Hello Codeforces!

The third edition of MindCoding is going to make its debut on Thursday, the 4th of February, 19:00 EET, with a Test Round. I invite you all to participate and help us test the improvements in our platform on this occasion.

There will be a total of 4 online qualification rounds, and one on-site final round. The final will take place in the city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, the same as last year.

The format of the contest is similar to that of Codeforces and TopCoder, so the learning curve should be quite mild. A new feature for this year is the addition of a second division, for beginners.

The rounds are organized by fellow Codeforces members:

• Petru Trîmbițas (Petru) — project coordinator
• Cosmin Rusu (cr.rusucosmin)
• Sergiu Pușcaș (Sergiu)
• Marius Gavrilescu (mgv) — the creator of our platform
• Dan Bodnariuc (Dutzul)
• Gabriel Ineluș (gabrielinelus)
• Adrian Crăciun (mlc)
• Bianca Costin (o_mic)
• Flaviu Berbecariu (SpiriFlaviu)
• Casian Marc (marccasiannicolae)

Last year's winners were rewarded with a total prize pool of €1500. You might recognize some of them from competitions such as the IOI and ACM-ICPC.

You can use the quick-start guide and the existing problem archive for practice. Some of my favourite problems are:

• Office — beginner
• Wilson — beginner
• Eggs (interactive) — medium
• kSpecialists — medium
• The Oddest Tree — medium
• FloodIt — hard

If you happen to struggle in coming up with a solution, most problems have a description of the answer on the right-hand side of the page.

I hope you all have fun participating in our test and qualification rounds!