How should I prepare for the competition?
The best way to practice is by solving the problems from previous competitions. You can find this all on our archive page. We will use Kattis to run the competition, so all the problems will be given in a similar input/output format to those seen in the Open Kattis Archive.
How many people can be on my team?
Teams must have a minimum of two students and a maximum of four students.
How many teams can we have?
We allow for two teams per school to attend our in-person competition (we may allow more based on registration time and available space). Any number of teams can join in the virtual open division.
What languages can we use?
You can use C++, Python, Java or JavaScript.
We recommend that everyone on your team know at least one of these languages in common. We additionally recommend that teams practice submitting solutions on Kattis because the input/output is done in a very specific manner that students may not be familiar with.
Ensure that your team knows how to take in Kattis input before the competition day; see the Kattis input tutorial for more details. We will also send out a link to a practice competition to practice submitting code.
What editors do the competition computers have?
The competition computers run on Ubuntu and have the following programs installed:
IDEs: IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, Eclipse, CLion.
Editors: Visual Studio Code, IDLE, emacs, vim
What divison should I register my team in?
The beginner competition includes foundational programming concepts such as: arithmetic, expressions, conditionals, loops, lists, and nested loops and lists. View last year's beginner problems for a good idea of the difficulty of the beginner problems.
The advanced competition includes advanced programming concepts such as: data structures (maps, sets), algorithms (BFS/DFS/sorting), and advanced data structures (stacks, queues, trees). A few simpler problems are also included. View last year's advanced problems for a good idea of the difficulty of our advanced problems.
How long is the competition?
The actual competition will be open for 4 hours, from 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM Mountain Time. There are opening and closing ceremonies lasting an hour at the start and end of the competition.
Can I bring my own device?
Yes. However, we find that using less computers benefits team problem solving ability as there is more opportunity for collaboration. See the rules for details.