Welcome to the 2016 Mackenzie Easter Competition!

The problem writers for this contest are atarw, Hypnova, and legolover2.

This contest is a seasonal challenge for those of you looking for something fun to do on the long weekend. The contest will include 6 problems that are approximately at the same difficulty of the senior CCC. Partial points will be awarded (with the exception of P6), so attempt all the problems!

To students of William Lyon Mackenzie C.I.:

This contest is much harder than the Mackenzie Weekly Challenges (for now) but is still a great way for you to practice your programming skills and get more attuned to the competitive environment. Even if you find the contest difficult, we recommend that you try it out! Partial points will be awarded, so attempt as many problems as you can!

Big shout-out to cheesecake and Xyene who were pivotal in the coordination of this contest!

To participate in the challenge, just login or register if you don't have an account. Once you've entered the contest, click the Problems tab at the top to access the problems.

Before the contest date, you may wish to check out the tips and help pages.

The contest consists of challenging 6 questions. You may get partial marks for partial solutions in the form of subtasks. If you are unable to fully solve a problem, it is encouraged that you attempt to achieve partial marks. You will have 3 hours to complete the contest. After the contest window begins, you may begin at any time. Your personal timer will start counting down, and you will be able to submit until 3 hours from when you started, or until the hard deadline (March 28, 12AM EDT), whichever comes first.

After joining the contest, you proceed to the Problems tab to begin. You can also go to Users if you wish to see the rankings.

This contest will be unrated.

We have listed below some advice as well as contest strategies:

• Start from the beginning. Ties will be broken by the sum of times used to solve the problems starting from the beginning of the contest. The last submission time of your highest score will be used.
• Remove all extra debugging code and/or input prompts from your code before submitting. The judge is very strict — most of the time, it requires your output to match exactly.
• Do not pause program execution at the end. The judging process is automated. You should use stdin / stdout to perform input / output, respectively.
• It is guaranteed that all the problems will be solvable with C++.

At the end of the contest, you may comment below to appeal a judging verdict. In the case of appeals, the decision(s) of our staff is final.

Good luck and happy Easter!