The 2nd Universal Cup Stage 22: Hangzhou was the only event of last week (problems, results, top 5 on the left, analysis). Team USA1 has returned to the winning ways after a short slump in form, already leading on 12 problems but still finishing everything with an hour to spare. Congratulations! Team "nwerc is bad" from the Univerity of Oxford also reminded that they are one of the favorites for one of the upcoming World Finals in Luxor by earning an excellent fourth place and being the best ICPC-active team this time. Well done! Thanks for reading, and check back next week for more meaningfu ..read more

The 2nd Universal Cup. Stage 21: Delft was the main event of last week (problems, results, top 5 on the left, analysis). Team HoMaMaOvO won the round and continued closing the gap in the overall standings, which is now down to a mere 0.16 points. Winning one more stage (their 9th of the season) would be enough for them to overtake USA1, since it would bring at least 1/4*(3/4)**8*(200-175)~=0.62 points. As both teams solved everything this time, the key advantage for HoMaMaOvO seems to have come from solving a tricky geometry problem B (and one can't complain that tricky geometry pro ..read more

TopCoder returned last week from another long break with SRM 852 (problems, results, top 5 on the left). The 1000-pointer was about counting k-th roots of a specific permutation, and it took the winner SSRS_ just 3.5 minutes since they reused their submission for a more general problem about counting k-th roots of any permutation. More generally this problem did not present as much of a challenge for the top participants as the 500-pointer, which saw many solutions fail and therefore offered a lot of challenge opportunities. Of the three contestants who managed to solve everything, kotatsugam ..read more

The 2nd Universal Cup Stage 19: Estonia was the only event of this week (problems, results, top 5 on the left, analysis). Team 03 Slimes, who are a distant third in the overall standings, won their second stage of the season in an impressive fashion, beating the top two teams in the overall standings by two problems. Judging by the +32, some squeezing was involved, potentially of an approach that was not intended to pass — but that is also an important skill in algorthmic competitions, so well done! I am also not sure who actually was on the team this time, as Mingyang Deng is also liste ..read more

The 2nd Universal Cup. Stage 18: Dolgoprudny was the only event of last week (problems, results, top 5 on the left, analysis). Team Hailiang FLS + RDFZ: Anonymous were the first to 6 problems at 1:58 into the contest, followed by Team HoMaMaOvO at 2:15. The remaining problems were much harder, and the teams were probably faced with tough choices between pursuing multiple problems in parallel and focusing on one problem to get it accepted. Both teams submitted 3 problems in the remaining time, and Anonymous were the first to get one of them accepted, but then HoMaMaOvO overtook them by ge ..read more

For the third consecutive week, the competitive programming scene consisted of a Universal Cup round, and a Codeforces round, both on Saturday. The Universal Cup round was called Stage 17: Jinan (problems, results, top 5 on the left, analysis). The usual suspects occupied the first two places (well done!), but quite unusually the scores of two teams that participated in the original ICPC regional, both from Peking University according to Google Translate, were enough for 3rd and 4th. I guess we need to pay attention to Peking University at the upcoming World Finals indeed :) The Codefo ..read more

The 2nd Universal Cup Stage 15: Macau took place last week, but its results were not public when I wrote the last summary (problems, results, top 5 on the left, analysis). Similar to the previous stages, this seems to have originated as an ICPC regional contest, but this time the top onsite team got quite high place 11 on the Universal Cup scoreboard (still with 9 problems, which seems to be a universal constant) — I guess we need to keep an eye at the Peking University team at one of the upcoming World Finals :) Congratulations to USA1 and HoMaMaOvO, the clear top 2 in the overall stand ..read more

Pinely Round 3 on Codeforces took place on Saturday (problems, results, top 5 on the left, analysis). Quite a few people got the first 8 problems correctly, some with more than half of the contest time left, but the last two problems proved to be quite tough to crack. Only zh0ukangyang got problem I right, and only maroonrk got problem H right, therefore earning the first two places. Congratulations! Quite interestingly, this time there was no contestant who successfuly solved H or I after skipping one of the easier problems (so rainboy sadly scored 0 :(), which goes to show that such s ..read more

The 2nd Universal Cup Stage 13: Shenyang took place last week, but its results were not public when I wrote the last summary (problems, results, top 5 on the left, analysis). The first two places in this round coincide with the first two places in the overall Universal Cup standings, and they were also the only teams to solve 12 problems. So I guess one could say this round went exactly as expected :) Congratulations to USA1 and HoMaMaOvO! This round used the problemset from an ICPC regional contest, and the best team from that contest is only on place 23 in the scoreboard with 9 problem ..read more

TopCoder SRM 851 was their first round after a long while (problems, results, top 5 on the left). Only three contestants got the 1000 right. Out of those, snuke had a small lead after the coding phase despite a resubmit on the 1000, and he managed to extend the lead with an active challenge phase (+2-2). Well done! Meta Hacker Cup 2023 Final Round was the last but also the most important event of the week (problems, results, top 5 on the left, analysis). The scoreboard was quite exciting to watch during the round, as different people went for completely different orders of tackling the probl ..read more