The scores that see in the arena just number of points out of 250 that you would have received if you had taken the same amount of time to solve the problem during the contest.

To check the correctness of your solution, in the practice room, Click on Run System Test under the practice options menu.

IMO, its a pretty confusing layout and time penalties shouldn't be present in practice rooms.

Score in topcoder depends on the time between opening and submitting problem.

If you are using the applet, you need to click "Run System Test" in the "Practice Options" menu. There should be a similar option in the web arena.

The point value you're seeing is based on how long you took to submit the problem after opening it. It means that if you were to submit that quickly in a real contest, and pass system tests, you would receive 179 points.

Does it means accepted if score was >0 ?