A family gold week

IOI 2024 was the main event of last week (problems, results, top 5 on the left). This time Kangyang Zhou beat everyone including the problemsetters — huge congratulations! I also lost 3 hall of fame positions this year: congratulations to Daniel Weber, Rain Jiang and Kshitij Sodani on the amazing performance over many years :)

The IC, ISC and HSC (and later the GA, I guess) had to deal with a controversy, and were put into a situation where no matter what they decide, somebody would feel very disappointed. However, I expect that the democratic process by which those decisions were taken (first within the IC, and then when confirming at the GA) helps those unhappy with the decision still accept it. And of course, I'd like to express my great respect to the IC members for navigating this very tricky case. Well done!

Similar to the last year, one author created several problems, which still impresses me a lot even though it is happening for the second year in a row. Well done Pikatan Arya Bramajati!

The 3rd Universal Cup Stage 9: Xi'an on Saturday was likely the last practice for many teams before the upcoming ICPC World Finals 2024 in Astana (problems, results, top 5 on the left). Team HoMaMaOvO have finally got back to the winning ways, wrapping up the contest with more than an hour to spare and with a respectable margin to the second place. Congratulations!

It seems quite hard for me to match this scoreboard with the (incomplete) list of teams coming to Astana, so maybe the readers of this blog can help: what is the highest-placed team in that scoreboard that is going to the World Finals?

There will be no contests this week, but this is just a small break before another huge event, as ICPC World Finals in Astana is already happening next week (website, brochure, some news on the left). So expect this blog to become a travel blog again, and we'll likely be organizing another stream of us solving the round in parallel, even though the meaning of "us" is unclear given that tourist is now a judge.

Thanks for reading, and check back next week for the Astana content!