This round is a traditional competitive programming round (similar in style to the International Olympiad of Informatics). For each round, your will be given 5 programming tasks to solve.
Each problem will be split into subtasks, designed to test the accuracy and efficiency of the program. A subtask consists of a number of hidden test cases.
When you submit code, the code is run against a number of subtasks, which consist of several test cases. If your code passes all of the test cases in a certain subtask, you get the points allocated to that subtask. If the code does not pass one or more test cases in a subtask, you do not get the points for that subtask (but may get points from other subtasks in the same problem).
You can submit code as many times as you need to in the three-hour period.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
1. Open the competition platform page and choose the Olympiad tab.
2. For Olympiad, you have 2 hours to complete 5 tasks. Navigate by clicking on the top of the page to switch between questions.
3. Your task is to write code that solves each problem.
4. To submit an answer, click on the submit button. You will be prompted to upload or paste your solution onto the platform. The code will be graded soon after and the score will be shown.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
Some Olympiad problems are available on the Student Dashboard. Register or log in to your student account to try it for yourself! Alternatively, you can try a few problems on online judge platforms such as Codeforces to practise your problem-solving.
This round is a traditional team competitive programming round (like the ACM-ICPC). For each round, your team will be given 7 programming tasks to solve.
There are no subtasks in this round. Instead, your code is run against a number of test cases. If all of them pass, you will be given the points allocated to this problem. If one or more test cases fail, you will not be awarded points.
Your team can submit code as many times as you need to in the three-hour period.
In case of a tie, the team that used the least amount of time to get to the current score will be ranked higher.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
1. Open the competition platform page and choose the Round B tab.
2. For Target, you have 3 hours to complete 7 questions. Navigate by clicking on the top of the page to switch between problems.
3. Your task is to write code that solves each problem.
4. To submit an answer, click on the submit button. You will be prompted to upload or paste your solution onto the platform. The code will be graded soon after and the score will be shown.
5. Because this is a team round, problems will generally be more complex than Round A. The key to doing well in this round is effective teamwork and communication.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
Some Target problems are available on the Student Dashboard. Register or log in to your student account to try it for yourself! Alternatively, you can try a few problems on online judge platforms such as Codeforces to practise your problem-solving.
This round is a programming codebreaker round. For each question, there is a hidden function that you must guess. You will be given a few input and output prompts as well as the ability to make queries, and your task is to find and code the pattern matching the inputs to outputs.
There are two courses of action you can repeatedly take:
1. Query - you can enter an input into the system and it will return the corresponding output. Every time you do this, you lose 50 points.
2. Solution Code - if you think you have identified the pattern matching input to output, you can submit code that replicates that pattern on codeforces. If your code is correct, the question is complete and you get 1000 points. If your code is incorrect, you lose 100 points.
However, you will not lose any points if you do not solve the problem. For example, if you make a query, the 50 points penalty will not be deducted until you create a successful submission.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
1. Open the competition platform page and choose the Round C tab.
2. There are two Decode rounds in each competition, Decode 1 and Decode 2. You can complete them in any order. Click on either button to start a round, any time over the competition weekend.
3. For each round, you have 30 minutes to complete 5 tasks. Navigate by clicking on the top of the page to switch between questions.
4. To submit an answer, click on the submit button. You will be prompted to submit your code on a separate platform.
5. Your task is to identify all 10 patterns across both rounds.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
Click here to try a sample Round C. More questions are available on the Student Dashboard if you register or log in to your student account.
This is an extremely open-ended team round where you have to solve 7 unusual tasks in 60 minutes. In each level, you will be given a link in which you can access. From there, you will have to think outside the box to get the password (which will always be in a UPPERCASE_WITH_UNDERSCORE format) that will bring you to the next level. The answers may not be obvious. The problem may require you to do some research online, access the page's source code or find metadata. In addition, you will need to decide on the most suitable tool/program/language for each level.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
1. Open the competition platform page and choose the Detective tab.
2. For Detective, you have 1 hour to complete 7 levels.
3. To submit an answer, enter it in the respective field on the competition platform page. Note that if you submit an incorrect answer, you will lose 15 points.
4. Your task is to solve all 7 levels. You can only access a level after solving the previous one.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
Some Olympiad problems are available on the Student Dashboard. Register or log in to your student account to try it for yourself! Alternatively, click here to try a few Detective style questions on The Python Challenge.
This round is to test your debugging and problem identification skills. Each question consists of instructions and pseudocode linked to those instructions.
However, the code given is incorrect. You have to find a test case where the pseudocode does not work as intended.
Enter the inputs as defined by the given function. Leave a space between each input.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
1. Open the competition platform page and choose the Round E tab.
2. There are two Debug rounds in each competition, Debug 1 and Debug 2. You can complete them in any order. Click on either button to start a round.
3. For each round, you have 30 minutes to solve 5 problems. Navigate by clicking on the top of the page to switch between questions.
4. To submit an answer, enter the required inputs on the page, space separated. If you submit a wrong answer, you will lose 50 points.
5. Your task is to identify failed test cases across all 10 questions.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
Click here to try a sample Round E. More questions are available on the Student Dashboard if you register or log in to your student account.
This team round is designed to not necessarily have a "correct" answer, but rather to encourage participants to write the most optimal code they can.
Your task is to work through the problem and given data with your team and devise the most optimal solution to the problem.
Your score depends on how close you are compared to others in the competition, as there is no optimal answer to compare it to.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
1. Open the competition platform page and choose the Optimise tab.
2. Optimise is an open round, so you can submit an answer throughout the entire competition duration.
3. To submit an answer, click the button on the platform which will redirect you to a platform where you will be able to submit your code.
For more details, please check the Instructional Video.
These rounds require participants to submit code on our partner platform - Codeforces.
Accepted languages are C, C++, Pascal, Perl, Java, C#, Python (2 and 3), Ruby, PHP, Haskell, Scala, OCaml, D, Go, Javascript and Kotlin.
Detective doesn't require any code submission. You may still have to write code on your computer to solve problems, but this does not need to be submitted and can be written in a language of your choice.
Debug requires participants to read (but not write) code. Code that needs to be read will be provided in pseudocode, which means that no prior experience with any specific language is required. However, participants who can code in multiple programming languages may have a natural advantage due to their wide exposure to code.