Hello Codeforces!

The Final Round of CROC 2016 will be held today at 17:15 Moscow time, where the best 50 participants from the Elimination Round will be competing for the valueable prices, as well as for their personal entertainment.

Everyone else will be able to participate in Codeforces Round #347 tomorrow at 19:35 Moscow time that will feature an almost identical problem set. It is going to be a usual unrated round, separate for each division.

The problem set was prepared by Evgeny Vihrov (gen), the one and only coordinator of Codeforces Gleb Evstropov (GlebsHP) and me. I would also like to thank Mike Mirzayanov (MikeMirzayanov) and all of the Codeforces team for the incredible contest development system and Alexander Fetisov (AlexFetisov) for test-solving the problems.

During the Final Round the contest scoreboard will be linked here, but the problems themselves will be available only tomorrow.

We hope that you like our problems. Good luck to the finalists and to everyone else tomorrow!

UPD 1: The link to the current standings: http://codeforces.net/spectator/contest/662/standings

UPD 2: Codeforces Round #347 will be unrated.

UPD 3: Scoring:
Div 1: 500 — 1000 — 1500 — 2500 — 2500
Div 2: 500 — 1000 — 1500 — 2000 — 3000

UPD 4: Congratulations to the winners!

UPD 5: Editorial: http://codeforces.net/blog/entry/44408

Hey Codeforces!

The Elimination Round of the CROC 2016 Championship will take place on Friday, March 18 at 16:35 UTC. After our last round, Yang Liu (desert97), Michael Kural (pi37) and I realized that we haven't had enough, so we joined forces with Kevin Sun (ksun48) and Daniel Chiu (waterfalls) to prepare another problem set for you guys. Our contest will be for combined divisions and consist of seven problems. And although only those who pass the Qualification Round can participate officially, the round will be open to and rated for all Codeforces users. As always, we'll be taking the tractor to Bovinia for some farmland algorithmic adventures with Farmer John, Bessie and her best friend Elsie!

Before we begin, we'd like to thank GlebsHP for doing a wonderful job as contest coordinator—we'd be hopeless without you. We would also like to thank MikeMirzayanov and the Codeforces staff for creating the awesome Codeforces and Polygon platforms. And finally, we're immensely grateful to abacadaea for providing one of the problem ideas and to winger and AlexFetisov for test solving our round.

Formally, there will be two rounds on the same problem set (both rated):

• CROC 2016 — Elimination Round: for registered Championship participants who have passed the Qualification,
• CROC 2016 — Elimination Round (Rated Unofficial Edition): for all others.

To take part in the official round you have to be registered for the Championship and solve at least one problem in Qualification round. Both the elimination round and its unofficial edition will be rated. The only difference is that the top 50 participants in the official round will be invited to join the Finals in Moscow. Finalists will be responsible for organizing their trip (tickets, hotel, visas and so on). Each participant may claim reimbursement for transportation expenses not exceeding ~135 USD. Invitations should be accepted no later than March 25.

We hope you enjoy our problems and our cow-flavored text even more than you did last time! Good luck!

UPD1: System testing is delayed because we are investigating some technical issues.

UPD2: The editorial has been posted here. Thanks for participating!

UPD3: Since last ~15 minutes judging system was incorrectly configured for F in the contest "CROC 2016 — Elimination Round" (it is interesting story how it happened), you may appeal your rating change if it affected you much. If you have submitted a solution for F in last 15 minutes and you have strong arguments why incorrect verdict (WA/RE on the test 1) significantly affected your place, please write MikeMirzayanov to make your participation unrated. Sorry about the issue. You can do it before March, 19, 23:59 (UTC).

UPD4: I'd like to congratulate the winners of each round, as well as the top 50 in the Elimination Round for progressing to the CROC 2016 Championship Finals! In addition, Petr and jqdai0815 deserve a special shoutout for solving all seven problems!

CROC 2016 — Elimination Round

1. Petr
2. tourist
3. vepifanov
4. rng_58
5. I_love_Tanya_Romanova

CROC 2016 — Elimination Round (Rated Unofficial Edition)

1. jqdai0815
2. anta
3. Alex_2oo8
4. NaiveNaive
5. eddy1021

The Qualification Round of the "CROC 2016" Championship will start on March, 16, 09:00 (UTC).

Please, read about the Championship by the link http://codeforces.net/blog/entry/43229

You need to participate in the Qualification Round to make it to Round 1. All contestants who gain a positive score will advance to the Round 1.

At the Qualification Round you will find a few problems, roughly ordered by the increasing complexity. During the Qualification Round the problems are judged only on pretests and system testing will take place after the end of the Qualification Round (round continues for 48 hours). The pretests do not cover all possible cases of input data, test your programs carefully! The Qualification Round has no hacks or decreasing values of the problems.

The round will last for 48 hours, but it does not mean that we encourage you to spend all this time solving of problems. We hope that most participants will cope with the problems (or with most problems) in a shorter period of time. This duration of the round is chosen so that each participant could find a convenient time to participate. The problems will be in English as well as in Russian.

Before the end of the round it is strictly forbidden to publish the problem statements/solutions/any thoughts and ideas about them elsewhere. It is forbidden to talk about the problems, discuss the statements and so on. Be honest and let the best participants make it into Round 1. When the Qualification Round is over, you can discuss the problems and solutions.

You can register for the round at any time up to its end.

The results of the round will not affect the rating. If you are not registered to the Championship officially, you can take part in the round out-of-championship.

Best of luck and enjoy solving the problems!

Hello, Codeforces!

In the spring 2016 the company CROC together with Codeforces will hold the third Russian Open programming championship «CROC – 2016». The goal of this project, as before, — encourage of the most talented and innovative young specialists and stimulate interest to the information technology.

As usual CROC company pays great attention to social projects, associated with the development of the IT-industry, to promotion of IT-professions and to the increasing interest in modern technology. CROC has rich experience of cooperation with universities, the organization of courses, seminars and competitions for pupils, students and experienced professionals.

The registration to the championship will be open from March, 1st to March, 16. Anyone, regardless of nationality, place of residence and level of education, can be a participant. The official language of the competition is Russian. Championship participants will take part in two main rounds: elimination round, which will take place in early March, and the final. There will be 50 strongest participants competing in Moscow on April, 15. CROC will cover transport costs in the amount of no more than 10000 rubles (it is about 135 USD). All finalists should confirm their will and ability to visit Moscow to take part in the Final before March 25. CROC will not be able to help you with visa (if it needed), so our primary target audience is Russian participants and participants from some ex-USSR countries. But two years ago rng_58 visited our Finals!

A warm welcome, meeting with the organizers of the event and experts in software development in the CROC, a festive buffet, a fascinating game round and great prizes and gifts are waiting for the finalists. Previous programming championship by CROC was held in 2013 and brought together ~3500 programmers from all over Russia, CIS and other countries.

Prizes

• 1 place — 100000 rubles
• 2 place — 70000 rubles
• 3 place — 50000 rubles

The prize for the winner of the game round is a laptop.

Schedule stages of the championship

• Qualification Round – 16 of March
• Elimination Round – 18 of March
• Finals will be held on April 15 in Moscow in the office of the CROC (50 participants)

All rounds will be open for unofficial participation for everyone. The Elemination and Finals rounds will be rated regardless of participation type (official or not).

Registration

To take part in the championship you have to register on the special page. Registration will be open until the end of the qualification round. Compete with the best programmers in the Open Championship "CROC-2016"!

The history of the CROC championships

The upcoming championship will be the third championship, conducted by the CROC on Codeforces. You can find the information about this championships by clicking on the links below:

• championship CROC 2012
• championship CROC 2013

Привет.

Если вы еще думаете, стоит ли участвовать в новом чемпионате КРОК (я-то уверен, что надо быстрее регистрироваться!), то посмотрите ролики КРОК о чемпионате (или для чемпионата) 2013-го года.

А вот в таких роликах в качестве актеров поучаствовали организаторы чемпионата того года: