Hi everybody!

Codeforces round #247 for Div. 2 participants will take place on May 21 at 19:30 MSK. Traditionally, Div. 1 participants can take part out of the competition.

Problems have been prepared by me(Antoniuk) and Kirill Schetinin(KaiZeR). This is the first round prepared by us and we hope that you will enjoy the round.

We want to thank Gerald and Delinur for helping to prepare the round and MikeMirzayanov for Codeforces and Polygon.

UPD: Score distribution will be the next — 500-1500-1500-2000-2500.

UPD2: The contest is over, we hope you enjoy it)

UPD3: Editorial.

UPD4: Statistics.

Congratulations to winners!

1) hzjsxxy
2) azariamuh
3) tonkosi
4) inutard
5) c.u.c.u.m.b.e.r

Gl & hf)

The warm-up round for Yandex's annual international open championship in competitive programming, Yandex.Algorithm, starts tomorrow, May 16, 2014.

Yandex’s annual programming championship, Yandex.Algorithm, with original rules, international participants and monetary prizes is open to anybody who wishes to participate, regardless of their education, profession or programming style.

You can register for participation and compete for a top prize of about $9,000, with runner up prizes totalling to about $4,500 for second and about $3,000 for third places respectively. Yandex.Algorithm 2014 will consist of six rounds, including a warm-up round on May 16, a qualification round on May 25, three elimination rounds, which will run from June 1 to June 15, and a final round on August 1.

The registration deadline for Yandex.Algorithm 2014 is May 26.

Join Yandex.Algorithm 2014 to try yourself against real-life algorithmic problems, meet new friends and discover new possibilities.

PS: you need to have a full Yandex account to register. To convert your account use the link below

https://passport.yandex.ru/passport?mode=light2full

Good day, codeforces)

Welcome to regular Codeforces round #246 for Div.2 participants. As always Div.1 participants can take part out of the competition.

The problems were prepared by authors Pavel Kholkin (HolkinPV) and Gerald Agapov (Gerald). Is not the first and definitely not the last time when we tried our best for you. Traditionally thanks to Michael Mirzayanov (MikeMirzayanov) for perfect Codeforces and Polygon systems and Mary Belova (Delinur) for translating the problems.

UPD: Score distribution will be standard — 500-1000-1500-2000-2500.

UPD2: The contest is over, we hope you enjoy it)

UPD3: the editorial is here

Congratulations to winners!:

1) PopovkinAndrey
2) FTD2009
3) Gulan14no
4) Kozakai_Aya
5) Mikael

We wish all participants good luck and enjoyment of solving problems)

After a short delay (but Oscar is given in spring too, huh?) we are pleased to announce the Cormen Medal laureates for 2013. This year, we’ve decided to slightly upgrade nominations again, so this year's Cormen Medal is given in two nominations:

• Best Progress
• Best Problemsetter

Best Progress

The Cormen Medal laureate in this nomination is Scott Wu (scott_wu, USA). Note the sharp upward dive his rating line takes. His achievements in 2013 are not limited by the spectacular dive into the best 10 participants on Codeforces: he got the 5-th place on IOI, won the 2013 season of the USACO contests, got target on TopCoder! We congratulate Scott and wish him many more achievements!

Best Problemsetter

We didn't have to search far and wide for the winner in this nomination. Naturally, the Cormen Medal goes to the most productive and loved by many author of 2013, Sergey Nagin (Sereja, Ukraine). Sergey prepared and conducted 7 rounds (all of them Div1+Div2) on Codeforces. Sergey's problems gained popularity among the Codeforces coders and we will be happy to see his contests again in the future! Sergey has already been awarded by a Medal and an Award Plate in February in Kharkov training camp.

Looks like it's becoming a good tradition. The laureates will be sent a book by Thomas Cormen (Introduction to Algorithms or Algorithms Unlocked), signed by the author.

History

Let us remind you that the Cormen medals have been awarded for the fourth year. tourist (Gennady Korotkievich) became the best participant three years in a row (in all the years when this nomination existed). Alex_KPR (Alexander Kouprin) became the best blogger in both years when this nomination existed. My favourite nomination "Best Problemsetter" was awarded to: natalia (Natalia Bondarenko) in 2010, Ripatti (Artyom Ripatti) in 2011, and witua (Vitaly Gerasimov) in 2012. Besides, in 2012 there was a medal for "Codeforces Spirit of Community 2012", the laureate was Nickolas (Mariia Mykhailova).

Hello everyone!

We invite you to participate in Codeforces Round #245, scheduled for Sunday, 11th May at 7:30 MSK. This is the fourth round I write for Codeforces. After the last round your upvotes helped me get into the Contributors Top 10. Thanks for all your good remarks; I'll try and do my best in order for this round to be at least as good as the previous one.

This round is prepared by my friend Ioan Petcu (author of D1 E) and I (all problems, except D1 E). We've chosen the problems to be as diverse as possible — no two problems will share the same programming technique. As the problems are varied, we hope you'll find at least one problem of your taste. The main character is Iahub, currently the number one ranked contestant in the Romanian selection camps for IOI. After reading the problem statements, you'll see what the life of a very good Romanian competitive programmer is like (just kidding, it's just my evil imagination).

This round wouldn't have been possible without the people that helped me test it: Gerald Agapov (Gerald), Damian Straszak (DamianS), Dan Alexandru (DanAlex) and Vlad Badelita (vladb). As always, we’d like to thank Mike Mirzayanov for creating the Polygon system and Codeforces plaftorm and to Delinur for translating the problems in Russian.

We wish high ratings to everyone and, above all, have fun!

UPD Score Distribution

Division 1: 500 1000 1500 2000 2000

Division 2: 500 1000 1500 2000 2500

I apologize for all technical issues during the round, from the ambiguous problem statements to very easy problem D1 D. In my trial to invent a nice task, I didn't see that straight forward solution for it and I have no excuse for this.

UPD Winners

Division 1:

1. SergeyRogulenko
2. scott_wu
3. vepifanov
4. YuukaKazami
5. ballon

Division 2:

1. clavichord93
2. krmunn481
3. Dgleich
4. PopovkinAndrey
5. roben_76

UPD Editorial

UPD Statistics

Good day everyone.

Codeforces round #244 for division 2 participants will start at May 2, Friday, 19:30 MSK. As you all know, participants from division 1 can also take part from out of the competition.

The round was prepared by me (Bidhan), student of University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. This is my first codeforces round. I have tried to prepare interesting and solvable problems for division 2 participants. Special effort was given to make the problem statements as clear as possible. Hoping that everything will go right and everyone will enjoy the round.

Special thanks to msh_shiplu, lecturer of University of Dhaka, for his contribution to the contest by finding time to set one of the problems, writing alternates, reviewing problem statements and giving expert advice on dataset generation in spite of his hectic schedule.

Also, a BIG thanks to nice guy Gerald, for helping throughout the preparation process.

I wish all the participants good luck :)

Update0 : Score distribution is 500-1000-1500-2000-2500.

Update1 : A short editorial of the contest is here. The post will be enlarged to detailed editorial later.

The Russian translation of this post is here.

Hello everyone!

Codeforces Round #243 will take place on Sunday, April 27th at 19:30 MSK. This is my eleventh Codeforces round and I hope not the last.

I'd like to thank Gerald and KADR for helping me to prepare the round. Special thanks to Delinur for translation of all problem statements into English.

I strongly recommend you to read ALL the problems.

Problem point values in first division 500-1000-1500-2000-2000. In second division — standard.

Gl & hf ! :)

Tutorial.
Statistics.

Hi, everyone!

Regular Codeforces round #242 for participants from the second division will take place on 25 April, 11:00 MSK. Participants from the first division are able to participate out of the competition.

The contest is prepared by programmers from Tomsk Polytechnic University: Pavel Khaustov (pkhaustov), Olesya Golub (Taube), Nickolay Kuzivanov (Carups), Dmitry Savvinov (Dsavvinov), Alexey Vetrov (noxwell).

Special thanks to Vladimir Chalyshev (cmd) and Alexey Dergunov (dalex) for their impact.

Also, thanks to Codeforces team and, especially, to Gerald Agapov (Gerald) and Maria Belova (Delinur).

Points distribution: 500-1000-1500-2500-3000

Good luck!