Competition

The competition consists of several consecutive rounds. In each round the participants are given to solve one or more problems of an algorithmic nature. They do so by designing algorithms, implementing programs, using those to compute solutions to provided data sets, and submitting the computed solutions.

After each competition round the participants are ranked according to their total scores. Ties are broken using total time, as specified in the next section.

The rounds are as follows:

Qualification round

The Qualification round takes place online on the competition website and runs for 48 hours.

Duration: June 27 and 28 in the CEST time zone (exact start, exact end).

All participants who are eligible to register for the competition can take part in the Qualification round.

At the beginning of the Qualification round a score threshold will be announced. Each participant who reaches or exceeds the announced threshold will advance to the Online round. If the previous rule produces fewer than 1000 advancers, all participants with a positive score who placed among the top 1000 in the rankings advance to the Online round.

Online round

The Online round takes place online on the competition website, begins on July 12 at 16:00 CEST and lasts for 3 hours. Only the participants who advanced from the Qualification round can take part in the Online round.

The 256 top-scoring and eligible competitors in this round will receive an official limited-edition Wincent DragonByte t-shirt.

The 20 top-scoring and eligible competitors in this round will receive an invitation to the Final round.

See the Terms and Conditions for Participation for exact eligibility criteria.

Final round

The Final round takes place onsite as a part of the Final event. The Final event will take place on September 12 to 14 in Bratislava, Slovakia at a location chosen by Wincent. The Final round takes place on September 13 and lasts for 4 hours.

Problems and problem sets

Once a round of the competition begins, the participants will be presented with multiple algorithmic problems. Each problem will consist of a problem statement and one or more data sets. Each data set will have a description and an assigned point value. Each data set will be labeled as either “public” or “secret”.

Input files

During the round the participants will be able to download an input file corresponding to each of the data sets. For each participant, each input file remains the same during the entire round and can be re-downloaded if necessary.

Submissions

During the round the participants can create submissions. Each submission is made for a single subproblem of a single competition problem. A submission consists of two parts: an output file that contains the solution to a downloaded input file, and source code that was used to produce that output file.

Maximum size for file upload is 128 kB, files larger than this threshold may be rejected. The participant is responsible for packaging and pruning the source code appropriately if it consists of multiple and/or large files. Deliberate obfuscation of source code is prohibited. The participant is responsible for uploading the correct and complete source code that was used to produce the corresponding output file. Once a submission is made, all requests to modify the uploaded source code will be automatically denied.

Grading

Once a valid submission is received, the system grades it according to the specifications in the problem statement. The result of grading is a point value between zero and the point value assigned to the corresponding data set. (For most data sets the only two available grades will be zero if the output is invalid and the full point value if the output is valid.)

If the data set is labeled as “public”, the participant is shown the result of grading as soon as grading is finished, and the result will also be displayed once the public ranklist is updated. Grades for data sets labeled as “secret” are only revealed after the end of the round.

Resubmissions

Participants may make up to 20 submissions for each data set. The first submission is free. Each resubmission incurs a 15 minutes penalty (see Ranklist below). Note that the penalty is applied for each resubmission regardless of your final score for the data set you're resubmitting (i.e., even if your final score for that data set is zero).

Ranklist

For each data set, if the participant made any submissions, their final grade is determined as the largest of the grades of those submissions. Otherwise, their final grade for that data set is zero. The participant’s final score in a round is the sum of their grades over all data sets used in that round. The participant’s solving time in a round is the time from the beginning of the round to the exact timestamp of the last submission that changed the participant’s total score. The participant’s total time in a round is the sum of their solving time and their penalties for resubmissions. The ranklist of the competition is produced by sorting the participants in descending order of their total scores. Ties are broken by sorting the tied participants in ascending order of their total times.

Disqualifications.

The contest organizers may, at their own discretion, disqualify a participant if the organizers reasonably believe that the participant has attempted to disrupt the indended operation of the competition, in particular but not exclusively by:

• Choosing a deliberately offensive username.
• Providing false information about their identity and eligibility.
• Acting in a threatening, harassing or otherwise disruptive way towards other participants or contest organizers.
• Communicating information concerning the content of problems and/or solutions before the end of the competition round.
• Making submissions that violate the rights of a third party, and/or using resources not allowed by these rules to produce submissions.
• Deliberately obfuscating source codes submitted for verification.

All decisions taken by the organizers in these matters are final and binding.

Disqualified participants will not be shown in the final ranklist of the round, cannot advance to the next round, and they are no longer eligible to receive prizes and gifts.

Use of resources

In order to solve the competition problems participants can use any available editors, programming languages, libraries, tools or other software (as long as they already have a right to use it), including software they paid for. Participants can also use code they themselves wrote before the contest and have a legal right to use. (The conditions for the Final round may be more restrictive. The participants in that round will be notified about those restrictions sufficiently in advance.)

Participants should only use one computer to produce their outputs.

Participants are allowed to use simple AI-based tools that assist with coding, e.g., by filling in boilerplate code. Use of AI to assist with the logic of the solutions themselves is cheating and may lead to disqualification.

Screen recordings

To help enforce the rules listed above, additional security measures will be in place during the Online round. Notably, participants may be expected to record their screens during the competition and provide said recording after the round if requested. Details on these security measures will be communicated to the advancers to the Online round at an appropriate time.

Prizes and gifts

T-shirts

The 256 top-scoring competitors in the Online round will be gifted an official Wincent DragonByte t-shirt.

T-shirt sizes will be provided on a best-effort basis. If the desired size cannot be provided, the closest available size may be substituted at Wincent’s discretion.

Wincent will only attempt to deliver each t-shirt to its recipient once. Wincent will make no effort to replace t-shirts that were lost or damaged in transit.

Finals stipend

Advancers to the onsite Finals will be provided an €400 stipend for travel and accommodation expenses. There will be several recommended hotels to choose for the accommodation (possibly with a discount for the participants) but you will be free to choose a different one if you prefer.

The €400 stipend will be reimbursed to each participant after they have attended the on-site finals in Bratislava. The payment will be made by bank transfer.

Expenses during finals

Wincent will provide meals and local transportation on the official event days during the parts of the schedule when all finalists are together. More details will be communicated to the onsite participants in a timely fashion.

Cash prizes

The top three participants in the onsite Finals will be awarded cash prizes as follows:

• 1st place: €10,000
• 2nd place: €5,000
• 3rd place: €2,500

The net amount will be paid out after applicable local taxes.