It's time for this years Spring Coding Bowl! We hope that this year's contest will allow programmers from various backgrounds to challenge themselves and hopefully have some fun!

Details

The Coding Bowl is an unrated, 2 hour, 5 problem competition. After the contest window begins, you may begin at any time. Once you enter the contest, your personal timer will start counting down and you will be able to submit until 2 hours from when you started, or until the hard deadline (00:00:00 EDT of April 29th), whichever comes first.

Each problem is worth 10 marks, with a difficulty ranging from beginner to intermediate.

There is no limit as to how many solutions you can submit to the grader. The grader will score your submission and show you how many points you are awarded. If you submit multiple solutions to a problem, the highest scoring submission will be counted. Please note that ties will be broken by the time of the last submission that increases a participant's score.

The contest is open to all high school students. Please consult the organization page for registration details. An official honour roll will be published on our website and top schools will also be recognized.

There will be cash prizes for the top 3 scoring students. The prizes are as follows, $50, $25, $15 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively. Ties will be by time of last submission that increases your score. Additionally, there will be a raffle open to all students. Each problem you solve will be an entry into the raffle. Three winners be chosen getting $10 each. Winners will be contacted for payment via the email you submit to the Coding Bowl organization.

During the Contest

1. Anytime Friday April 26th - Sunday April 28th, log into DMOJ and go to this page.

2. Start the contest. This will start a personal 2-hour timer which indicates how much time you have to do the contest. Once you start, the timer does not stop so make sure you plan your time wisely.

3. Find and solve the problems. Once you start the contest, you should be redirected to a page showing all five problems. As long as your 2-hour window hasn't expired, the "Problems" tab on the navigation bar will also take you to the five problems.

Once you click into one of the five problems and have coded a solution, use the "Submit Solution" button and paste your code for the grader to grade. The grader will tell you how many points you obtained. If you don't obtain full marks, you are encouraged to adjust your code and try submitting again, or to work on another problem. If the grader gives you a status code such as WA or TLE, you can find out what it means here. Please see the Details section above for more information about scoring.

NOTE FOR PYTHON USERS: When you are submitting your code, try using "PyPy 3" or "PyPy 2" as the language instead of "Python 3" or "Python 2". The PyPy interpreter is much faster and can dramatically speed up your program in some cases.

Rules

Do not communicate with other contestants or individuals regarding the contest before 8:00am on April 16. This includes communication online and in-person.

Internet use is strictly forbidden. Searching on sites like StackOverflow, GeeksForGeeks, or YouTube is not permitted.

All AI tools including ChatGPT are strictly forbidden.

Do not consult or use any previously written program by yourself or others. Note that there are anti-plagiarism systems built into the contest-hosting platform.

Do not use multiple accounts to participate in the contest.

Attempts to circumvent the contest system are strictly prohibited.

Any improper conduct will result in immediate disqualification and notification of your school's administration.

Tips

To prepare, try practicing some problems, including problems from past competitions.

Read each problem! While the problems are generally in order of difficulty this might not necessarily be the case.

Take advantage of partial marks! Subtasks worth partial marks will be detailed in the problem statements and the point value for each test case is clearly indicated. In many cases, focusing on getting partial marks (especially for the later problems) can be much easier than tackling the full problem.

For clarifications about the rules or problem statements, submit a ticket using the Report an Issue button.

Good luck and have fun!