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NCPC 2009

3rd October 11:00-16:00 CEST

Information Participating sites Rules Back to main NCPC page

a part of

The contest was held 3rd October 11:00-16:00 CEST. The winner was Les Blotières from KTH in Sweden, with 9 problems solved out of ten.

• Problem set [PDF].
• Slides describing solutions [PDF].
• Example input and output [tar.gz].
• Judges input and output [tar.gz]. (Note: Current test data lets through some faulty solutions for C - Allergy Test.)
• Judges solutions [tar.gz].
• All of the above [tar.gz].
• Scoreboards
• Contestant list
• NCPC Kattis contest system
• Instructions for contest system

The registration is open until October 2nd at 8:00 CEST. The list of registered teams.

NCPC will use the Kattis automatic judging system developed by KTH. Every team will get a new account on the day of the competition. If you have a personal Kattis account then you can use it to practice on the available problems. To request a Kattis account (not required for the competition) send an email to kattis-adm@csc.kth.se with subject ncpc09-konto. To simplify the procedure please format the email as follows (on two separate lines):
Name: Firstname Lastname
Email: your@email.address.com
The accounts are created manually so it may take a while. A confirmation and password will be sent to the email address given in the letter.

• Instructions for contest system
• Kattis contest system

The winners will be Nordic Champions in programming for teams, and the best student teams will go to NWERC, the regional finals in the ICPC contest. This contest also encompasses national and local championships, and is held in a distributed manner at various sites throughout the Nordic countries.

Organisers should review the NCPC-Site-HOWTO.

Below is a list of sites that will hopefully join NCPC in 2009. (+ marks verified sites.)

In short: Teams of up to three persons try to solve as many problems as possible from a set, without external help.

The rules for this contest is given by the ICPC regional contest rules, with the following clarifications and additions:

Who may compete

The teams competing consist of up to three persons. The competition is open to everybody, as long as they belong to some Nordic entity in some sense (all belong a given university or company, or all just come from the same country).

ICPC eligibility

Only ICPC eligible student teams compete in the ICPC division. These may qualify for the regional finals (NWERC), and further to the ICPC World Finals. Basically, any student who started his/her university/college studies in 2005 or later is eligible to compete. For exceptions such as retaken years, military service and so on, please refer to the ICPC rules. Persons who have competed in five regional finals already, or two world finals, may not compete in the ICPC division.

What you may bring to the contest floor

• Any written material (Books, manuals, handwritten notes, printed notes, etc).
• Pens, pencils, blank paper, stapler and other useful non-electronic office equipment.
• NO material in electronic form (CDs, USB pen and so on).
• NO electronic devices (Cellular phone, PDA and so on).

What you may use during the contest

• What you brought to the contest floor (see above).
• Your assigned (single) computer.
• The specified system for submitting solutions.
• Printers designated by the organiser.
• Things given to you by the contest organiser.
• Electronic content specified by the organiser, such as language APIs and compiler manuals.
• Compilers and IDEs specified by the organiser.
• Non-programmable tools which are a natural part of the working environment (such as diff and less).
• NO other compilers or interpreters for programming languages.

Behaviour during the contest

Before the contest begins, you are allowed to log in on your assigned computer, and log in on the submission system. You may do nothing else with the computer (such as starting to write code). You may not touch the problem set before the contest has started.

Contestants are only allowed to communicate with members of their own team, and the organisers of the contest. You may not surf the web (except for allowed content), read e-mail, chat on MSN, or similar things. The only network traffic you may generate is from submitting problem solutions, and access to content specified by the local organisers.

The contest

The problem set consists of a number of problems (usually 8-12). The problem set will be in English, and given to the participating teams when the contest begins. For each of these problems, you are to write a program in C, C++ or Java that reads from standard input (stdin) and writes to standard output (stdout), unless otherwise stated. After you have written a solution, you may submit it using the specified submission system.

The team that solves the most problems correctly wins. If two teams solve the same number of problems, the one with the lowest total time wins. If two top teams end up with the same number of problems solved and the same total time, then the team with the lowest time on a single problem is ranked higher. If two teams solve the same number of problems, with the same total time, and the same time on all problems, it is a draw. The time for a given problem is the time from the beginning of the contest to the time when the first correct solution was submitted, plus 20 minutes for each incorrect submission of that problem. The total time is the sum of the times for all solved problems, meaning you will not get extra time for a problem you never submit a correct solution to.

If you feel that problem definition is ambiguous, you may submit a clarification request via the submission system. If the judges think there is no ambiguity, you will get a short answer stating this. Otherwise, the judges will write a clarification, that will be sent to all teams at all sites in the contest.

Updated: 2009-08-14 (h c)
Responsible editor: Fredrik Heintz