Our 66th Lunchtime took place on November 24 and it was a showdown to remember with a major rank list shake-up! Keep reading to read who gained ratings and who lost them in the November Lunchtime.

Leading the pack in Div 1 was uwi, who is presently ranked number 1 in Japan and number 5 globally. Following our 100th Cook-Off, we mentioned in our Contest Recap that uwi was less than a hundred rating points short of a spot in the global top 5. Looks like, uwi took up the challenge and dethroned China’s ACRush to claim the world number 5 spot. But ACRush is a regular in our Long Challenges, stay tuned to see if he makes a comeback next month.

Other notable mentions in Div 1 are zemen from Russia who moved to 5-star status in this competition and rns5 from North Korea who went from 5 stars to 6. natsugiri, also from Japan, rounded out the top 4, all of whom scored 500. rns5 has risen rapidly through the rating system, gaining a whopping 6 stars since joining CodeChef in August this year. He needs just about 182 rating points to join another, rns4 another celebrated Kim Il-sung University student, in the 7-star club.

In Div 2 mzuev from Russia, took the lead going from 2 to 3 stars in the process. Close behind was xuzijian629 from Japan who was participating in a CodeChef contest for the very first time and made a rating jump of 275 points, which is the maximum jump possible! He promises to be a coder to watch out for. Dubai based antrikshh claimed the third spot, with Indonesia’s sidiqha in 4th place. While no Indians made it to the top 10 in Div 1, 4 Indians secured spots in Div 2’s top 10. A huge shoutout to its_ulure, mindjolt, radon12 and shubham698.

School students were well-represented in the November Lunchtime Div 1 with 9 of them earning places in the top 20. The best performers were tmwilliamlin from Taiwan who was at rank 5, farhod_farmon from Tajikistan at rank 7, and Ukraine’s adalbert at rank 8. Div 2’s best performing school students were its_ulure from India at rank 5, arafat_01 from Kazakhstan at rank 9, and fake_here from China at rank 15.

Special mentions go to female coders amina283 from Azerbaijan and mh755628 from Bangladesh, both of whom made it to the Div 1 top 100. In Div 2, it was hui_yin from Hong Kong and India’s own viralivora who reached the top 100.

Joining xuzijian629 on the list of users who made sizeable rating jumps are mzuev from Russia and tyakennikku from China who improved their rating by 233 points each. Indonesian sidiqha enjoyed a rating jump of 209 points while India’s own its_ulure from West Bengal, increased his rating by 201 points.

The highest participation this month came from  India, followed by Bangladesh and Ukraine. India’s National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra and Jaypee Institute of Information Technology had the most participants in this Lunchtime. If you’d like to spread the word about competitive programming in your school or college, start by creating or joining a CodeChef Campus Chapter today.

Probability (PPAP) emerged as the least solved problem of both Divisions with no successful submissions in Div 2 and just 7 in Div 1. Event (EVENT) was the most solved problem of Div 2 with 769 successful submissions out of a total of 5738 while in Div 1, Beats and Pieces (BPS) got 169 successful submissions from a total of 576. Check out the editorials for this Lunchtime’s problems here.

As we conclude this recap, we tip our hats to our problem setting panel:

• Setter: Rehim Memmedli (nots0fast)

• Tester: AmirReza PoorAkhavan (arpa)

• Statement verifier: Jakub Safin (xellos0)

• Editorialist: Hussain Kara Fallah (deadwing97)

• Translators:

  • Mandarin Translator: Hu Zecong (huzecong)

  • Vietnamese Translator: Team VNOI (khanhptnk)

  • Russian Translator: Fedor Korobeinikov (gomelfk)

  • Bengali Translator: Mohammad Solaiman (solaimanope)

  • Hindi Translator: Akash Srivastava (devils_code)

And as always, many thanks to our problem panel admin Hasan Jaddouh (kingofnumbers) whose hard work helped us pull the contest together.

After our heated and long-drawn May Challenge, we’re back with our highly contested May CookOff. So, without further ado let’s just dive right into it.

In Div A, the top spot was secured by the 7-star progmatic from Belarus. Presently ranked 21 globally, Progmatic has shown an awe-inspiring improvement over time. In the past 3 months alone, he has increased his overall rating by over 250 points and jumped from the orange to the red band. A huge accomplishment by any metric, and not to mention, a motivation for many. Further, progmatic is only 6 points behind the globally ranked 20, hzhz.

Apart from progmatic, there were 4 other participants in Div A who managed to score a perfect 5 in the CookOff — sam__2, mnbvmar, tautsjasiunsas, and farhod_farmon. For sam__2 and mnbvmar, the top 5 rank should hold greater importance since it was their first ever CookOff. Hats-off to them! Unfortunately, one of CodeChef’s regulars and a 7-star, uwi, didn’t fare as well as one would have hoped. Nevertheless, he ranked 8 in May’s CookOff; and overall holds the CodeChef’s global rank of 32 at the moment.

Now, over in Div B: A surprising 12 participants managed to attain a perfect 5, with CodeChef debutant geothermal leading the pack. geothermal is a student from the United States studying in Pennsylvania and is currently a 3-star. Closer home, one_more_fake, another debutant (although, with a slightly unusual handle), was the only Indian who got a score of 5 in Div B.

Moreover, school students have gradually upped the game, and have begun to pose a serious competition to our experienced coders. And this CookOff was no different. Though Div A featured only one school student in top 20, Div B had a whopping 7 school contenders listed in top 20. A great feat! We’re eagerly looking forward to the next few months to see whether the scale of balance tilts towards our young programmers.

As with all our contests, May CookOff, too, was an opportunity for many to increase their ratings. A startlingly 89 participants seized that chance, having climbed from Div B to the elusive Div A. Five of these participants happened to be school students. This follows the past trend: May Challenge saw over 150 participants graduate from Div B to Div A. These figures suggest that the stage in Div A is set for fiery battles, even more than they already are.

As we conclude this recap, we express our immense gratitude to our problem setting panel:

• Setters: Mohammad Solaiman (solaimanope), Pritom Kundu (anchor)

• Tester and Editorialist: Teja Vardhan Reddy (teja349)

• Statement Verifier: Jakub Safin (xellos0)

• Translators:

  • Mandarin Translator: Hu Zecong (huzecong)

  • Vietnamese Translator: Team VNOI (songuku95)

  • Russian Translator: Fedor Korobeinikov (gomelfk)

  • Bengali Translator: Mohammad Solaiman (solaimanope)

  • Hindi Translator: Akash Srivastava (devils_code)

And as always, many thanks to our problem panel admin Hasan Jaddouh (kingofnumbers) whose hard work helped us execute the contest effortlessly.

Do let us know in the comments your thoughts on the May CookOff. Until next time, keep practicing!

Post our May Lunchtime contest, we bring you the monthly recap of our highly contended June Long Challenge. Keep reading to get our in-depth coverage of the contest as well as some interesting stats.

In Division A, white2302, a student of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, secured the top spot. This is a significant achievement, and continues a trend of  remarkable Long Challenge performances. But, this is the first time that white2302 placed first in Long Challenge, having hovered between Contest Rank 4 and Rank 10 since February this year. white2302, presently a 7-star coder, managed to add another 135 rating points to finish at an admirable 2774, placing him at the top of the Russian charts.

The second spot in Div A was grabbed by vishal4556 from India’s Birla Institute of Technology & Science Pilani. vishal4556 returned to compete after a considerable break, and still managed to increase his rating points by 136 to take it up to 2706. Not just that, this rating bump also led to vishal4556 seizing the overall India Rank 1 post the contest.

Incidentally, India witnessed an incredible representation in the Top 20 of Div A, with 9 Indians altogether and 2 in the Top 5. Apart from white2302 and vishal4556, cheng2014, sinus_070, and zjp_shadow were the other participants occupying the Top 5 rank, respectively.

Over in Division B, he_____he, from China, seized the first position. he_____he (with a rather unusual & funny name, even by CodeChef’s standards) added a sizable 204 rating points to ultimately acquire another star (now a 4-star) and finish at 1965 rating. robbinb1993, heltion, gjaiswal108, and vanbang9710 were the other Top 5 rank holders in Div B for this contest, respectively. Meanwhile, school students continued their ongoing streak of stunning performances, with 5 featuring in the Top 20 for Div A, and 6 in Div B.

The June Long Challenge particularly helped change the Division demographic: More than 320 participants increased their ratings, to jump from Division B to A. The number for school students in this group was a good 13. At the same time, over 100 participants slid down from Div A to Div B. Effectively, there was an addition of 220 new entrants in Div A. It would be interesting to see how this change plays out in the upcoming contests.

Furthermore, akee and megatron10 were the biggest gainers in Div A, respectively adding 184 and 183 rating points. Whereas, in Div B, priyanshu_py and vinu_1998 managed to add a massive 237 and 234 rating points, respectively.

Lastly, coming to the problems: SUMAGCD was the first problem to be solved overall, and it was successfully submitted by ashmelev (a 7-star) from Div A, 6 minutes into the contest on 7th June. The first problem to be submitted in Div B was PROXYC by chandler_1729, towards the end of the 9th minute. Interestingly, the problem to be cracked the least, in both Divisions, was FGTREE. It was successfully submitted by mcfx1 in Div A, 7 hours into the contest, while in the Div B, it was eventually solved on the 4th day, by diamond_duke.

With almost half of 2019 already behind us, and many more contests scheduled ahead, it will be fascinating to see how the rest of the year unfolds for our active community of programmers.

As we conclude this recap, we express our immense gratitude to our problem setting panel:

Setters: Alei Reyes (alei), Danylo Mocherniuk (daniel_1999), Andrey Filimonov (filyan), Reshab Gupta (coolreshab), Roman Derkach (roman_derkach), Ritesh Gupta (rishup_nitdgp), Abhishek Vanjani (ucntstopme), Saurabh Yadav (saurabhshadow), Kartik Singhal (kartik_354), Aman Kumar Singh (aman_robotics), and Lewin Gan (lg5293)

Tester: Radoslav Dimitrov (radoslav192)

Editorialist: Teja Vardhan Reddy (teja349)

Statement Verifier: Jakub Safin (xellos0)

Translators:

• Russian Translator: Fedor Korobeinikov (gomelfk)

• Mandarin Translator: Hu Zecong (huzecong)

• Vietnamese Translator: Team VNOI (songuku95)

• Bengali Translator: Mohammad Solaiman (solaimanope)

• Hindi Translator: Akash Srivastava (devils_code)

Lastly, a huge thanks to our problem panel admin Alexey Zayakin (alex_2oo8) whose hard work allowed us to pull the contest effortlessly and smoothly.

Do let us know in the comments your thoughts on the June Long Challenge. Until next time, keep practicing!

The June Long Challenge was anything but uneventful! The contest resulted in some big country rank shuffles, particularly for Russia and India. Besides, Div A witnessed an amazing performance by Indian participants, with Indians filling 9 out the Top 20 positions and 2 in the Top 5. Now we recap our Cook-Off, a contest known for being short, yet fierce. Read on to find what went down.

Let’s start with the winners: In Div A, argos, a 7-star coder from Moscow, secured the top position. argos increased his rating by 132 points in this contest, and now holds an overall global rank of 13 with an enviable country rank of 3. Trailing close behind, in the 2nd position, was uwi from Japan. He added 56 to points to his ratings, to finish at 2700 points. Presently, uwi holds overall global rank 24 and country rank 1. Strikingly, both argos and uwi submitted all solutions without a single incorrect answer. The other noteworthy mentions in Div A are: isaf27, karolis_kusas, html_sanek, farhod_farmon, and andrey_efremov, respectively securing ranks 3 to 7 in the contest.

Over in Div B, the top two positions were secured by geothermal and vmaddur, both from the United States. geothermal, earned ended the Cook Off at rank 1, and bumped up his rating by 203 points, leaping from 3-star to 4-star coder status. vmaddur followed a similar trajectory to geothermal, increasing his rating by 185 points and jumping from 3 stars to 4-star level. The rest of Div B’s Top 20 was dominated primarily by Indian participants, with 14 spots occupied by participants from the country.

The school students fared particularly well in June Cookoff; with 4 out of the Top 20 spots in Div A and 5 in the Div B Top 20 being secured by them.

In Div A, zxcv123456 emerged as the biggest gainer, improving his rating by 171 points. While in Div B, amit_neogi and praccoder both managed to boost their rating by 225 points. amit_neogi and praccoder’s rating bump also led to them levelling up from 3-star to 4-star.

Overall, 132 participants made the transition from Div B to Div A, including 8 school students. While, 29 participants slipped from their position in Div A to Div B, effectively translating to a new addition of 102 new entrants in Div A.

Speaking of problems: the first one to be submitted successfully was EXAM1 by geothermal in Div B — astonishingly, 3 minutes into the contest. In Div A, it was ANTEATER; it was submitted by smelskiy within 8 minutes of contest commencement. Akin to June Long Challenge, the problem to be cracked last was the same for both Divisions: SECRECP.

Congratulations to all the winners! And to the rest, never  fear, another chance at coding greatness awaits in the form of the upcoming Lunchtime contest. As we conclude this recap, we express our immense gratitude to our problem setting panel:

Setters: Hasan Jaddouh (kingofnumbers), Erfan Alimohammadi (erfaniaa), Mohammad Solaiman (solaimanope)

Tester and Editorialist: Teja Vardhan Reddy (teja349)

Statement Verifier: Jakub Safin (xellos0)

Translators:

• Mandarin Translator: Hu Zecong (huzecong)

• Vietnamese Translator: Team VNOI (songuku95)

• Russian Translator: Fedor Korobeinikov (gomelfk)

• Bengali Translator: Mohammad Solaiman (solaimanope)

• Hindi Translator: Akash Srivastava (devils_code)

Lastly, a huge thanks to our problem panel admin Hasan Jaddouh (kingofnumbers) whose hard work allowed us to pull the contest effortlessly and smoothly.

Do let us know in the comments your thoughts on the June CookOff. Until next time, keep practicing!

Close on the heels of the exciting June CookOff, we bring you our recap of June Lunchtime. Continue reading to get our full in-depth coverage of the contest.

In Div A, a total of 8 participants managed to score a perfect 500. gennady.korotkevich, with overall Global Rank 1, led the charge, securing the first position in this contest. The 7-star from Belarus managed to further solidify his unsurpassed rating by adding another 60 points, finishing at jaw-dropping 3488. This is Gennady’s first contest appearance in months, having undergone a period of dormancy since January this year. The 2nd and 3rd positions were secured by gainullinildar from Russia and uwi from Japan. With this contest, gainullinildar made a re-entry into the elusive 7-star club, improving his rating by 138 points. The others to manage a perfect score were: natsugiri, tautsjasiunsas, andrey_efremov, mohammed200218, and yamunaku.

Over in Div B, compiler_101 and oahcc were the only two participants to score 500, ranking 1st and 2nd in the contest, respectively. compiler_101 , student in Cairo, added 191 points, and consequently, made the jump from Div B to Div A. Parallely, oahcc also levelled up from Div B to Div A, increasing his rating by 169 points. Amongst school students, 4 finished in the Top 10 for Div A; while 3 managed to secure a spot in the Top 10 for Div B.

Overall, 93 participants jumped from Div B to Div A. While simultaneously, 30 coders slid down from Div A to Div B. Meanwhile, fly_37, adibov and ultrac emerged as the biggest gainers in Div A, improving their rating by 186, 180, and 179 points, respectively. While in Div B, brayand and conformisto increased the rating by the largest margin, by 233 and 220 points, respectively.

Coming to the problems: PAJAPONG was the first problem to be successfully solved overall, with entry submitted by singhal_coder in Div B, in just 3 minutes after the commencement of the contest. In Div A, BURARRAY was the first scorable problem to receive a successful entry, made by chandler_1729 in the 7th minute. Funnily enough, for both Div A and B, the last scorable problem to be cracked was FUZZYCON.

As we conclude this recap, we express our immense gratitude to our June Lunchtime problem setting panel:

Setters: Mladen Puzić (thesitzr), Raj Khandor (hackslash_123)

Tester: Michael Nematollahi (watcher)

Editorialist: Taranpreet Singh (taran_1407)

Statement Verifier: Jakub Safin (xellos0)

Translators:

• Mandarin Translator: Hu Zecong (huzecong)

• Vietnamese Translator: Team VNOI (songuku95)

• Russian Translator: Fedor Korobeinikov (gomelfk)

• Bengali Translator: Mohammad Solaiman (solaimanope)

• Hindi Translator: Akash Srivastava (devils_code)

Lastly, a big thank you to our admin Hasan Jaddouh (kingofnumbers) whose hard work allowed us to pull the contest with such ease.

Do let us know your thoughts on the June Lunchtime in the comments below. Plus, don’t forget to practice your problem solving skills and participate in the long form July Long Challenge, which began on 5th July. Until next time, keep practicing!

After the really interesting and intense June Lunchtime, we returned with the Long Challenge contest of the month. Keep reading to get our detailed breakdown of the contest.

Beginning with Div A: the 7-star ACRush finished at the top of the leaderboard. ACRush, making a Long Challenge appearance after a gap of 3 months, managed to increase his rating by 128 points to ultimately end with a rating of 2985. He currently holds the overall rank 1 in China, and is globally ranked as the third best player. Close on ACRush’s heels was andres96. Even andres96 made a comeback on the platform after a long time, almost a year. And what a great one, indeed! andres96 bumped his rating up by 146 points, and jumped from being a 5-star to now holding the 6-star tag. The contest featured remarkably good performance from China and India in Div A, with 11 participants each in the Top 30.

Another participant to shine out in the Div A was rumblefool, from India, who ranked 4th in the contest and managed to raise his rating by 134 points. The others to finish in the distinguished Top 5 were romawhite and Oleg, ranking 3 and 5, respectively.

Over in Div B, loopfree from China secured the top spot. Having started competing on CodeChef only this year, loopfree increased her rating by 208 points and jumped from Div B to Div A. Snatching the 2nd spot in Div B was marco_l_t. This was marco_l_t’s first contest on CodeChef, and he grew his rating by the maximum possible value: 275 points. The other participants to make it to the Top 5 in Div B were alina_alina, spookywooky, and dbh_, occupying the 3rd, 4th and 5th position, respectively.

The contest bore particularly good fruits for school students: In Div A, 12 out of Top 30 were school students, while the number for Div B within the same bracket was 9. Meanwhile, minamoto from Div A (Rank 19), and loopfree (Rank 1) and alina_alina (Rank 3) from Div B were some of the female programmers that really stood out in the contest.

Overall, 320 participants migrated from Div B to Div A, including 15 school students. While simultaneously, 103 coders slipped down to Div B from Div A.

Finally, coming to problems: the problem to get first overall successful submission in the contest was CHFM from njha1999 in Div A, just 4 minutes into the contest. In Div B, too, CHFM was first problem to receive a successful submission, solved by apower2 in the 5th minute after the start. The problem to be cracked last in both the division was LVMFFN, solved by ACRush on the second day in Div A, while in Div B, it was solved by foreverlasting on the sixth day.

As we conclude this recap, we express our immense gratitude to our July Long Challenge problem setting panel:

Setters:

• SNKAPT: Aviroop Pal (aviroop123)

• CIRMERGE: Erfan Alimohammadi (erfaniaa)

• GUESSPRM: Bohdan Pastuschak (bohdan)

• CHFWAR: Sombit Bose (deadshot_sb)

• LVMFFN: Kasra Mazaheri (kmaaszraa)

• MXMN: Jiang XunCi (nqiiii)

• CCC: Abhinav Jain (iamabjain)

• PRTAGN: Pranjal Rai (prnjl_rai)

• CHFWAR2: Alei Reyes (alei)

• MMAX: Mayank Agrawal (mayank1601)

• CHFM: Tanay Mishra (mishra_tanay_)

Testers: Alipasha (alipasha132), Kasra Mazaheri (kmaaszraa)

Editorialist: Anand Jaisingh (anand20)

Statement Verifier: Jakub Safin (xellos0)

Translators:

• Russian Translator: Fedor Korobeinikov (gomelfk)

• Vietnamese Translator: Team VNOI (songuku95)

• Bengali Translator: Mohammad Solaiman (solaimanope)

• Hindi Translator: Akash Srivastava (devils_code)

• Mandarin Translator: Gedi Zheng (stzgd)

Ultimately, a huge thanks to our admin Alei Reyes (alei) whose help ensured that we were able to pull the contest off effortlessly.

Do let us know your thoughts and opinions on the July Long Challenge in the comments below. Plus, don’t forget to practice. There are highly engaging contests scheduled this week and the next. Until next time, keep coding!

For those of you who missed it, we bring you our recap of the interesting July CookOff. Read on to get our detailed dissection of the contest.

In Div A, uwi from Japan secured the 1st spot. Further improving his contest rank from June CookOff, where he stood 2nd, uwi added 124 points to his rating in this month’s contest to finish with 2848 rating. He currently holds the overall country rank 1 and global rank 8 on the platform.

Close behind uwi and occupying the 2nd position was progmatic from Belarus. progmatic (with a username, which one can only assume is an amalgamation of words — programmer and pragmatic) increased his rating by 139 points and made a comeback into the 7-star league, after getting briefly downgraded post July Long Challenge. Both uwi and progmatic managed to score a perfect 5 in the contest. The others to finish in the top 5 were — mrkerim, sam__2 and andrey_efremov — securing ranks 3, 4 and 5, respectively.

Over in Div B, perucmpamypa from Ukraine seized the first position. This was perucmpamypa’s first contest on CodeChef, and he was able to increase his rating by the maximum possible value: 275 points. The 2nd place was snatched by nstyrl. Coincidentally, it was nstyrl’s first contest on the platform, too and even he increased his rating by 275 points.

Despite the otherwise great performance that the contest witnessed in Div B, there wasn’t anybody to manage a perfect 5 score. juckter, eshoru, and godwind were the other contestants to finish within the top 5 in Div B — finishing with the 3rd, 4th and 5th positions, respectively.

Amongst school students, andrey_efremov (rank 5) and tasmeemreza (rank 13) showcased real programming prowess in Div A; while in Div B, some of their equally impressive counterparts were: eshoru (rank 4), godwind (rank 5) and arshiadadras (rank 7). Overall, 96 participants increased their rating significantly enough to jump from Div B to Div A, including 3 school students.

Coming to contest problems: christian_grey from Div B was the first to successfully submit a solution in the contest, solving PLAYSTR within 4 minutes of commencement. Meanwhile, the first scorable problem to be cracked in Div A happened to be BDGFT, successfully submitted by progmatic in the 9th minute. The last problem to be cracked in Div A was MGICMENU, solved by KADR; while for Div B, that problem was WARTLND, solved by arshiadadras.

As we conclude this exciting recap, we’d love to express our enormous gratitude to our July CookOff problem setting panel:

Setters: Anik Sarker (imanik), Hasin Rayhan Dewan Dhruboo (ezio_26)

Tester: Teja Vardhan Reddy (teja349)

Editorialist: Taranpreet Singh (taran_1407)

Statement Verifier: Jakub Safin (xellos0)

Translators:

• Russian Translator: Fedor Korobeinikov (gomelfk)

• Vietnamese Translator: Team VNOI (songuku95)

• Bengali Translator: Mohammad Solaiman (solaimanope)

• Hindi Translator: Akash Srivastava (devils_code)

• Mandarin Translator: Gedi Zheng (stzgd)

Lastly, a huge shoutout to our admin Hasan Jaddouh (kingofnumbers) without whose assistance we wouldn’t have been able to pull the contest off this effortlessly.

Do let us know your thoughts and opinions on the July CookOff in the comments below. Until next time, keep coding!

This month at CodeChef began with the Long Challenge, from the 6th to the 16th of December. The contest was exciting with submissions from coders pouring in from all over the globe. Several coders stood above the competition in the ten-day long coding extravaganza. With noticeable gains made by 65 participating coders who climbed up from Div 2 to 1.

Beginning with Div 1: the 5-star romawhite from Ukraine finished as the leader in the rank list. romawhite drastically improved from rank 599 in November Long Challenge to the number one spot this month.  Close behind romawhite, was akee, a school student from China with 799.59, and his fabulous performance bumped his Rating up by 142 points. The contest starred excellent performances from China and India in Div 1, with 13 coders from China and 7 from India landing in the Top 30.

The others who managed to finish in the Top 5 were zhouyuyang, ACRush, and xuanyiming ranking 3, 4, and 5, respectively. The highest rank achieved by an Indian Programmer in Div 1 was 12 by cskanani, who achieved a raise in his rating of 164 points.

In Div 2, the contest was fierce with 3-star coder khalid545 from Morocco acquiring the first position, and also jumping up to Div-1 consequently. Stealing the 2nd spot in Div 2 was rohit2000 from India. rohit2000, a school student, added 171 points to his Rating. Other participants who made the Top 5 cut in Div 2 were sakarak, pulak15, and sarthak007sg60, occupying the 3rd, 4th, and 5th positions, sequentially.

In Div 1, 11 out of the Top 30 were school students. However, the number dwindled to just two in Div 2 within the same bracket. Meanwhile, sanae acquiring 8th rank and minamoto ranking 27 from Div 1, were some of the best female programmers in the contest.

Overall, 65 participants improved from Div 2 to Div 1, including 4 school students, while 24 coders slid to Div 2 from Div 1.

Arriving at the problems finally: the problem to get the first overall successful submission in the contest was PLMU by sharepo in Div 2. The submission was made 15 minutes into the contest. The problem to be cracked last was TESTGEN, solved by Tomsyd in Div 2 on the second day, while in Div 1, STICNOT was the last problem to be solved by dontjudgeme on the first day.

The Long Challenge came to a close on the 16th of December, with the total number of submissions peaking at 213,696 from 15,301 distinct users. 14,507 CodeChef users made at least one correct submission in the duration of the contest. We congratulate all the users who put in their effort and time. Further, we thank the December Long Challenge problem setting panel:

• PLMU: Vivek Chauhan (vivek_1998299)
• SUBSPLAY: Bhavya Rustgi (bhavyarustgi10)
• BINXOR: Akash Tike (black_truce)
• CHFRAN: Ritesh Gupta (rishup_nitdgp)
• STICNOT: Abolfazl Soltani (Saboon)
• APAIRS: Foyaz Akanda (foyaz05)
• TESTGEN: Alexey Zayakin (alex_2oo8)
• BINOFEV: Rezwan Arefin (rezwanarefin01)
• CUBVIRUS: Alexey Zayakin (alex_2oo8)
• WATSCORE: Abhishek Pandey (viju123)
• Alexey Zayakin (alex_2oo8)

Tester: Ildar Gainullin (gainullinildar)

Editorialist: Alexander Kulkov (melfice)

Statement Verifier: Jakub Safin (xellos0)

Translators:

• Russian: Fedor Korobeinikov (gomelfk)
• Vietnamese: Team VNOI (songuku95)
• Bengali: Mohammad Solaiman (solaimanope)
• Hindi: Akash Srivastava (devils_code)
• Mandarin: Hanlin Ren (r_64)

Finally, our admin Alexey Zayakin (alex_2oo8) whose help ensured that we were able to pull the contest off effortlessly.

Let us know your thoughts and opinions on the December Long Challenge in the comments below. Plus, don’t forget to practice. We have a list of exciting contests coming up over the month. Until next time, keep coding!

Welcome to the live blog for the ACM ICPC Amritapuri Regional 2019-20. The contest started at 10:20 am IST.

Link to Public Ranklist

11:05: Minimum Spanking Tree (Rank 2) gets WA on PRMPRT, the 3rd easiest problem of the set. Cogito Ergo Error (Rank 1) have 1 penalty on Convolution. the 2nd easiest problem of the set.

11:20: With a total of 365 submissions made we complete one hour into the contest. Team Cogito Ergo Error solve PRMPRT, their 5th problem. Here is what the ranklist currently looks like

1. Cogito Ergo Error
2. Minimum Spanking Tree
3. tesla_protocol

11:40: Currently, there are 4 Teams with 5 correct submissions. The race to the top spot is becoming more interesting.

11:50: An hour and a half have passed, and teams are engrossed coding and testing their code. Team Cogito Ergo Error takes the lead, followed by PersistentTriers, and Fast_Code_Transform. 24 teams have solved at least 3 problems correctly.

12:05: 8 teams have 5 correct solutions on their plates. The total number of submissions has reached 502, as the top teams try to solve their 6th problem in the set.

12:15: We finally have a correct submission for the sixth distinct problem. There are 11 teams with 5 correct submissions now! Which team will solve their 6th problem first and take over the ranklist?

12:42: Finally, team I_See_AC from IIT Guwahati solves their 6th problem! and take the top spot on the ranklist. 12 other teams are still at 5 problems.

13:05: Persistent Triers gets a TLE on P1, and Minimum Spanking Tree has 6 penalties on P1, while no submissions have been made by team Cogito Ergo Error in the last 1hr 45 mins.

13:15: Team Cogito Ergo Error solve their 6th problem and the 7th distinct problem of the set. They take the second position after team I_See_AC while 19 other teams are still at 5 correct submissions.

13:20: We enter the fourth hour of the contest with a total of 745 submissions. 3 problems are yet to receive a successful submission while two problems have only one correct submission each.

13:35: Cogito Ergo Error solves their 7th distinct problem making their hold on the first spot even harder. Meanwhile, Fast_Code_Transform solves its 6th problem climbing up to the 2nd position.

13:40: Team tesla_protocol solve their 6th problem too and move up to Rank 4, the contest is becoming interesting as 3 teams are on 6 problems now.

14:00: Team Hold right there Sparky!! solve their sixth problem. There are 4 teams at 6 Problems and Cogito Ergo Error with 7 problems is at the top of the ranklist currently.

14:10: 10 minutes left until the ranklist freezes, 2 problems are yet to receive any successful submissions. Meanwhile, the top 3 teams are:

1. Cogito Ergo Error
2. Fast_Code_Transform
3. I_See_AC

14:15: Right before the ranklist freezes team PersistentTriers solves their sixth problem too and make way to the 2nd spot with lesser penalty. PersistentTriers from Nirma University is the only team among the top 40 teams with 0 penalties!
14:20: Further increasing the mystery of this adrenaline packed contest the ranklist has frozen. The teams have a complete hour in hand. These are the current standings:

1. Cogito Ergo Error
2. PersistentTriers
3. Fast_Code_Transform

15:20: 10 problems, 101 teams and 5 hours which are finally up. The teams did all that they could and now they wait until we announce the winners of ICPC Asia Kanpur Regional Contest. Stay tuned!
The wait is finally over as we reveal the names of the winning teams of coders at the ICPC Asia Kanpur Regionals.

1. Cogito Ergo Error from Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi
2. Hold right there Sparky!! from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee
3. I_See_AC from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati

Team CodeChef thanks everyone who joined us for this exciting series of updates. We congratulate the winning teams and all the participants. And as we say Keep Coding!

With the excitement of June Lunchtime still left to die down, the competitive programming world braced itself for CodeChef’s July Long Challenge 2020. With 32,416 participants and 5,56,044 submissions, the 10-day coding challenge had put the best to test, thanks to our star problem setters. The 13 unique problems spread over two Divisions of the challenge had made some of the best competitive programmers rack their brains, and the fight was as close as it gets.

Division 1 – a close contest among heavyweights.

Division 1, the battleground for the tougher programmers, was dominated by North Korean coder Kim Song Bok. The 7-star coder finished at the number 1 spot with a score of 1000. The student from Pyongyang has shown a meteoric rise in his last three Long Challenges. In October 2019, Bok was ranked 1230, and from there he leapt straight to rank 3 in May 2020. It now seems as though Bok isn’t in the mood to let go of his incredible form in the Long Challenge, and his current rank speaks for it. With his CodeChef competitive programming rating increased by 113 after the contest, Bok stands at a rating of 2908, inching steadily towards the 3000 club. Lagging behind the top scorer by almost 9 points, Indian coder Abhishek Kanhar finished in the 2nd spot with a score of 991.375. Kanhar’s last Long Challenge was in October 2019, where Bok had also participated. Kanhar, who was ranked 7 in October 2019, beating Bok by miles, has finally been outranked by the current champion. However, Kanhar seemed to take a lot more than just a fantastic rank from the July Long Challenge. However, the most notable takeaway from Kanhar’s performance is the fact that with an increase of 143 in his rating, he’s only 13 of becoming a 7-star coder. 

“The last contest was one of the most productive paths to invest my time in this lockdown. In the contest, I enjoyed solving the problem EXPREP (for myriads of approaches to solving it using different Data Structures), EXPTREES (an excellent Mathematical problem). Also, it was quite surprising to see very little accepted submissions on a mere medium level problem, GEOXD. The Challenge problem (DYNHUL) was well-prepared, and I regard this as the best in the whole contest. In the end, I was quite happy to see myself on the first page of the leaderboard,” said the Long Challenge global rank 2 holder in an interview to CodeChef. 

Kanhar secured his 2nd spot beating Polish coder, Krzysztof Maziarz by a whisker. The Microsoft professional bagged the 3rd spot, just 0.545 points short of the 2nd. Japanese student, nyaan, zhouyuyang from China, and American coder jijiang, who studies in the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Mumbai, Maharashtra, and 5-star Chinese coder test12345 finished 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th respectively. A three-way close competition left the 8^th spot a tie between Bangladeshi coder Jubayer Nirjhor, Chinese student mayaohua, and Mateusz Radecki from Poland. 

Division 2 – an underdog promise-land.

Despite three ties in the top 10 and a few more down the list, we have a clear winner in Division 2, Nikita Bykov. The Russian coder and a student of Saint Petersburg State University rocketed from rank 2238 in the February Long Challenge to rank 1 in July. He was last seen just a month ago in June Lunchtime, where he finished 18th globally. The addition of 229 points to his rating leaves him 29 away from graduating to a CodeChef yellow band coder from purple. The fight for the second spot has been a two-horse race between Chinese coder Tianfang Nan, and FSYolanda. While this was Tiafang’s first appearance on any CodeChef coding contest, FSYolanda took a giant leap from rank 29,873 in the June Challenge to a shared 2nd spot in just a month. With no 3rd spot to spare, Indian programmer from Punjab, Vedant Gupta claimed the 4th spot with a score of 889.77. This is the first time the Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology Patiala student managed to secure a rank less than three digits in any CodeChef contest. Bangladeshi coder, Maruf Ahmed Mridul bagged the 5th position while three CodeChefers, Jay Faldu (India), mrboorger(Belarus), and Debasish Ray Chawdhuri(India) shared the 6th spot. Four more Indians, Robin Jagal from Patiala, Harsha Kunchala from Hyderabad, Shailendra Jain from Jalandhar, and Rohit from Delhi shared the 9th spot. With this, 7 Indians made into the top 10 of July Long Challenge Division 2. Along with three ties in the top 10 spots, it’s interesting to note that there have been eight ties at the 13th spot in Division 2.

Problem setters on their coding problems.

With so many neck and neck performances in Division 1, and a surprising number of ties in Division 2, and fewer ACs than usual, it’s safe to say that the July Long Challenge problems haven’t been easy. It doesn’t come as a surprise after hearing from the problem solvers themselves as some of them have put in the extra effort to make the problems as demanding as possible. Md. Mahamudur Rahaman Sajib, who had set one of the least attempted problems in the contest, Easy Geo xD (GEOXD) admits that this was the hardest problem he had ever set on the CodeChef platform. According to Sajib, GEOXD is the kind of problem that a setter picks randomly and then goes about finding a solution. As a result, composing the problem is as tough for the setter as it is to solve by the contestants.

“GEOXD eventually is the least solved problem in this long challenge in the end, and that gives me much pleasure as a setter,” said a satisfied Sajib.

Sudipan Datta, the creator of Doctor Chef (DRCHEF), shares the same sense of satisfaction with Sajib.

“The performance of DRCHEF was as expected. It was a tricky problem. So like I presumed it had very few submissions on day 1, 2, and at the end of the long challenge, it had many ACs. Even some red coders took more than 3-4 attempts to get an AC. I’ll be honest with you; it feels very nice when your problem gets WA’s,” said Datta, who debuted as a problem setter in July Long Challenge 2020.

Aviroop Pal, who set the problem, Expected Repetitions (EXREP), expected a dearth in the number of ACs to his problem as most participants are not very familiar and comfortable with string problems. On being asked why he chose to set this particular problem, here’s what he had to say:

“I found suffix automata as one of the most powerful string data structures that I’ve known. So the problem of using a heavy light merging on the link tree came naturally to me. This kind of trick is not so common in string problems, so I thought of giving it a try.”

The overall low number of ACs indicate that the problem setters have had the last laugh in the July Long Challenge 2020. Despite the tough competition, performances of the top coders have been commendable With close finishes, incredible comebacks, and problem setters going for the kill, July Long Challenge 2020 was tough, gruelling, and unpredictable but definitely worth it.

It is that time of the month again when we prepare for one of the most enthralling coding contests, the Cook-Off! With almost 10,000 participants and 35,000+ submissions, one could say that the July Cook-Off 2020 was an intense rush hour (read two and a half hours). The contest ended with some big rank shuffles for some coders, particularly for the Indian participants who showed impressive programming acumen across both Divisions.

The elite battlefield, Division 1, was topped by 6-star Canadian coder ksun48, who was the only performer with a perfect score of eight. ksun48 has shown a steady rise in his rating recently, going from 1853 to 2316, over just four contests – a feat rather commendable. 

Competing closely with ksun48 was 7-star coder, icecuber. icecuber, with a score of seven, and an increased rating of 147, has now taken his final tally to 2612. The Norwegian coder has been giving us some memorable performances over the past few contests with notable increments in his ratings. Entering the 7-star category with the match, his July Cook-Off ranking has been his best so far. 

icecuber secured the second spot by a narrow margin, going head to head with 7-star Indonesian coder, iafir. The Institut Teknologi Bandung student had the same number of correct submissions as icecuber but had to settle with the third spot because of the total penalty. toloraia from Georgia, uwi from Japan, and Ukrainian coder anton_trygub claimed the fourth, fifth, and sixth spot respectively with six submissions each. 

Division 1 saw some noteworthy performances by Indian coders, with five of them making it to the top twenty global rankings. raghav_19 from Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology secured the seventh spot, his best yet. Two more names worth a mention in the July Cook-Off are maesterr and knandy. 

Heading over to Division 2, ivandasfs from Croatia secured the top spot with a perfect score of six, the only one in Division 2 to do so! After obtaining a rank of 7261 in the July Long Challenge, ivandasfs was back with a strong show for the Cook-Off. With his rating increased by 183, ivandasfs took his total to 1875, thereby entering the primary playground, Division 1. The second position was battled out between the American coder rappel, and port_13 from Georgia. Both had five successful submissions each, but the former beat the latter based on Total Penalty. This duel was the highlight for Division 2!

Division 2 was dominated by Indian coders. With a total of fifteen Indian participants in the top twenty-five, it was a top-notch show from our Indian programmers. The best Indian performance came from hvr2804 of Manipal Institute of Technology, who had a score of four and secured the fifth spot. Two more Indian coders, what_is_coding and andanarchist1729, also put themselves on the map with their performances at the recently concluded contest. 

There have been several neck and neck competitions in both the divisions – evident from the number of similar scores we had. With only one perfect score from each division, it’s safe to say that this Cook-Off has been a tough one for most participants. There has been a lot of effort put in selecting the problems so that the coders could be tested on different paradigms. The problem EXTREME has been the toughest for this month’s Cook-Off, with merely two successful submissions. Problem setter Shahjalal Shohag told CodeChef that the problem was one of his favourites from the set.

“I like this one a lot. Initially, I had no proof of the solution, and I had to stress test over small inputs to verify the solution. The solution is quite easy but needs more thinking. It is my second most favourite problem for the set,” said Shohag. 

The most talked-about problems on our Discussion Forum have been BOJACK and ORTHODOX with BOJACK being more popular of the two. Shohag, who is also the mastermind behind BOJACK, seemed rather impressed by the problem he had set. 

 “It is my favourite problem from the set. The initial version had larger constraints. As the problem name suggests, I tried to create a problem which would be a crossover of some known ideas. The performance on the problem has not been as I expected. It should have had more green verdicts. But I think most of the participants liked this one, and I am proud of myself for coming up with this problem,” said Shohag on his problem, BOJACK.

Even though the contest was a tough one, there have been several commendable performances from the coders who tried their level best to come up with the solutions! With so many close finishes and such incredible comebacks all in mere 150 minutes, the July Cook-Off 2020 was anything but uneventful!

Did you find the July Cook-off problems tough as well? In case you’ve faced any hurdles in getting the solutions, please go through the Post-Contest Discussion.  

This is CodeChef correspondent, Ashutosh Pandey inviting you to post your comments on this match report and stay tuned for more. 

With the Coders Legacy contest coming to an end, it’s time to get your hands on all the details you might have missed. Hosted in collaboration with KeyGEnCoders this was one of our external rated contests for both Division one and two – an explanation for the unversed.  

In a nutshell, a lot of organizations, campus chapters and colleges host their own contests on CodeChef. We inspect every single one of these in detail to ensure excellent problems and strong test cases. KeyGEnCoders is one of the CodeChef Campus Chapters based in Kalyani, West Bengal. It is one of those Campus Chapters where programming comes alive with junior and senior students battling out amongst each other, volunteered by our representatives and the institution. So coming back to the Coders Legacy here is a recap of the frenzy that pushed the participants perilously close to the edge.

Rated for both divisions, the contest drew the interest of all players. This resulted in a photo finish battle that gave us an amazing competition. It started on the 15th of July at 9 pm and was over three hours later. With 5,515 participants and over 35,000 submissions, the competition was close and only the best were in with a fighting chance. 

There were seven problems to wade through to get to the revered number one rank. Chef vs Doof was the most popular problem amongst our coders with 4839 successful submissions and a near 50 percent accuracy rate. On the far end of the spectrum (and I mean really truly far) were our most elusive problems Perry learns Binary and Phineas and Marks. Both combined got only eight successful submissions with seven belonging to Perry learns Binary. The single correct answer to Phineas and Marks came from the United States-based user geothermal more about him as we move on, but first, let’s get to the rankings.

The first position was bagged by coder uwi, who continues with his winning streak since July Lunchtime. Ranked fifth globally, the star coder had his fight cut out for him, but he proved his mettle and managed to inch into first place. On the number two spot, we had 7-star coder from Russia, html_sanek who managed to solve six of the given seven problems to reserve this spot for himself. Rank number three went to solaimanope from Bangladesh who managed to accumulate 163 points in this contest, graduating from a 4-star player to a 5-star one. sam_2 claimed the fourth position right behind Soliamanope. The University of Auckland (New Zealand) student managed to make this competition count jumping stars from 6 to 7. Fifth place was secured by progmatic from Belarurs. Ranked 47th globally, progmatic had a close fight with sam_2 for the fourth spot but eventually had to settle for the fifth. The sixth position was occupied by nuip from Japan followed by geothermal who managed to capture seventh position, using the competition to advance from 5-star to 6-star.

Moving on, India’s performance in this challenge was rather impressive with near 1/4th of the top 25 being Indian players. The star performer who cracked his way into the top ten was shubham_12 The 6-star player stood firm at his eighth position, having solved five of the seven  given problems. Lagging behind him by just three spots was aviroop123 The orange band coder missed out on the top ten by a hair and had to settle for the eleventh position. Triumphantly making his way into the top fifteen was nitix who is just about 50 points away from being a 7-star. With an impressive performance, the coder secured the thirteenth position. User aniket9465 stood just two positions behind his compatriot. The 6-star coder, who is ranked fifty in India managed to solve four of the given problems to seal the deal. Scurrying to make it into the top 25 were supersri_pro and pro_noobie who both secured the position number twenty-three and twenty-four respectively. Both the orange band users, who are ranked somewhere in the sixties in India, pulled a stunning performance and managed to be seen on the first page of the rankings.

The problems were tough, the competition was stiff, and the organizers seemed to have enjoyed every bit of it. Upon asking organizer Sarthak Manna on his views on the problem Phineas and Marks he said, “In problems the last problem that Abhijeet (problem setter) set was the toughest no doubt. I actually expected zero submissions, but at last, we got one, so that was a good moment”. 

Also talking to us about his experience with CodeChef, Sarthak revealed that he most certainly enjoyed the contest. 

 “I loved interacting with the setters and testers. They were really nice, so that was a good part. And the competition ended well, and there was a lot of positive feedback, so it was overall nice,” said Manna. 

We also engaged in conversation with Avijit from the organizing team, to get to know his thoughts on the competition. When asked about his opinion on the toughest problem of the lot he told us the story of how it came to life  “The problem CLMARKS was inspired by a TedEd video of the Pirate Riddle and was basically thought out in a discussion with Jatin while sharing the original problem. There was a lot of talk which had gone behind this problem, specially to remove any ambiguity from this problem. Sarthak did challenge me that it would get 0 AC submissions, but eventually, we got an AC submission (geothermal) to this problem!”

Sharing his thoughts on the contest and how it culminated Avijit said “We had never imagined to get such huge participation in this contest and would like to thank all of the CodeChef team sticking with us throughout this time and helping us in all possible ways to organize the contest.”

Overall the Coders Legacy contest was an intense affair with some quality coders showing off some serious skills. With July already having had a fabulous Long Challenge and the Lunchtime yet to come, this promises to be a spectacular month. Keep your eyes peeled for the next rated (or unrated) contest. Till then, this is CodeChef correspondent Riddhi Acharya hoping that the players can keep this momentum going and give us more breathtaking performances down the road.

Last to last weekend was no time to relax and unwind because that weekend was CodeChef Lunchtime 2020. The 3-hour challenge saw 95,030 submissions over the two divisions with some determined coders taking the bull by its horns. The top rank holders, most holding aces already, battled it out on a challenging field, thanks to our problem setters. 

A heavyweight grind – Division 1.

With the star-studded (and quite literally so) top 5 of Division 1, it seemed like the contest was a race amongst stalwarts. Isaf27, the 7-star CodeCheffer from Russia has been dominating all CodeChef contests he’s taking part in, and the July Lunchtime was no exception. The Economics student with a rewarding penchant for programming claimed the first spot at the contest with a perfect score of 500. The only dent in his otherwise incredible streak in CodeChef contests was the negative rating of 70 in the July Long Challenge.  However, it was more than compensated for with a jump of 136 points in this contest. Japanese star coder, uwi makes his way into the top 5 again finishing second. The JAVA wizard’s impeccable record seemed to have played against him this time as the law of average cost him a rating drop of 26 – not something he can’t recover from in no time, though. Homeboy aviroop123 held rank three with an increased rating of 137. With a steep leap from rank 478 in April Lunchtime, and some commendable performances in various CodeChef contests in between, aviroop123’s graph has been worth a watch. 7-star coder risujiroh from Japan secured the fourth position showing a consistent and steady rise from February Lunchtime where he was ranked five. The fifth spot goes to hitonanode, also from Japan. The coder may have climbed down a couple of ranks since June Lunchtime but with an increased rating of 135, the CodeCheffer has made his way to the red band league of 7-star programmers. kal013 was the second Indian to finish in the top 10, securing the eighth position. With a consistent presence in the top 20 in Lunchtime over the past year, the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi India student seems to be inching towards the big rank in the next contest. 

Division 2 – a surprise package. 

We mentioned that July Lunchtime 2020 had 95,030 submissions. Did we say that 89,977 of them were in Division 2? You heard that right – the highest participation, and the highest number of submissions ever on a short contest by CodeChef. Now let’s take a look at the best takeaways from Div 2. 3-star coder, rns6 from North Korea comes to CodeChef’s contest platform with a clean slate and owns the first spot at his every first challenge. With a mystery coder hitting the ball way out of the park, Lunchtime Div 2 was a shocker. Chinese student simphoni, just two CodeChef contests old, finished in the second position. simphoni was last seen earlier this month at the Long Challenge, where the coder was ranked 190th.  After two novice coders claiming the first two spots, we finally have a familiar name at the third spot – June Lunchtime champion, ushakovfedor. The Russian coder probably wouldn’t mind the drop in ranking as the contest came with 183 points to his name, taking him to a higher notch of purple banded coders. The Indian tri-colour sets the scheme of the Div 2 ranklist with four Indian coders sitting on fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth position. At number five, ayasherayasher from West Bengal, India appeared for his first Lunchtime ever, making it to the top 10 at the first go. Indian Institute of Technology Patna Bihar, India student prem_1412, ranked sixth, made a promising comeback from his September Lunchtime 2019 performance. With just three CodeChef contests to his name, New Delhi coder kcalm062 ranked seven followed by Indian Institute of Technology Dhanbad student childhood. 

What’s your (favourite) problem? 

Of the seven problems, Binary Concatenation received the highest number of successful submissions in Division 1. With the 428 successful submissions and an accuracy of 14.28, it was the most attempted problem. Colured Pairings, with just six successful submissions, was the least. The problem had an accuracy rate of 5.83, and the only user to get a perfect score on this one was Japanese coder risujiroh. Coming to Division 2, Chef and Steps bagged the highest successful submissions scoring 8726 with an accuracy of 33.96. The least was Profitable Paths 2  with just seven successful submissions and an accuracy of 4.22. The first perfect score on this one was achieved by third runner-up ushakovfedor who solved the problem in 0.38 seconds. 

While the heavyweights dominated Division 1, Division 2 came with its own set of surprises. What did you think about the freshly concluded match? Let us know what’s on your mind. This is Debanjan, signing off, until the next match report. 

Code Ensemble 2020 was full of great performances. Organized by the DotSlash community of Indian Institute of Technology, Nagpur, this external rated contest was scorable only for Division Two. With tough problems and little time to solve them, the contest had all the rookie players glued to their screens.

Before the contest started, we got in touch with problem setter Arun Das and asked him what he thought would be the toughest problem.

“I personally feel that CENS20B(Cherry and Squares) will be the toughest since it is based on a mixture of dynamic programming and data structures and is relatively harder to implement,” he said. 

The competition commenced with keyboards blazing and didn’t slow down at all. The players had seven problems to work through and they did not disappoint. 6-star user geothermal got the first successful submission of the competition just one minute in, for the problem Priya and And. This problem proved to be the bandwagon, as by the end it had accumulated over 12,000 submissions out of which 4,898 were accepted. Another problem popular among the participants was Help Martha. The first successful submission for this one came from user vladprog. By the time the contest ended Help Martha had garnered 2,215 successful submissions. On the other end of the spectrum were problems Cherry and Pyramids and Cherry and Squares. The first user to crack Cherry and Pyramids was once again geothermal. While the problem got 31 successful submissions darshanjain31, akshay_kumar99, and mabhay3420 were the only three Division Two players in the list. Just as Arun predicted Cherry and Squares proved to be a tough problem. geothermal was the one with the first successful submission for this problem. When the contest ended only five answers got the green tick, and all of these belonged to Division One players. 

The rank list was full of great competition. Topping the charts was Indian user shouryap. He gained 207 points in this contest, changing stars from 3 to 4, and he is now a Division One player. Right behind him was compatriot doubleux. Similar to shouryap, doubleux managed to make this competition count gaining 183 points, and becoming a 4-star user. Third position was bagged by user prabhakar_987. Mirroring the players before him, Prabhakar used this competition to move-up from a 3-star player to a 4-star player. After him came 1-star user darshanjain31 from India, who gave a stunning performance to clinch fourth place. Next was user ravan9 who stood at fifth position, having managed to change stars from 3 to 4. sobolevich from Brazil claimed the sixth spot and at the same time switched up from a 3-star player to a 4-star player. Seventh position went to user cheeta_coder from India, who gained 171 points to become a 4-star user. At the number eight spot we had dtc03012 from South Korea. This user accumulated 235 points in the contest and now qualifies as a 3-star user. Position number nine and ten went to fatal_destiny and kamol7 respectively. User fatal_destiny jumped two stars to become a 3-star user, while kamol7 went from 3-star to 4-star. 

After the contest we also spoke to problem setter Aman Dwiwedi on the behind-the-scenes experience of hosting a contest.

“It was our first time organizing the rated contest, so it was a new experience for us. It was an exciting one and CodeChef really helped us in providing a great platform. We hope we can come up with the “Rated for All” version soon” he said. 

In conclusion, the Code Ensemble 2020 was a fun contest. With visits from 7-star players like EgorK, aryanc403 and sjshohag the contest saw an astounding display of skills. We saw a lot of players in this contest move from Div Two to Div One  and we hope to see more of these promising players in the upcoming contests. 

If your college would like to start its own coding club visit here, and to host your own contest on CodeChef reach out to us here. We look forward to hearing from you.

The post Code Ensemble 2020 – A Thrill From Start To Finish. appeared first on CodeChef.

August Long Challenge 2020 was a special one because it was the first long-format CodeChef contest since the new rules against plagiarism were announced. The 10-day programming challenge saw 4,12,028 submissions, with top coders and underdogs aiming for the big score all alike.

Of the significant number of submissions, Division 1 received only 24, 873. With a mere 1100 teams/users with successful submissions, Div 1 lived up to its name of being a tougher playing field in the Long Challenge. However, no matter how steep the climb to the top has been, rns5 of Kim Il-sung University Pyongyang, North Korea continued with his winning streak. Basking in the glory of being the rank one holder, the North Korean student earned himself a rating rise of 141 with this competition. Russian coder endagorion who seems to prefer Long Challenges more than any other CodeChef contests, finished at the second spot, just 0.662 behind the top scorer. With an increased rating of 146, the CodeChefer is only one match away from joining the red band club. Holding the third position strong and firm since his last Long Challenge in April, white2302 missed the second spot by 1.164 points. American coder, atomicenergy, who was last seen in July Lunchtime, finally added a 7-star rating to his name finishing fourth at the August Long Challenge. Microsoft professional from Poland, krismaz, who has been in the top 10 in all his recent appearances, finished fifth in the contest. However, the 7-star coder did see a rating drop of 12, despite a commendable performance.

Division 2 may have had comparatively easier problems but with 3, 87, 155 total submissions, claiming the top spot was not easy. With absolutely no prior CodeChef history whatsoever, Chinese coder, wasa85 bagged the first position with a score of 900. The Hangzhou No.2 High School, Zhejiang student got a rating rise of 225 points at his very first contest programming contest. Last seen on July Lunchtime, Russian student, felixarg finished second with an increased rating of 206, making it to the purple band of coders. On the third spot is another CodeChef debutant, ivgechu from Ukraine who earned a 275 rise in rating with the performance. Another one to jump bands with their performance at the August Long Challenge is American coder raynor30. The New Yorker rose to the purple band club with a rating hike of 194. The fifth position saw something incredibly interesting and highly unusual. We have a 24-way tie for the position with coders from all around the world, including thirteen Indians. With all users scoring 800, it seemed like the fifth position was the fiercest battle at not just the August Long. The real culprit was obviously the tiebreaker problem, Ants(Challenge). A tough problem that most failed to solve, leaving no room for the decimal point differences.

Talking of problems, Smallest KMP received the highest number of submissions in Division 1 with accuracy of 28.67. Ants(Challenge) that caused havoc as the Division 2 tiebreaker was also the least solved problem in Division one with just 32 successful submissions. In Division 2, Chef Wars – Return of the Jedi saw the highest number of successful submissions – 28,768. We got hold of the author of Subsequence Frequency Counting, Temirlan Baibolov who believes that anyone experienced in combinatorics should be able to solve his problem. He seemed satisfied with the number of submissions his problem had received.

“The problem is not hard to solve if you are experienced in combinatorics. I initially had a thought that 40-50% per cent of Div1 should be able to solve it. Real numbers turned out to be really close,” said Baibolov.

August Long Challenge 2020 was no easy competition. While submissions poured in heavily, ACs were hard to come by. Division 1 has been the top coders’ ground, while Division2, as the recent trend has been, saw some new names in the top list once again. This is CodeChef writer Debanjan signing for now and looking forward to your comments and reactions on the freshly concluded Long Challenge.

The post CodeChef August Long Challenge | A Mixed Bag Of Thrills & Surprises appeared first on CodeChef.

We are sure that you will agree that August Cook-Off 2020 was a coding competition worth remembering. An unexpectedly high number of users jammed the servers, causing a minor bump in the road in the beginning. But once that was taken care of, the last Cook-Off went as exciting as ever. With unsolvable problems and unexpected comebacks, this is how the story unfolded. 

The Platter Of Problems.

As 9 pm drew closer we could all feel the tension in the air. The contest got off to a fiery start. Both the divisions had their hands full with five problems each. The first successful submission in Division One came for the problem Polygon Relationship. Eventually, this proved to be the most popular problem in Division One. At the time the competition ended 825 players had tried to solve this problem and 681 emerged triumphant. Chefina and Dishes was the problem that had the Division One players confused, as only 19 players were able to give the correct solution to this problem. Even tougher than this was the problem Safety in Treeland. Merely 50 players were brave enough to attempt this problem and none were successful.

Meanwhile, Division Two was hard at work. The most popular problem here was Chef and Work. The problem got 16,225 submissions out of which 6,771 got the green tick. Not far behind on the list was Polygon Relationship. In this division, this problem got 4754 accurate submissions. Not all problems proved such crowd favourites as the problem Red-blue Trees definitely had the players stumped. The first successful submission for this one  came from user james42. When the contest ended this problem had just 57 submissions with the green tick. Similar to Division One, even here we had a problem with zero accurate solutions. Beautiful Subsequence was attempted by over 250 users but alas none hit the bullseye. 

After the contest, we got in touch with problem setter Arthur Nascimento who set the toughest problem in Division One – Safety in Treeland and talked to him about the way he set it and how it performed. 

“My inspiration for it, in general, was problems regarding subtrees updates. I wanted to create a problem where you need to do a series of operations on the tree and some data structure, but for some reason, it was not obvious that you were able to do all the required operations in time. That’s why there is a parameter R[i], and a condition on the statement that implies not trivially that their sum are small. I expected a small number of contestants to solve my problem, but it turned out that no one solved it.” he said 

The Action-Packed Rank Lists.

The rank list was an exciting affair in both the divisions. In Division One the chart was topped by user nuip from Japan. nuip certainly gave an impressive performance, leaving behind several ruffled 7-star players in the quest for gold. Although he entered the competition as a 6-star player, he left it as a proud red coder. Second place was stolen by 5-star user kevinwan from Canada. Like nuip him, Kevin also managed to jump stars, as he is now a 6-star coder. The next three positions were an all 7-star deal as users uwi, iafir, and kmaaszraa claimed positions three to five respectively. The Indian player that shone through in Division One was shubham_12. Shubham put up a great show as he bagged the seventh position. Other Indian players who managed to secure a place in the top 25 were kokil87, the_eagle, taran_1407, dinesh_12345, knandy and vsriram10.

At the same time, Division Two had equally tough problems to tackle. 1-star user james42 stunned everyone as he bagged the first position. The competition worked out great for him as he is now a 3-star user. Second place went to user hayven from Poland. hayven started the competition as a 3-star user and ended it as a 4-star one. Next was Indian user zindagime_aish. Mirroring hayven, zindagime_aish also jumped stars from 3 to 4. In the fourth place we had user bhagwa_brigade. This was the user’s first-ever CodeChef competition, and  bhagwa_brigade did a great job, advancing from a 1-star user to a 3-star user. Right behind him was compatriot saravpreet14. Saravpreet also managed to make this competition count jumping two stars to become a 3-star user. Other Indian users that gave pleasing performances were betaphoenix who grabbed the seventh position, ad_1608 who clinched the ninth position and fatal_destiny who stood at tenth place. 

At the end of the day, the August Cook-Off 2020 was one heck of a competition. With such tough problems to solve we hope the players enjoyed it as much as we did. Until next time, this is CodeChef correspondent Riddhi Acharya hoping that this contest has left all the players revved and waiting for the August LunchTime 2020. 

The post Gripping and Compelling: This Is How The August Cook-Off 2020 Went Down appeared first on CodeChef.

Growth is always measurable by comparisons, and today we have compiled stats from the 2019 CodeChef July contests and the 2020 CodeChef July contests. From which players were consistent performers both years to what problems fared best, read on to find out how the same challenges panned out both years.

First contest first: The Long Challenge

The July Long Challenge 2019 that started on the 5th of July 2019 and lasted till the 15th was undoubtedly a competition to remember. With 8 problems to solve in both divisions, the players certainly had a lot on their hands. The most popular problem in Division One was Guess the Prime! with a total of 5666 successful submissions. We can only assume that Maximum and Minimum was the toughest problem in the lot. With only 943 people attempting the problem, the number of successful submissions stood even smaller at 30. Meanwhile, Division Two was hard at work. Parity Again was the problem that scored the most submissions here at 35,699. The problem that had all the players scratching their head was.(Challenge) CodeChef War 2. Only 28 players were brave enough to send submissions and just 14 emerged victorious.

Moving on to the July Long Challenge 2020. Both divisions were given 10 problems, and the players certainly had their work cut out for them. In Division One  Missing a Point was the problem that garnered the most successful submissions at 1,453 (48.72℅). The most elusive problem in division one was Easy Geo xD. With only 319 overall submissions, the right solutions number stood even smaller at just 13. At the same time, Division Two was also facing tough competition. Chef and Strings and Chef and Card Game saw huge amounts of submissions with 60,000+ and 50,500+ submissions respectively. The problem that had the division two players racking their brain was Expected Repetitions. Although 3333 players attempted to solve it only 4 got it right.

The Cook-Offs

Cook-Off is a competition you can always count on for being exhilarating. In the 2019 July Cook-Off both divisions were given 5 problems. For Division One Birthday Gift Again was the problem showered with the most love as it had the highest amount of both submissions and successful submissions. The Division One problem Magical Menu didn’t turn out to be so magical after all as only 8 of the 30 submissions were right. In Division Two the problem Playing With Strings was the most attempted and solved problem. It had 6654 submissions out of which 3260 got the green tick.  The problem War in Treeland Again certainly waged war on the players as just 4 out of the 71 who attempted it were successful.

This is how the 2020 July Cook-Off went down. Division One had 8 problems to solve while division Two had it a little easier with only 6. In Division One the problem OR-thodox Distinction had the most submissions at 2,017. The problem

 I Hate Symbo-LIS-m was the hardest problem to solve in Division One with only 5 trying and 2 being successful. The most attempted and solved problem in Division Two was Even-tual Reduction. It got 12530 submissions out of which 7834 got the green tick. The In-XOR-able Task was the most elusive problem in Division Two. Although a total of 422 players did attempt to solve it just 6 were successful.

Time for LunchTime

Here is a look at how the 2019 July LunchTime fared. Delete a Subarray was the most popular problem in Division One, with 782 submissions. Unfortunately, not a lot of the submissions were right as the accuracy rate was merely 20.33 per cent. Police and Thieves turned out to be the toughest problem here. With just 28 overall submissions and a singular successful one, Police and Thieves definitely gave the participants a tough time. In Division Two the problem that stole the spot for most submissions was Easy Math with 5480. This problem also got the most successful submissions at 2822. Equal Median was the problem that frustrated the coders of division two, as only 19 bothered to send a submission and merely 2 claimed bragging rights.

The July LunchTime 2020 was just as thrilling as the July LunchTime 2019. Similar to 2019 both the divisions were assigned 5 problems. In division one Binary Concatenation acted as bandwagon with nearly 3000 submissions. However only 428 of the submissions we’re accurate. Coloured Pairings was a problem that certainly didn’t go the players way. There were over 10000 submissions but only 6 (yep, you read that right) hit the mark. In Division Two Chef and Steps was the most solved problem with an accuracy rate of 33.96 per cent. The Coloured Pairings of Division Two was

Profitable Paths 2. 165 coders sent in answers but unfortunately only 7 got the green tick.

Consistent players from both years-

Consistency is a vital part of a good player. Here is the list of players who managed to secure a position in the top 10 (same contest) both years.

1. zhouyuyang – he managed to secure a rank in the top 10 in both July Long Challenges. In 2019 he bagged ninth position and back then he was a 6-star user. This time he stood at the fifth position and he is currently a 7-star coder.
2. progmatic – In the 2019 July Cook-Off progmatic claimed the second position. In 2020 he managed to secure the tenth position. Since 2019 progmatic has changed stars from 6 to 7.
3. uwi – uwi was the shining star of the 2019 July Cook-Off where he was ranked one. At that time he was a 6-star player. This July Cook-Off he secured the fifth position and at the moment he is a 7-star player. 
4. kal013 – In the 2019 July LunchTime kal013 stood at the seventh position as a 6-star user. This time in the same contest he secured the eighth position as a 7-star user.
5. progmatic – Aside from the Long Challenge, progmatic also gave a good performance in the 2019 and 2020 July LunchTimes. In 2019 he bagged the first position, and this year, he was ranked tenth.

Naturally over the years, some parts of the competitive programming world evolve and certain things stay the same. We hope you enjoyed this trip down the memory lane as much as we did.

The post The CodeChef July Contests 2019 vs 2020: An Absolute Delight Both The Times. appeared first on CodeChef.

The August Lunchtime 2020 was nothing short of a 3-hour roller coaster ride. One of the most exciting Lunchtimes in recent memory, the contest had around 60160 submissions. We witnessed some great performances across both Divisions. Let’s talk about the big rank shuffles, intense competitions, the toughest problems, and everything else that went down.

Division 1 – The Fight between The Best

With only one coder with a perfect score, this Lunchtime was pretty challenging for the Division 1 stars. gennady.korotkevich, the Global Rank 1 holder, made his return to Lunchtime after more than a year, and he surely lived up to our expectations. With the only perfect score of 600, the Belarusian programmer led the charge in Division 1. Not only that, but he also managed to solidify his unsurpassed rating by adding another 50 points, finishing at a jaw-dropping 3713. If you think that’s astonishing, hear me out when I say that he did all this in under 90 minutes!

Securing the 2^nd spot was the 7-star coder samvel. With the best performance of his CodeChef career, samvel finished the contest with a score of 450. The Armenian programmer has made significant progress over the past few months and has finally landed in the elite zone. He finished off the Lunchtime with a rating of 2565, having made a monumental increment of 140 points. The Japanese coder moririn2528 grabbed the third position. The 5-star coder has been by far the most improved programmer in the August Lunchtime. Having started his journey with CodeChef in April 2020, moririn2528 made incredible progress over five months. Improving with each contest, he finished with a rating of 2117.

The 4^th and 5^th positions were grabbed by flowerofsorrow and the homeboy taran_1407, respectively. The striking feature of the August Lunchtime 2020 was its competitiveness. This is pretty evident when you notice that four of the top five contestants have the same score.

Division 2 – The Exciting Battleground

What if I tell you that Division 2 was more competitive and enticing than Division 1? The August Lunchtime has to be one of the most memorable one in terms of the performances in Division 2. With rank shuffling happening till the final minutes of the contest, Division 2 did not disappoint.

The North Korean coder olihun owns the 1^st spot in Division 2 this time. This was only the second contest for the 4-star programmer on CodeChef, and he came out on top in the final minutes of the competition. Lagging in the initial stages, olihun made significant progress in the last minutes and moved past everyone in Division 2. He finished the contest with a rating of 1978, making an increment of 275 points and moving into Division 1. Grabbing the 2^nd position in Division 2 was the North Korean rns6. rns6 dominated most of the August Lunchtime sitting comfortably on the 1^st position before olihun pulled off the final strings. He finished off the contest with a rating of 1978.

The 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th positions were all secured by the Indian participants bugs_bunny_001, practiceguy101, and arsh1598, respectively. bugs_bunny_001 spent a significant amount of time at the top but had to satisfy with the 3^rd rank in the end.

Indian Programmers – The Dark Horses

Let us take a moment to appreciate the performance of Indians in both Divisions. We witnessed a great show of skill and talent from them, and they went head to head with the very best. 9 Indians finished in the Top 25 for Division 1, and 17 made the Top 25 list in Division 2. There were moments when Indian coders were leading all the way and were competing with the likes of gennady.korotkevich. We hope that this form continues for our homeboys.

The Problems – A Pool of Complex Riddles!

Some problems left the coders completely perplexed until the very end of the contest. Game on a Strip was by far the most loved problem in Division 1 with 773 submissions. It had an accuracy rate of 24.79, which shows how challenging the problems were this time. Mode of Frequencies had the highest submission with 6540 in Division 2. The most challenging problem in Division 1 was Chefina and Swaps. With only 2 submissions and an accuracy rate of 3.64, this problem certainly left the coders thinking. Elevator had the least number of submissions in Division 2. Only the Top 2 North Korean participants were able to crack it. What was your favorite problem from the contest?

Division 1 was more of domination by the very best, but Division 2 certainly surprised us all with its competitiveness. The August Lunchtime was attention-grabbing and kept us glued to our seats till the very end. What are your views for the freshly conducted contest? Let us know by commenting down below. That’s it from my side. This is Ashutosh signing off until the next match report. Till then, keep coding!

The post CodeChef August Lunchtime 2020 | Gennady Makes A Comeback To The Nail-Biting Contest appeared first on CodeChef.

The 10-day grind has just come to an end. The September Long Challenge 2020, with 4,06,069 submissions, was yet another exciting event to witness. We saw some cutthroat competition among programmers, fighting over 12 problems spread across both divisions. With challenging problems and close margins, the match kept us glued to the scoreboard. We are taking you through the entire competition’s highlights if you missed out on the action. 

Underdogs on top in Division 1 

Division 1, a challenging playing field mostly dominated by seasoned competitive programmers, saw two 4-star coders take away the top spots – a rare sight. Putting the top coders behind, North Korean coder, rns6 topped the charts with a score of 1000. The young student coder had finished 2nd in the August Lunchtime 2020 Division 2, but to beat the top dogs in Division 1 at the Long Challenge was a pleasant surprise for the community. The top position was closely followed by another purple coder, oilhun, also from North Korea. The Kim Il-sung University Pyongyang student’s last Long Challenge was in July 2019, where the coder finished at the 2nd spot in Division 2. The coder came back strong with formidable performance, this time in Division 1, giving us all an underdog moment that we all love watching at our competitions. 

Top coders follow close

The red and orange band coders may have been beaten by the lower band coders this time, but the former still managed to adorn the Div 1 scoreboard in the top 5. Finishing in the 3rd position, we have red-coder kut_hbi1998 – yet another North Korean in the top 3. Also known as BaekI Hwang, the CodeCheffer, despite his excellent performance, faced a rating drop of 62 points taking his score to 2894 currently. Following not too far behind is another 7-star coder, xuanyi. Finishing at the 4th position with a score of 983.98, the Chinese coder has freshly stepped into the red band league with a rating rise of 149. Another top coder, making their way into the top 5, is white2302. Participating from Russia, white2302 also faced a rating drop of 32 points despite a cracking performance, thanks to the law of average 

Homeboys make it to top 7 

In the 6th position, we have 5-star Indian coder jatinaggarwal1 finishing with a score of 981.253. With a rating rise of 159 points, the Indian Institute of Technology BHU Varanasi student is now a part of the yellow band with a score of 2128. Following him in the 7th position is run_timeterror, who is also from the same university as his rival, claiming the rank just above him. 

Promising performances in Division 2 

Russian coder, demidenko who claims to be Chuck Norris in his CodeChef bio, lived up to the claim with an excellent performance in September Long Challenge 2020 Division 2. Not only did the coder bag the top rank, but he also managed to jump bands from blue to purple with a rating rise of 165. Last month’s Long Challenge champion, wasa855 finished 2nd this time with a score of 975.801. The coder may have lost his top position, but has managed to graduate to the purple band with an increased rating of 203. The self-proclaimed “Jobless fellow” from India, chan_iitp finished 3rd in the September Long Challenge, managing to move bands from blue to purple with a rating rise of 168. His commendable performance at the contest should be enough to make him remove the “jobless” tag from his bio since the big recruiter are keeping an eye on the performances. 

Div 2 top 10 – An Indian affair 

While chan_iitp secured the 3rd rank, fellow coders from India took over the top 10. Or should we say the top 6? Interestingly, September Long Challenge 2020 saw a 9-way tie in the 6th spot, followed straight by the 15th position. At number 4, we have a German 3-star coder, veladus, followed by another Indian coder, umesh007, in the 5th position. Of the nine people claiming the 6th spot, we have 6 Indians including, niketagl,speeddeet, ashutosh321607, jethalal_e, aniketjiain0317, and aditi060303. 

Problems too problematic? 

A relatively lesser number of successful submissions, especially in Division 1, indicates that the problems weren’t easy to crack. CHEFSUMS seemed to be the toughest of the lot, with an accuracy rate of just 0.87 in Div 1. MOVCOIN2 and MVCN2TST were two more low scoring problems with the accuracy of 2.2 and 3.46, respectively, in Div 1. 

We got in touch with Simon St James, problem setter for MOVCOIN2, and MVCN2TST for his reactions on how the problems fared. 

“I didn’t expect the low AC rate. MOVCOIN2 was my favorite. There was a consensus that it was medium-hard. So I’m very, very surprised that MOVCOIN2 had the fewest ACs in the contest, “ said Simon. 

Despite the challenging contest, it was a treat to see the underdogs taking the lead in September Long Challenge 2020. Were you a part of this 10-day madness as well? If yes, we’d like to hear about your experience in the comments below. Till then, this is Debanjan from CodeChef signing off. 

The post 4-star Coder Tops CodeChef Sept Long Challenge Div 1|North Koreans Dominate Game appeared first on CodeChef.

The 32nd International Olympiad in Informatics is upon us, and now we know the names of the young, Indian coders who made it to the finals. Making their way from the Zonal Computing/Informatics Olympiad to Indian National Olympiads in Informatics, and having trained at the IOI camps, four Indian school students, Kshitij Sodani, Rajarshi Basu, Udit Sanghi, and Shashwat Chandra head for the finals. The last IOI was certainly an exciting affair for India with a silver and a bronze medal. This time the country’s programming community has their eyes set in anticipation of the performances of the four finalists in IOI 2020. All four of these students are active CodeChef volunteers, and we are proud to see them achieve this huge feat. Additionally this reinstates our long held belief that introducing kids to programming early is key to shaping a good coder. Let’s get to know the Indian finalists who will be battling it out with the best young programmers from all around the world in Singapore.  

Kshitij Sodani

This 14-year-old is a passionate problem solver even outside of programming. Hailing from Gurugram, Haryana, Kshitij has given us many memorable performances since he joined CodeChef. His coding talent is obvious not only on CodeChef where he is a 6-star player but also on various other platforms like Codeforces where he is currently a “master”. The most recent CodeChef contest where this Delhi Public School student blew us all away with his coding prowess was the June LunchTime 2020, securing the eighth rank in Division One. We hope that he gives us a similarly stunning performance in the IOI.

Rajarshi Basu 

As last year’s bronze medalist, Rajarshi is definitely on the “watch out for” list for the IOI. His choice of language is C++14 and watching him work is fascinating. We know this first hand as we had the privilege of him having him as the editorialist for the April Cook-Off 2020. Rajarshi has also volunteered with CodeChef for live problem discussion sessions for our monthly contests. Along with programming Rajarshi also seems to take a keen interest in blogging. On his blog “codingwithrajarshi” he dissects coding problems, and reading his blogs is always a fun time. This 5-star coder from Bodhicariya Senior Secondary School, Kolkata, has given us amazing displays of skill in the past and we have faith that he will dish out more such performances in the IOI.   

Udit Sanghi 

The 16-year-old programming prodigy from Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, Udit Sanghi’s name is often used to exemplify the fact that age doesn’t matter when you’re a coder. A student of Bhavan Vidyalaya, Haryana, Udit started his competitive programming journey when he was merely 13. One of the top performers in almost every programming contest platform, Udit has a long association with CodeChef. Not only is he a 5-star coder on our platform, but he’s also one of the volunteers curating the DSA Learning Series. You can catch Udit explaining various problems of CodeChef on our YouTube channel. Here’s Udit discussing Dynamic Programming Basics. 

Shashwat Chandra

An upcoming coder, Shashwat is a 4-star player on CodeChef and a “master” on Codeforces at the moment. This die-hard programming fan, has been actively involved in building a competitive programming culture in his school. Like compatriot Rajarshi Basu, Shashwat’s preferred language is C++14. Currently studying in the 12th grade of Delhi Public School, his CodeChef history is full of excellent problem solving. Shashwat also participated in the 2019 IOI and although he gave an impressive performance, unfortunately he wasn’t able to bring home a medal last year. Our wishes are with Shashwat this year, and we hope he gives us yet more displays of his exuberant coding. 

Other than the various incentives of winning the IOI like the sponsorships and scholarship offers from well-known universities from around the world, a good performance will also mean that these players might claim the CodeChef Go For Gold For Schools. We wish all the four players the very best for the IOI and hope they play flag bearer to the fact that being a good programmer is an achievable dream even at such a young age.  What are your thoughts on the Indian finalists for the IOI 2020? Let us know in the comments section, and wish them luck. 

The post Going For Gold: Meet The IOI 2020 Singapore Finalists From India appeared first on CodeChef.