SRM 423

Posted on November 6, 2008. Filed under: TopCoder |

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SRM 423 was scheduled today at 1730 IST.

Prior to SRM 423 was a chat session with Psyho. I was amazed to know that he actually started programming at 22 and is now red at 25.

Coming to SRM, I was assigned Room 41 in Div 2.

I started with 250 pointer. It was straight forward as usual, but I took longer time than my average to code correctly at 233.74. I can blame lack of practice during last few weeks for that.

Then I moved onto 500 pointer. My first code passed all the test cases except one. I tried to solve it on paper but my solution on paper was not different from my code. So I started considering all possible ways to solve and then realized what I was missing. Finally after passing all the test cases,I submitted it for 385.87.

I was feeling good after solving both 250 and 500 within 25 minutes.

1000 pointer was easier than usual so code was worth 900 points. I took about about 23 minutes to code it. after submitting it for 589.45, visited room’s summary. I was at the top. As there were 9 green coders in my room and none had submitted 900 pointer, I was in doubt for it reaching and passing system tests.

Challenge phase started at 1850 IST. I opened a 500 pointer which was submitted in last few minutes of coding phase.Took about 7 minutes to figure out that he was applying a brute force to find the solution. I challenged it and +50 :).

Then I tried few other 500 pointers too but was not able to figure out any bug. Few minutes later someone sucessfully challenged my 900 pointer :(. Rest of the challenge phase was silent.

I was happy when finally both of my remaning codes passed system tests.

Finally I was ranked 3rd in room and 86th in division.

Overall a good SRM after many days resulting +100 to my points :).