Traditionally, SnarkNews runs two New Year Contests.

The New Year Blitz Contest (Multiple Language Round) will start at 16:00 31.12.2015 and ends at 08:00 01.01.2016 Moscow Time. Contest will consist of 9-13 problems. Some of those problems are based on problems, used at official or training contests in 2015. Contest rules are based on the ACM system with two important modifications.

1. Penalty time is calculated as distance between time of first successful submit for the contestant on this problem and 0:00:00 01.01.2016, i.e. successful submissions at 23:50:00 31.12.2015 and at 0:10:00 01.01.2016 will both have penalty time 10 minutes (600 seconds).

2. Multiple Language Round rule: If for the first successful submit for the contestant on the some problem was used the programming language, which was never used by this contestant in his previous first successful submits on other problems, contestant receives language bonus: his summary penalty time is decreased by 100 minutes (6000 seconds). Note that different implementations of the same language are counting as same language, i.e. Java 6 and Java 7 are both counted as Java, C++ 32 bit and C++11 64 bit both as C++. Additionally, C and C++ are counted as same programming language.

Contest will be running on Yandex.Contest system. Link for registration and participation.

12'th Prime New Year Contest will start at 0:00 30.12.2015 and finish at 23:50 10.01.2016 Moscow time. Traditionally, Prime New Year Contest consists of problems, which were presented at team programming contests in 2015 and never solved on the contest. For the Prime New Year contest plain ACM rules are used.

Idea of Prime Contest was first implemented by Andrey Lopatin and Nick Dourov at Summer Petrozavodsk training camp at 2003; in Russian word "Prostoj" used in meanings "prime" and "easy", so, contest was called "Prostoj contest" but was composed of extremelly hard problems, numbered with prime numbers (2,3,5 etc). Since then such a numeration is traditionally used for contests, consisting of very hard problems only.

Contest will be running on Yandex.Contest system. Link for registration and participation.

Both contests have English statements.

First open NEERC-2015 Predictions Contest is started. It is new implementation of ejudge-based Predictions Contest, which were usually running for the people, who are registered at SnarkNews. Now registration is more easy: predictions Contest is based on Yandex.Contest engine, so anyone who registered at Yandex may try to guess NEERC results.

Predictions Contest consists of two nominations: in first one you have to guess teams, who will finish at first six places. For each place you select a team and submit this team (note that each team must be submitted separately). When the NEERC results will be announced, you will earn 1 point for any team in Top6 you named and additional 1 point for any team you named at its correct place. It is possible to change your guess; last one will be counted. In case of tie player, who did his final guess earlier, will take advantage.

In second nomination you have to guess universities, which will qualify to the 2016 World Finals from NEERC. You have one list and you shall mark atleast one and at most 20 universities. Final score will be calculated following next formula: number_of_guessed_teams+20-max(number_of_marked_teams, number_of teams_qualified_from_NEERC). As in first nomination, you may change your guess; last guess is counted as final one and in case of tie player, who did his final guess earlier, will take advantage.

Now, after NEERC-2015 results are finalized, here are the standings:

Results of the first nomination

Results of the second nomination

Congratulation to winners!

Mirror of NEERC-2015 will start at Sunday, December 6, 11:00 Moscow Time. Mirror will be hosted on Yandex.Contest. Enter, register and participate. Both team and individual participation are possible. Good luck on the contest!

Problems of Japanese Grand Prix will be used on another training camp at February 6, so please do not discuss those problems before Feb 7. Thanks in advance.

For now, preliminary standings after 3 rounds of Three Subregionals Cup are published. If some team was split between rounds (or some different teams were counted as one), please tell it in comments to this post. At 11:11 Tuesday, 11/11 standings will become final.

Two teams, solving Moscow subregional as testers, are added to standings of the first stage of Three Subregionals Cup. And after that final standings of Three Subregionals Cup are published.

Second stage of the Three Subregionals Cup is scheduled to Thursday, November 6, 2014, 12:00 Moscow Time. In case of any changes information will be added to this post.

SnarkNews opened special project related to SEERC-2014, which is started at 10:00 Kyiv time in Vinnytsia (Ukraine) and Bucharest (Romania). For now it contains table of standings (main and separately by Vinnytsia and Bucharest sites), standings for Championship of Ukraine, and text translation (at the moment English is very poor).

Upd: standings are updated. Congrats to Lviv NU Penguins!