried to solve An Inveractive Problem, but only participant the_art_of_war took the green tick home. 

Uber Competitive Ranklists! 

Although not as dramatic as the October Long Challenge’s ranklist, this Cook-Off saw quite some action in the charts. The Division One ranklist was topped by (to absolutely no one’s surprise) gennady_korotkevich. Gennady solved 5 of the given six problems, gained 63 points during the contest, and is currently enjoying an all-time high score of 3833 points. Right behind Gennady, we had the University of Warsaw student errichto. errichto accumulated 140 points during the contest and has now entered the league of red band players. Third place was secured by 7-star user uwi, and right on his tail, we had Canadian 7-star user ksun48. Vietnamese player lomzom was the one who secured the fifth position. The user entered the competition as a 6-star user and exited it as a 7-star coder. The number six spot was bagged by Ukrainian user wrinx. Mirroring lomzom, wrinx was also able to use this contest to jump stars from 6 to 7. The seventh and eighth places went to 7-star players msm1993 and nuip, respectively. At the ninth position, we had coder nirjhor. The Bangladeshi user accumulated 140 points in the contest, but unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to help him change stars. After nirjhor, we had player quartermelon. quartermelon was able to use this competition to gain 154 points and subsequently change stars from 5 to 6. The only two Indian users who were able to secure a rank in the top 25 were avinashkartik and jay_1048576. Both gave good performances to secure positions 14 and 23, respectively.  

The ranklist for Division Two was just as fun as its counterpart. It was a pleasant surprise to see user purple_forever rush ahead to the number one spot. This is the user’s first CodeChef competition, and he has already jumped stars from 1 to 3. Right on his tail, we had player jackbai. jackbai was able to accumulate 211 points during the contest and qualify as a 4-star player. Next, we had user bigbag who replicated jackbai’s performance and used this competition to jump stars from 3 to 4. The number four spot went to Chinese player rgb_icpc2. Even rgb_icpc2 was successful in using this competition to advance from a 3-star player to a 4-star one. Next, we had user jerdno, who gained 215 points during the contest and is now a 4-star coder. Player the_art_of_war secured the sixth position in the contest, and his performance has helped him jump stars from 3 to 4. Indian user gambhir_sahab bagged the seventh position. The players gained 182 points in the contest and is now a 4-star user. The eighth spot went to user rgb_icpc7, who manage to make this competition count as they jumped stars from 3 to 4. On the ninth place, we had player insert_cool_ha. The Russian user gave a stunning performance in his first-ever CodeChef competition and is now a 3-star player. United States user wjli grabbed tenth spot and used this contest to jump stars from 3 to 4. 

The Division Two ranklist was peppered with the Indian tri-color as half of the Top 25 were Indian users. Other than gambhir_sahab, the coders who managed to secure a spot in the Top 15 for themselves were – alone_12, sachin491, nextsemoffline, and shouryap. We all certainly hope to see more of these talented coders in the next competition. 
Overall this Cook-Off was definitely a fun two and a half hours of coding. For some more coding fun, you can check out the video editorials of all the problems from this contest here. Until next time, this is CodeChef correspondent Riddhi Acharya waiting impatiently for more such fantastic coding.

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