A couple of days ago I was asked to answer the question "What is it like to be a problem writer for programming competitions?" at Quora web-site. My first idea of the answer had only one word, but then I've thought of a more detailed one, and then of a story I must include, hmm, and I should definitely mention this... Around the second page I realized that this is becoming more than an answer, and at the third one I decided to share this article with a qualified audience — that would be you.

So, what is it like to be a problem writer for programming competitions?

In one word (the one I've thought of at first), it's "awesome". In a bit more detail, "hard, sometimes unrewarding, but anyways fascinating job". In even more detail...

So, here goes the editorial. I'll tell you right away that nobody guessed MikeMirzayanov's problem (nice disguise, er?) — it was problem C about the picky princess. Actually, this was the first problem of the round, the rest of problems I invented to keep up the lovely topic.

148A - Insomnia cure

The number of dragons D can be quite small, so the problem can be solved in a straightforward way, by iterating over dragons 1 through D and checking each dragon individually. Time complexity of such solution is O(D).

Hello,

Codeforces Round #105 will take place on February 2nd, 20:00 Moscow time.

This is a themed round, based on the fairy tales I write in Russian.

In this round we decided to conduct an experiment on smoothing the effects of problem setters misestimating the complexities of the problems: all problems have point values of 1000. We tried to order the problems by increasing difficulty, but this is a subjective opinion, so surprises are possible.

Thanks to MikeMirzayanov for the problem contributed to the round (who can guess which one of the five is not mine?) and to RAD for his help in preparing the problems.

Good luck at the round!

Hi there. I invite you to participate in my contest. It will take place in Codeforces::Gym at 15:00 (Moscow timezone — UTC+4) (Time in other regions).

Problems are rather easy, so it will be more interesting for div2 participants.

** Warning: I have only russian statements. This contest is only for those who can understand russian statements.**

Good luck

Alexey freopen Zolotov

Since almost every member of the community Codeforces know how to write programs, we decided to abandon the wysiwyg HTML editor, and introduce a geek method. Of course, technical texts will gain much more convenient, and text will look uniform.

Now we use modified Markdown as a markup language for blog posts and comments. Since we use an additional extensions, we called markup simply Codeforces Markup. Codeforces custom tags are available in the editor, I will publish a description of the rest here a little later. In a few words it looks like simplified previous version — double square brackets are replaced by single square bracket.

In addition, we improved typography posts and comments.

See description Markdown using the links:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown
• http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax
• http://bywordapp.com/markdown/syntax.html

Here's a short list of features:

1. insert user handle (use ~tourist);
2. italic and bold;
3. inline code — return a == 0 ? b : gcd(b % a, a); (place it between `);
4. numerated, unnumerated and nested lists;
5. headers;
6. autocorrection hyphens with dashes;
7. smart URL detection (makes them to be links) http://codeforces.net/;
8. tables and images;
9. source code highlighting;
10. "smart" quotes;
11. separate paragraphs with a blank lines;
12. special Codeforces tags;
13. insert photos like [photoalbum:PicasaPublicAlbumURL];
14. and much more!

I recall that on Codeforces implement preview, so you do not need crazy experiments on the Markdown in comments:)

MikeMirzayanov

On January, 27 we summed up the results and rewarded the laureates. They are:

tourist The Best Codeforces Participant 2011

Ripatti The Best Codeforces Problemsetter 2011

Alex_KPR The Best Codeforces Blogger 2011

• The Best Codeforces Participant 2011: Gennady tourist Korotkyevich. We've recounted the rating taking only the 2011 rounds into consideration. Gennady topped the table well ahead of everybody else! You can follow the link to track his success on Codeforces contests.
• The Best Codeforces Problem Writer 2011: Artem Ripatti Ripatti. In 2011, Artem prepared about 10 rounds on Codeforces and proved to be an author of interesting problems as well as a responsible partner. We are grateful to Artem for the help to the project and we hope for further collaboration.
• The Best Codeforces Blogger 2011: Alexander Alex_KPR Kouprin. Alexander's blog (mostly in Russian) frequently delighted readers with interesting posts. His reports on the Russian Code Cup, the ACM-ICPC finals, Petrozavodsk training camp aroused interest not only in regular readers but also attracted some new ones. Thank you!

The Codeforces project thanks all participants and post authors for the interest towards the project. But we want to say our special thanks to all problem authors!

Hey everyone,

Not so long ago in the English Wikipedia has been added to the article about Petr Mitrichev (Petr). Currently, there is a discussion of this article for removal due to the lack of significance. Here is a quote from the discussion: "I don't see how Petr is notable in Wikipedia standards. What makes him different from the hundreds or maybe even thousands of others who are on a similar level as him at competitive programming?".

By the way, there is the article about Reid Barton, the outstanding contestant from US. Who is more valuable for the history?

It would be nice if those who is familiar with the rules of Wikipedia, added to the discussion to support Petr.

By the way, the article actually seems incomplete and not disclosing the success of Peter. Maybe someone will undertake to improve?

Comments?

Hi!

Tomorrow, January, 22-nd at 11:00 o'clock (Moscow timezone), will have place Codeforces Round #104! The problemsetter will be me, Herasymiv Vitaliy (witua). Thanks a lot to Artem Rakhov (RAD) for help in praparing the problems and Maria Belova (Delinur) for problems translation.

I hope you will like this round.

See you tomorrow!

Points destribution today is:

DIV1: 500-1000-1500-2500-2500

DIV2: 500-1000-1500-2000-2500

Thanks to all, and here are the results:

Division 1:

1. tourist
2. dzhulgakov
3. PavelKunyavskiy
4. wuzhengkai
5. shangjingbo
6. ilyakor
7. Gerald

Hi there. I invite you to participate in my first contest. It will take place in Codeforces::Gym at 19:30 (Moscow timezone — UTC+4).

Problems are rather easy, so it will be more interesting for div2 participants.

Warning: now statements are only in russian. But later we will translate all our trains in english, so everybody will be able to run them in virtual contest mode.