INTRODUCTION
RULES
MAPS AND DIRECTIONS
CONFIRMATIONS
REGISTRATION FORM
PRACTICE PROBLEMS
CHECKLIST
CONTACT INFORMATION

The contest will last three hours. Each team may have a maximum of three students. Calculators, notes, outside software, and books other than language references are prohibited. Books are subject to approval by the ACM staff. Team members may not discuss the contest with other teams or with their school sponsor during the competition.

Problem solutions will be graded as the test progresses. Each incorrect submission of a problem will result in a 10 minute team penalty added to your score. Solutions may be submitted as many times as you like. When a team is ready to submit a solution, a representative must raise his/her hand and wait for a grader. Once a hand is raised, a problem attempt will be logged, even if the team decides it is not ready. The grader can only provide the problem's test input and state whether the solution is correct or incorrect. The graders cannot answer any questions! If a team has any questions about the problems, the grader will summon a judge. The judge's decision is final.

The following three criteria will be used to determine final placement and prize winners:

  • The team with the highest point total will be declared the winner, the second highest second place, and so on.
  • Should two or more teams have the same number of points at the end of the competition, the higher rank will be awarded to the team with the lowest overall time, including penalty minutes. If a tie still exists, the team with the fewest attempts will be ranked higher.
  • In the unlikely event that two or more teams are still tied after applying the tie-breaking criteria, a tie will be declared.

    A note about input and output: Most of the contest problems do not depend upon exact formatting, so embedded spaces in programs' input and output will be tolerated. Also, the method used for re-running programs for separate tests is left to you. Individual questions may override these general rules in their notes sections. If a team has any questions about how to format a program's input or output, the team should ask a judge before submitting the problem to be graded.

    Regarding Java: Students may need to know how to take console input (like the scanf( ) function in C). This is not as trivial in Java as in the other languages, but we feel that Java offers other features that more than make up for this difficulty. We will not be supplying teams with a standard wrapper for Java I/O. We will accept workarounds for the console input if appropriate (like using the command line to pass arguments to a batch system) but there are no guarantees as to how many problems console input will be necessary on.

    Regarding the AP classes: We have been told that the AP Computer Science class has a custom set of wrapper classes for common data types and that AP teachers have been discouraged from using the atomic data types. Since the Java language has similar wrappers built in and because we are told use of the AP classes is mandatory for AP students, we will allow these classes in competition.

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