**CodeCon: F2025 TU**
This page contains details about the 2025 Nov 22 CodeCon programming contest.
This contest is for Taylor University students only and will take place in Euler 201, 217, and 218.
There are two team divisions.
- Beginner: TU students who haven't taken COS 265
- Advanced: All TU students
All members create a Kattis account with their Taylor email and then register.
# Results
Here are the results of the competition!
## Beginner Division
  
| Rank | Solved | Attempted | Points | Time | Team Name | Members |
| :--: | :----: | :-------: | :----: | :--: | :--------------------- | :----------------------------------------------------- |
| 1 | 8+1 | 13 | 605 | 221 | Juan Isaiah | Juan Andres Delgado Garate
Isaiah Baurain |
| 2 | 8+1 | 12 | 605 | 237 | Micah Keller | Micah Keller
Hailey Deckard
Jack Swartzentruber |
| 3 | 8 | 12 | 575 | 227 | bw 121 | Travis Hutton
Chase Pedone
Aaron Webb |
| 4 | 7+1 | 11 | 530 | 147 | Team 3.141592653589793 | Anderson Smith
Christian Vruggink
Roman Hathaway |
| 5 | 5 | 8 | 325 | 207 | The Overthinkers | Kevin Wills
Ethan Altizer |
!!! NOTE
Any ties among teams were broken with the Time field, which is the time since beginning of competition of last score-increasing submission.
See more details on the [Kattis Standings Page](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/standings).
The questions for the Beginner Division were:
1. [Backspace](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/backspace)
2. [Cat in a Box](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/catinabox)
3. [Contrarianism](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/andmal)
4. [Knot Knowledge](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/knotknowledge)
5. [Black Friday](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/blackfriday)
6. [Dice Game](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/dicegame)
7. [Herman](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/herman)
8. [N-Puzzle](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/npuzzle)
9. [Darts](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/dartscores)
10. [Hidden Password](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/hidden)
11. [Pebble Solitaire](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/pebblesolitaire2)
12. [Permutation Encryption](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/permutationencryption)
13. [A Towering Problem](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/towering)
14. [This Ain't Your Grandpa's Checkerboard](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/thisaintyourgrandpascheckerboard)
15. [Yoda](https://open.kattis.com/contests/y5qrad/problems/yoda)
## Advanced Division
  
| Rank | Solved | Attempted | Points | Time | Team Name | Members |
| :--: | :----: | :-------: | :----: | :--: | :------------- | :------------------------------------------ |
| 1 | 7 | 9 | 1850 | 239 | PythonSea++ | ZM
AV
JV |
| 2 | 7 | 9 | 1810 | 156 | Roots of Unity | Matthew Kennedy
Kyle Dagman
John Hetz |
| 3 | 5 | 8 | 1290 | 221 | Stragglers | Drew Nye
Ethan Elliott
Luke Staritz |
| 4 | 5 | 8 | 1220 | 97 | Bad Drivers | Joshua Forbes
Jordan Norris |
!!! NOTE
Any ties among teams were broken with the Time field, which is the time since beginning of competition of last score-increasing submission.
See more details on the [Kattis Standings Page](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/standings).
The questions for the Advanced Division were:
1. [Where, Oh Where has my Little Dog Gone?](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/wherehasmylittledoggone)
2. [Different Distances](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/differentdistances)
3. [Some Sum](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/somesum)
4. [Periodic Strings](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/periodicstrings)
5. [Enlarging Hash Tables](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/enlarginghashtables)
6. [Asteroid Avoidance](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/asteroidavoidance)
7. [Gregory the Grasshopper](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/grasshopper)
8. [Pig Latin](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/piglatin)
9. [Robot Turtles](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/robotturtles)
10. [Teacher Evaluation](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/teacherevaluation)
11. [Union-Find](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/unionfind)
12. [Associative Exponents](https://open.kattis.com/contests/vtzf74/problems/associativeexponents)
# Images
# Timeline
The following are dates and times to keep in mind.
## Practice Session
The department will hold a practice session on Tuesday, November 18, at 7pm in Euler 217.
There you can learn some general strategies and practice some contest-like problems.
See the [Programming Contest Strategies document](https://gfx.cse.taylor.edu/events/programming-contest) for strategies and practice problems and the [Open Kattis Tutorial page](https://open.kattis.com/languages) for a list of accepted languages and tips on usage (more printable form [here](https://codecon.cse.taylor.edu/kattis-help/)).
## Competition Day
The following is the schedule for Saturday, 2025 Nov 22.
| Time | Event | Beginner | Advanced |
| -------: | :----------------- | :-----------: | :-----------: |
| 10:00 am | Introduction | Euler 217 | |
| 10:30 am | Practice Session |Euler 201 | Euler 217/218 |
| 12:00 pm | Break for lunch | (on your own) | |
| 1:00 pm | Competition Begins | Euler 201 | Euler 217/218 |
| 5:00 pm | Competition Ends | Euler 201 | Euler 217/218 |
| 5:05 pm | Ceremony | Euler 217 | |
During the Introduction phase, we will cover the contest rules, the formal of the contest, and try some practice problems.
At noon, we will break for lunch (eat on your own), but every team needs to be back by 1pm when the competition begins!
All teams have 4hrs total or until 5pm, whichever is first, to finish as many of the problems as possible.
# Competition Details
Below are details about the competition.
## Contest Rules
- Two Divisions: Beginner and Advanced
- No student who has taken a COS 265 course may participate in the Beginner division.
- Any student may be in the Advanced division.
- Teams consist of either 2 or 3 current Taylor University students
- No solo teams. No teams of 4 or more.
- Each team may use exactly one workstation with one keyboard and one mouse
- Teams can submit solutions using any of the languages listed in the Languages section below at any time during the competition
- Only resources allowed:
- Printed references (ex: books)
- Only approved "cheat sheets" will be allowed
- Only certain websites
- C++: [cppreference](https://en.cppreference.com/w/), [cplusplus](https://www.cplusplus.com/reference/)
- Haskell: [documentation](https://www.haskell.org/documentation/)
- Java: [docs.oracle.com](https://docs.oracle.com/javase/10/docs/api/overview-summary.html)
- Prolog: [reference manual](https://www.swi-prolog.org/pldoc/doc_for?object=manual)
- Python 3: [Python 3.8 Documentation](https://docs.python.org/3.8/)
- This site and the programming contest server site
- **IMPORTANT:** General search engine searches (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, AltaVista, AOL, Ask Jeeves, etc.), developer debugging sites (StackOverflow, etc.), AI-assisted tools (Copilot, ChatGPT, TabNine, etc.), and other online resources will _**NOT**_ be allowed during the competition
- Scratch paper and pencils will be provided
- No phone-usage is allowed during the competition
## Problems and Judging
All teams (regardless of division) will be given 6–13 problems to solve in a 4 hour block of time.
Each problem will consist of a problem story, the specifications for the input, the specifications for the output, runtime and memory constraints for the problem, and at least one sample input and corresponding output.
Teams can submit solutions to problems in any order, and they are allowed to resubmit solutions until success.
Each submission is tested against a set of (hidden) tests.
The team can see how many total tests there are, how many tests passed, and how many tests failed.
A problem is considered solved if the team submits a program which can correctly pass all of the tests within the runtime and memory constraints.
Although teams can submit solutions as often as they choose, teams are strongly encouraged to test their code on the workstation prior to submission, because they will get the most feedback that way.
Teams are ranked based on the number of problems solved correctly, with partial credit if some but not all tests passed.
Ties are broken by the time of the last score-increasing submission.
## Languages
The programming contest server can accept solutions in many different languages.
Teams are allowed to submit solutions to problems using any of the accepted languages.
!!! WARNING
Although there are many possible languages, participants will be limited to the references sites listed above.
Teams are encouraged to bring printed reference materials.
!!! NOTE
If the language supports an exit code, any non-zero exit code will be interpreted as a Run Time Error
See [Open Kattis Tutorial page](https://open.kattis.com/languages) for details on which languages are accepted, which compiler / runtime environment will be used, what compiler / runtime flags will be passed, which libraries are allow, etc.