Last week (02/12 — 07/12) the North Macedonia TST for EJOI, EGOI and IOI took place in the Univerzitet Sv. Kiril i Metódij, where we were hosted by professor Biljana Angelova. The teams were selected based on contestants results on four different contests. There also were several classes on different common competitive programming topics, like FFT, Li Chao Tree, and 3D Convex Hull presented by ReaLNero and forelax. The contest were IOI-like, each lasting around 12 hours, with no breaks, in order to prepare contestants to adverse testing conditions. (Just kidding, they were standard 5 hours contests)

Day 0

On the first day, we didn't have any tests, since everyone was just arriving. However, we had to move to another hotel, since a particular group of people were making too much noise and got us banned from the hotel. (They were watching Sausage Party 2 and laughing too much with it. Highly recommend this awesome movie btw).

Watching the movie:

Getting evicted:

Day 1

This was the first day with contest. Many unexpected things happened this day during the contest. Deide Costa, who got 13th place on the national olympiad, surprisingly managed to snag a 5th place during the first day, and Thomas Turbano, who got first place on the national olympiad, fell down to 6th place. The first four contestants were not unexpected, since me, Sujiro Kimimame, and Paula Tejano went to IOI in 2024, and Ku Shai Shang and Shota Nakama were highly rated in the national test.

First day results:

After the contest, we got together in Deide's room, in the new hotel, and once again we almost got banned. This day, one of the contest setters and one of the teachers went to Deide's room and were shouting at each other very loudly, and the chief organizer of the TST scolded us because other guests at the hotel were complaining about the noise. We didn't get banned this time though.

Day 2

On this contest, Thomas (the one who was first in the national olympiad), thought one of the problems in the contest was harder than it really was, and sadly fell down to 12th place. Ku Shai also managed to get first place by scoring ~12 points more than the others in IOI range. But these two events are far outshined by the three participants who were caught cheating and were penalized with -50 points on one of the problems. They were caught discussing the problems in a toilet stall. Some contestants, including me, thought the punishment was too light, but there was little we could do and the cheating participants were in last place notheless.

After the contest of this day, some of the contestants (mainly those whose scores were in IOI range — Sujiro (me), Ku Shai, Shota, and Paula) went to Skopje City Mall, where we spent ~40 euros in those machines that you can try to grab plushies with a claw, just to get a single plushie:

Day 3

On the third contest day, Thomas finally remembered he is the Macedonian GOAT, and improved a total of 7 positions, getting to 5th place. Even then, Ku Shai just decided to become the chillest guy and simply aced the test in two hours (out of five), while the second place in the day only managed to score 245, and most of the contestants scored ~100 points.

Day 3 scoreboard:

Another thing that happened this day, was that the contest got delayed by three hours, and we the contestants got together around what we called "Setters Zoo", that was a room outside the computing institute (from where we were doing the test) where the setters were organizing the contest. Because the contest was running so late, some people (definitely I was not included in this group) started throwing small rocks in the windows, but we managed to get away before the main setter started running after us. We also started drawing in the contest room whiteboard:

Things are in japanese because some of us are asian

Day 4

Finally, the last contest day arrived. Sadly, no major changes happened in the scoreboard, and sadly, Thomas didn't manage to go to IOI in his last TST. Despite this, he will remain as the Macedonian GOAT in our hearts. In the end, the IOI team was Sujiro (me), Ku Shai, Paula, and Shota.

Final scoreboard:


To celebrate the last day, we decided to do a makeshift lan house in my room, and once again, almost got banned.

Lan house:

Because the contest was already over, we also spent the whole night awake, and when morning came we went to the swimming pool. Sadly I don't have the photos of the pool :(

It was a really fun week, with many adventures and mishaps, but that eventually ended in a great way. I would like to thank the problem setters, who worked incredibly hard to make the contests we had, and everyone who participated in the TST for making it so memorable, even if I was only able to participate in it twice and this was my last year.

Another important person that I need to thank is tourist, who is a big inspiration for my competitive programming journey.

Link with the final results: here

*names may be different from the original in order to maintain privacy