A 250+ week

The Aug 20 - Aug 26 week was very calm compared to the previous ones, with just the TopCoder Open 2018 Online Wildcard Round on Saturday (problems, results, top 5 on the left, parallel round results, analysis). ACRush, Egor and Stonefeang were the only participants to solve all three problems, but ACRush and Egor were almost twice as fast in solving the hardest one, thus qualifying to the TCO onsite with a 250+ point margin. Well done!

The easy problem in this round was cute. You are given a 10x10 grid and can place at most 150 unit cubes onto it. A cube can be placed onto a cell of the grid, or on top of another cube. Given a number s between 1 and 500, you need to place the cubes in such a way that the surface area of the resulting figure (the total number of sides of the cubes that do not touch the grid or other cubes) is equal to s, or report that it's impossible.

Thanks for reading, and check back for more!