And how would you like it contest?

Unfortunately, I haven't reached the phase of solving difficult problems, and it looks like some of them are rather interesting. And that is really good. Thanks to the authors. However:

1) E is very well-known. One problem from Petrozavodsk-2006 (!) had exactly the same statement.

2) H is an old classic, without any changes in statement. See http://acm.tju.edu.cn/toj/contest/showp40_F.html

3) B has no idea. And again the authors want us to OPTIMIZE a code with correct asymptothic to get AC. I still can't understand what for.

So, IMHO the easy problems weren't good. But, I repeat that the contest was interesting enough.

Edited by author 16.12.2006 19:25

E is an extremely easy problem. No matter if it was used somewhere else. There is no such problem on Timus, and it is enough. Buy the way, no one of us - and almost no one of the participants - visited Petrozavodsk 2006, and did not know such problem was there. If we knew, we would take some any other easy problem.

H might be an old classic. We just cannot know all the problems, because there are thousands and thousands of them. It is ok.

B - what does it mean - "has no idea"? Just cannot understand the complaint :)

Optimization? What problem do you mean? We have solution for each problem which pass the TL easily. Moreover, for each problem there is Java solution, which works much faster than the timelimit. Just write a good code, and you will get AC. No "easy" problem today needed special optimization tricks.

Edited by author 16.12.2006 20:15

Although some of the problems were quite well-known I enjoyed the contest :) And I guess it is impossible nowadays to make a contest containing only original, novel problems - one can always find a similar problem in one of the thousands of contests that were held before. What is really important for a good contest is to have good tests and properly set timelimits and I think the authors of the contest worked that out perfectly.

And what was the most impressive for me is to receive this line in my status for an untested (I was short of time) solution:
4:59:38    Andrey Mokhov    K    C++    Accepted
That would be a hard record for me to beat in future ;,)

Thanks again, looking forward to taking part in Timus Top Coders: Fourth Challenge .)

Thank you for the support and for participating as well. We are looking forward to see you - and as more programmers from your country as possible - on our next contest.