2024 ICPC Results

On August 31, 124 teams from Australian and New Zealand Universities competed in the ICPC South Pacific Preliminary Final, across three divisions and ten different sites:

1. The Eastern Division: Auckland and Christchurch, New Zealand.
2. The Central Division: Canberra, UNSW Sydney, The University of Sydney, and Brisbane, Australia.
3. The Western Division: The University of Melbourne; Monash University; Adelaide; and Perth, Australia.

They were joined by another 30 unofficial teams from universities and high schools throughout Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific Region, keen to given the problem set a go.

The problem set was prepared by judge team Darcy Best, Timothy Buzzeli, Eliot Courtney and Head Judge Max Ward, with thge assistance of problem setters Ali Khosravi, Minghan Zhou, Henning Koehler, Raveen De Silva, Tim French and Mike Cameron-Jones. It was split into two levels; The Level A problem set was designed to challenge teams and select those advancing to the regional finals, whilst the Level B problem set was designed to be more accessible. The contest was hard fought and challenged teams right until the end. Every problem was solved by at least one team, every team solved a problem, and no team solved all the problems.

Running a large distributed contest is not easy and there were some technical challenges throughout the day: DOS whitespaces crept into one set of sample data, over zealous firewalls restricted server access, and the start was delayed at one site. However the technical, judging and site teams rose to these challenges and minimise the disadvantage to any team. Two wild card spots were given to mitigate any potential disadvantage arising from these challenges.

Results

In the end the Level B contest was won by All you need is white king (Quanhao Chen, Yuchen Ye, Tianyi Zhang) from University of Sydney, with eye see pee see (Daniel Patrick Khuu, Kobi Beckett, Alicia Tan from UNSW Sydney) second, and Crazy_Thursday_Vivo_50 (Ruiqiu Zheng, Xiangsong Tian, Dihao Cheng from University of Auckland) third. The rest of the results can be found in the full scoreboard.

The Level A contest was won by W[3]-complete (Jerry Li, Yiming Zhang, Evan Lin) from UNSW Sydney, with Sunshine Sleepers (Louie Zhao, Chenran Wang, Qirui Wang from University of Melbourne), and Seems Goods! (Jiannan Zou, Ryan Ong, Isaiah Iliffe from UNSW Sydney) third. The full scoreboard shows a really hard fought contest and a good spread of teams from all divisions and institutions across the region.

There is a special mention for the top high school team 2K24YXI, of Sydney Grammar School, who solved ten problems, enough to be in the top five of the official placings.

The Boersen Prize celebrates Raewyn Boersen’s foundational work building competitive programing and computer science education in the South Pacific Region, and encourages diverse participation in South Pacific ICPC contests. The Prize is awarded to the top team whose members are all women or non-binary. This year the Boersen Prize is awarded to Sprinkle Forces (Jack Morton, Shayla Nguyen and Tom Frew) from the University of Adelaide.

Proceeding to Regionals

The following teams are invited to the Regional contest, to be held on October 20, 2024, at UNSW Sydney:

1. W[3]-complete, UNSW Sydney (Central division 1st placed university).
2. SunshineSleepers, University of Melbourne (Western division 1st placed university).
3. Waxed Lightly Weathered Cut Copper Stairs, The University of Auckland (Eastern division 1st placed university)
4. amoonguss, Monash University (Western division 2nd placed university)
5. Grounded Abstraction, The Australian National University (Central division second placed university)
6. CAA9000, University of Canterbury (Eastern division second placed university)
7. Seems Goods!, UNSW Sydney
8. habibi, University of Melbourne
9. gyattism, Monash University
10. hmm, The University of Canterbury
11. Adelaide Kangaroos, The University of Adelaide
12. !DirectCurrent beta version, University of Wollongong
13. Sprinkle Forces, The University of Adelaide (Boersen Prize Winner and wild card spot one)
14. Panic! At The Submit Button, The University of Auckland (*wild card spot two)
15. blink1, UNSW Sydney (Boersen prize invitation to regionals)

Two wild card spots were awarded to mitigate the case where one site did not completely satisfy the integrity requirements. Consequently the Boersen prize invitation to regionals rolled over the the next qualifying team, blink1 from UNSW SYdney.

The top two universities from this contest will be invited to both the ICPCWorld Finals and the Asia Pacific Championships.

Best of luck!

Thank you

A huge thank you to the judge team for a superbly crafted problem set, the many technical teams that support the delivery of the contest, and the coaches, site volunteers, and student organisations who make these contests possible.

The SPCPA acknowledges ongoing support from Wisetech Global.

Tim French, Regional Contest Director, September, 2024.

Over the weekend of October 19-20, the best university programmers and problem solvers gathered at UNSW Sydney for the 2024 South Pacific Regional Finals. Fifteen teams from eight universities competed for the opportunity to represent the South Pacific at the upcoming Asia Pacific Championships and ICPC World Final 2025.

On October 19, teams went on a cycling excursion, attended a careers fairs with Sponsors Wisetech Global, Jane Street and UNSW Sydney, and had attended a presentation from South Pacific Alumni, and Jane Street engineer, Ishraq Huda.

The contest was held on October 20, and the judge team of Max Ward, Darcy Best, Eliot Courtney, Timothy Buzzelli, Ali Khosravi and Minghan Zhou produce a challenging problem set of twelve questions. There was a close contest with the lead changing many times. At the end W[3]-Complete (Jerry Li, Yiming Zhang and Evan Lin, coached by Raveen De Silva) from UNSW Sydney won with 11 problems solved, ahead of Habibi (Phuc Nguyen, Quang Anh Trinh and Hoang Giap Vu, coached by Junhao Gan) from University of Melbourne with 10 problems solved and Sunshine Sleepers (Louie Zhao, Edge Wang and David Wang, coached by Junhao Gan) from the University of Melbourne with 9 problems solved. The full scoreboard is here.

Many thanks to the judge team for the efforts, Raveen immense work as local organiser, and the event sponsors, Wisetech Global, UNSW Sydney, and Jane Street.

Best of luck to W[3]-Complete and Habibi at the 2025 Asia Pacific Championships and ICPC World Final.