Hi everyone!

This summer I participated in the program AddisCoder 2019. It is a five-week intensive summer camp where high school students from different regions of Ethiopia learning the basics of programming and algorithms. Next summer the program will be held as well.

It was an amazing experience because I met a lot of cool and passionate students, teaching assistants and professors. As for TAs, we were working on problems for students, helping them with exercises, giving mini-lectures and had a lot of fun exploring Ethiopia together in our free time.

Students chosen for this program are good. They were selected by the Ministry of Education based on their achievements during studying in high school or applied themselves. Some students never used a computer before the program still being quite good at maths and it was exciting to see their advancement from that level to ability to write some simple algorithms. After the program, they have an opportunity to continue study in the best universities in the world.

One of the organizers of this program is Jelani Nelson. He is a computer science professor who used to compete a lot on TopCoder and now runs this program. Teaching assistants are chosen from all over the world and some of them are also part of the competitive programming community. So I want to inspire you to apply as Reyna did it this year for me.

The exact dates of the program are not chosen yet, but it will likely be the middle of July to middle of August, for 5 weeks. The foundation will cover the flight and the hotel. If you need you can also ask for a stipend.

Apply here: addiscoder.com/#apply

For more details or some photos you can check out addiscoder.com

Hello everybody! A new round is upcoming and I'm honored to be its author. The round will first appear as the onsite for Dasha.AI Code Championship and later we will hold a rated mirror. Everybody is welcomed to participate in Codeforces and I wish good luck for people in Saint Petersburg and Novosibirsk.

Using the opportunity, I want to thank:

• mnbvmar for helping in the preparation of a great part of everything. Really, without you, I wouldn't do it.
• 300iq for coordination and help with preparation.
• As always, MikeMirzayanov for taking care of international competitive programming and making such great platforms as Codeforces and Polygon.
• KAN, zscoder, Lewin, Jeffrey, Darkstalker, Darko and Gtaumaturgo for testing the problems and great advice.
• Dasha.Ai for an organization and a sponsorship.

Scoring will appear later.

Good luck and see you during the contest!

UPD1a: Scoring in div2: 500-750-1250-1750-2500-3000

UPD1b: Scoring in div1: 500-1000-1500-2250-(1500+1250)-3500

UPD2: editorial

UPD3: Congratulations to the winners!

In div1:

1. Um_nik
2. yosupo
3. ksun48

In div2:

1. lqs2o15
2. rainboy
3. HoshigakiKisame

In the onsite competition in Saint Petersburg:

1. aid
2. vintage_Vlad_Makeev
3. cookiedoth

In the onsite competition in Novosibirsk:

1. Timonnable
2. Pechalka
3. Maho

Hello.

It is not an official announcement of the events. Just information: The contest on Sep/22/2019 12:05 (Moscow time) will be only for onsite finalists. The mirror round will be the next day on Sep/23/2019 17:05 (Moscow time).

Hope to see many participants. Guess, who are the main writers of the Final?

Hello everyone! This round will be a little bit special because it is composed from the problemset of Saratov school elimination stage to the all-russian olympiad of school students. The problems were invented and prepared by Alexander fcspartakm Frolov, Ivan BledDest Androsov and me, Vladimir vovuh Petrov. Good luck to everyone!

UPD: Thanks to Daria nooinenoojno Stepanova and Danila sad101010 Smirnov for testing!

UPD2: We will open solutions to view and start the hacking phase a little bit later because the school elimination stage is not over yet. We will open all in about two hours. Please don't discuss any solutions during next two hours.

UPD3: Now you can discuss problems.

UPD4: Editorial is published!

<almost-copy-pasted-part>

Hello! Codeforces Round 587 (Div. 3) will start at Sep/21/2019 10:05 (Moscow time). You will be offered 6 or 7 problems (or 8) with expected difficulties to compose an interesting competition for participants with ratings up to 1600. However, all of you who wish to take part and have rating 1600 or higher, can register for the round unofficially.

The round will be hosted by rules of educational rounds (extended ACM-ICPC). Thus, during the round, solutions will be judged on preliminary tests, and after the round it will be a 12-hour phase of open hacks. I tried to make strong tests — just like you will be upset if many solutions fail after the contest is over.

You will be given 6 or 7 (or 8) problems and 2 hours to solve them.

Note that the penalty for the wrong submission in this round (and the following Div. 3 rounds) is 10 minutes.

Remember that only the trusted participants of the third division will be included in the official standings table. As it is written by link, this is a compulsory measure for combating unsporting behavior. To qualify as a trusted participants of the third division, you must:

• take part in at least two rated rounds (and solve at least one problem in each of them),
• do not have a point of 1900 or higher in the rating.

Regardless of whether you are a trusted participant of the third division or not, if your rating is less than 1600, then the round will be rated for you.

Thanks to MikeMirzayanov for the platform, help with ideas for problems and for coordination of my work. Thanks to my good friends Mikhail awoo Piklyaev, Maksim Neon Mescheryakov and Ivan BledDest Androsov for help in round preparation and testing the round.

Good luck!

I also would like to say that participants who will submit wrong solutions on purpose and hack them afterwards (example) will not be shown in the hacking leaders table.

</almost-copy-pasted-part>

Hello Codeforces!

On Sep/19/2019 17:35 (Moscow time) Educational Codeforces Round 73 (Rated for Div. 2) will start.

Series of Educational Rounds continue being held as Harbour.Space University initiative! You can read the details about the cooperation between Harbour.Space University and Codeforces in the blog post.

This round will be rated for the participants with rating lower than 2100. It will be held on extended ICPC rules. The penalty for each incorrect submission until the submission with a full solution is 10 minutes. After the end of the contest you will have 12 hours to hack any solution you want. You will have access to copy any solution and test it locally.

You will be given 6 or 7 problems and 2 hours to solve them.

The problems were invented and prepared by Roman Roms Glazov, Adilbek adedalic Dalabaev, Vladimir vovuh Petrov, Ivan BledDest Androsov, Maksim Neon Mescheryakov and me. Also huge thanks to Mike MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov for great systems Polygon and Codeforces.

Good luck to all the participants!

Our friends at Harbour.Space also have a message for you:

Hello Codeforces,

We want to know what you think about Harbour.Space’s involvement in the Codeforces community, and how you believe we can improve.

So we created this short, 5 question survey to hear your thoughts about how we can provide you with more stuff that you’re interested in, so that we can improve your experience on Codeforces.

We really value your feedback, so it would mean a lot if you could take a minute and fill out the survey. Thanks in advance!

Congratulations to the winners:

Congratulations to the best hackers:

And finally people who were the first to solve each problem:

UPD: Post about the issue

UPD2: Editorial is out

Hello Codeforces!

We are glad to invite you to the Codeforces Round 586 (Div. 1 + Div. 2). Yes, it is rated!

The problems were invented and prepared by Alexponomarev7, adamant, lesswrong, wrg0ababd, VeryLonelyRaccoon, CepryH9, msmlkm and me, SerezhaE. A lot of thanks to 300iq and cdkrot for help in contest preparation, and also we want to thank MikeMirzayanov for Codeforces and Polygon systems.

The contest starts on Wednesday, September 18 at 16:05 UTC and you will have 2 hours to solve the problemes. I believe everyone will find interesting problem for themselves :)

UPD. Editorial is published!

Good luck!

Hello, Codeforces!

It's our pleasure to announce the the finals of the 12th Bubble Cup! Bubble Cup is a programming competition organized by Microsoft Development Center Serbia (MDCS). The contest will take place on Saturday, 14th of September at 10:00 UTC+2 in Belgrade, and will last for 5 hours. Live results will be available on the official Bubble Cup website. Results will be frozen during the last hour of the competition. The winners will be announced at the closing ceremony.

The format of the competition is very similar to ACM-ICPC — teams consisting of up to three people are allowed, and they have one computer and five hours to solve problems without partial scoring. Ties are broken using the usual time penalty rules.

Just like in the previous years, there will be an online mirror of the finals here at Codeforces, starting on Sunday, 15th of September at 15:35 UTC+2.

Just like last year, the onsite competition is divided in two "divisions", called Premier League and Rising Stars. The two contests will have most of their problems in common, but the Rising Stars competition will feature some easier tasks targeted at high school contestants. We do not guarantee that every problems unique to Div2 is easier than every problem that is not.

Both of the contests will be mirrored here on Codeforces, with Premier League mapping to the Div1 contest and Rising Stars mapping to the Div2 contest. The mirror will use native Codeforces ACM-ICPC team contest rules.

Both contests will be unrated, due to the format and the length of the mirror being dissimilar to the standard Codeforces rated rounds. Note that this is a team contest, i.e. competing in teams up to three people is allowed. (Of course, you can also compete in a 1-person team.) There will be at least 8 problems in each division.

As of now, Codeforces does not support rating-based divisions in team contests, so we came with the following ad-hoc rule: teams with the maximum rated member having rating less than 1900 should enter the Div2 contest. Teams with the maximum rated member having rating at least 2100 should definitely enter the Div1 contest. The teams not covered by the previous two criteria are free to choose.

Here are the past Bubble Cup mirrors on Codeforces:

Bubble Cup 8 — Finals [Online Mirror]

Bubble Cup 9 — Finals [Online Mirror]

Bubble Cup X — Finals [Online Mirror]

Bubble Cup 11 — Finals [Online Mirror, Div. 1]

Bubble Cup 11 — Finals [Online Mirror, Div. 2]

The problems and their solutions were created by employees and interns of Microsoft Development Center Serbia (MDCS).

We are very grateful to MikeMirzayanov and the rest of the Codeforces team for their support and the wonderful Polygon platform. Special thanks to knightL for big help with problem testing.

The full editorial, together with the statements and solutions of the tasks from the qualification rounds, will be available in the booklet section of the Bubble Cup website on Sunday.

We wish good luck to all participants!

EDIT:

Congratulations to everyone who participated!

Top three teams in Div1 who were also the only teams who solved all 9 problems:

1. ITMO University: Standard deviation: budalnik, craborac, cdkrot

2. Almost Retired: KAN, Um_nik

3. denglaoshi fans: 300iq, jqdai0815

Winners of Div2 are:

1. Omar^3: OmarHashim, Momentum, omarosama96 with 5 problems solved

2. WNTN: Diashka, DeD_TihoN, ZloyHR with 4 problems solved

3. Reversal Destiny: SorahISA, Nkl5RDZZZVq1N2F0 with 4 problems solved

You can now find the solutions to the problems in the booklet section of the Bubble Cup website.

Thanks to everyone who took part in the competition!

Hello Codeforces!

Codeforces Round 585 (Div. 2) will be held on Sep/15/2019 13:35 (Moscow time). The round will be rated for Div. 2 contestants. There will be 6 problems for 2 hours. Please, notice that the start time is unusual.

The round will be rated for the participants with rating lower than 2100. The statements will be available in Russian and English.

The round will start 2 hours after the start of the Qualification Stage, so they will finish around same time. That's why we ask the participants of the Quals to stay silent and don't share the statements of the contest with anyone. Unfortunately, we cannot add all the problems from Quals to the round, it will contain only six problems.

The problems were prepared by Alex fcspartakm Frolov and me.

We also would like to express our gratitude to Mike MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov for the permission to make a mirror and Codeforces and Polygon platforms, Ildar 300iq Gainullin for his help with testing the problems and preparing the round. Also big thanks to the testers: Adilbek adedalic Dalabaev and Roman Roms Glazov.

As usual, the scoring distribution will be announced just before the round.

Good luck!

Hey, hi, hello.

Codeforces Round 584 - Dasha Code Championship - Elimination Round (rated, open for everyone, Div. 1 + Div. 2) starts on Sep/14/2019 16:05 (Moscow time) and lasts 2h30m. The score drain will be adjusted for longer contest duration. It's a combined rated round with around eight problems. It is open and it is rated for everybody. Yes, it's rated. There are Dasha t-shirts for top 30 competitors (not counting later-to-be onsite finalists).

As an extra, this is an elimination round for those who live in/near SPb/Novosibirsk. More info about the championship is in the other blog. Thanks to Dasha.AI for making such an event for the community!

Problems are prepared by MikeMirzayanov, FieryPhoenix, dragonslayerintraining and Errichto. One of these setters also created Codeforces, thanks for that! And huge thanks to cdkrot for coordinating the round, to Merkurev, isaf27, KAN and me for testing, and finally to mareksom, Radewoosh and Marcin_smu for some small help.

I wish you more fun than bugs. Enjoy the contest!

PS. I recorded the process of preparing one problem with commentary, will publish it on Youtube after the contest. EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaViSV0YBog

UPDATE, points: A 500, B 500, C 1250, D 1500, E 1000+1500, F 2500, G 1500+2250, H 4000. There are 8 problems and 2 of them are split into two versions. Good luck!

UPDATE, huge congratulations to winners!

1. Petr
2. jqdai0815
3. LayCurse
4. zeliboba
5. 300iq

I was the author of last two problems: Into Blocks (but thanks for cdkrot for preparing it!) and Walkways, hope you liked them.

UPDATE, editorial is out.