OnSite Contest Rules

1 For the convenience of tracking, a solution to a problem that is submitted for judging is called a run. Each run will receive a binary decision, namely accepted or rejected by a nominated judge panel and the respective team will be notified the decision afterwards. It is noteworthy to mention that only source codes are allowed to submit, not the executable or any other files.
2 The contest will be conducted on the CodeMarshal algorithm contest hosting platform, a.k.a., CodeMarshal. Only this website will be accessible from the contestant’s pc. Any attempt to access other websites or the Internet will result in disqualification. In addition, any attempt to tamper with the online contest hosting platform will also result in disqualification.
3 In case of experiencing any ambiguity in a problem, a contestant may submit a clarification request to the judge panel through the CodeMarshal’s clarification system only. Once the claim found valid, a clarifying message will be dissiminated among the contestants. Conversely, the judge panel can decline a clarification request by marking it as IGNORED in the CodeMarshal clarification page.
4 If a team discovers any anomaly in a problem test case, they are strongly advised to communicate with the judging panel through the CodeMarshal clarification system rather than meeting in person after the contest.
5 The contestants are prohibited to converse with anyone other than their own team members and the personnels designated by the organizing committee, while seated at the team desk. They may not even talk to their team members when they are walking around the contest floor during breaks, including lunch/health break or any other purposes.
6 Even though the contest is scheduled for a fixed time length of five hours; however, the judging director may extend the length after consulting with the chief judge and/or contest director to tackle any unforeseen difficulties. Every such change will be notified to the contestants in a timely and uniform manner.
7 A team may be disqualified for any activity that jeopardizes the contest, including dislodging extension cords, unauthorized modification of contest materials, distracting behaviors, communicating with other teams, and several others. In addition, the judges can also recommend penalizing a team with the additional penalty minutes for their distracting behaviors.
8 8-12 problems will be posted on the contest platfrom. To the greatest extent, problems will be designed considering their independence of detailed knowledge of a particular application area or a particular contest language.
9 The rank-list that presents the performance of different teams during the contest will be frozen in the final hour of the contest. However, during this period, teams will only receive verdicts of their own submissions without the rank-list.
10 The contestants cannot leave the contest premises during the contest without the explicit permission from the judges/invigilators. Event after receiving permission from the concern authority, the contestants are prohibited to communicate with any other contestants, including their own team members or coaches while outside the contest premises.
11 A team can bring a copy of their "Team Reference Document (TFD)" that must maintain the following guidelines: i) comprise of at most 25 pages of reference materials, ii) single-sided, and iii) letter or A4 size. Each page must be numbered on the upper right-hand corner and the university and team details on the upper left-hand corner. Moreover, included texts and illustrations on the pages must be readable by a person with correctable eyesight (without any magnification) from a distance of 0.5 meter. It may include hand-written comments and corrections on the fronts of pages only. The backside of each page must be completely empty. Nothing else will be allowed.
12 Every Team needs to submit the Team Reference Document to the host volunteers on the opening day for inspection. They will receive it back on the next day before the onsite contest starts. If any team fails to do so may result in receiving the document late (to their team desk) due to the inspection delay.
13 No team is allowed to bring any electronic devices, including calculator, CD, DVD, Pen-drive, iPod, MP3/MP4 players, floppy disks, watches(smart, digital, analog), and others. In addition, a team CANNOT bring their own keyboard, mouse, and others.
14 A team can only touch their assigned workstation after the contest starts.
15 The contestants can receive printouts of their codes for debugging purposes with the help of the volunteers and judges. Passing any printout of codes to other teams is strictly prohibited and may cause disqualifications to the teams involved.
16 Each team needs to seek attention to the volunteers for printing their codes during the contest. In each call, a team can ask for a printout of up to 10 pages. Thus, a team can ask for printouts of at most 50 pages in total.
17 A team must inform the volunteers/invigilators/judges for not receiving any verdict/reply within 10 minutes of their submission/clarification. Again, a team should also notify the volunteers if they fail to log into the CodeMarshal platform. These sorts of complaints will not be entertained after the contest.
18 The submitted codes must not use any system command or multi-threading approach. The contestants must not attempt to access any other computers other than their own in the network. Violating these rules may result in disqualification.
19 The teams that are utilizing Java and Python programming languages should be extra careful about incorporating Transfer Learning (TL) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques in their codes as the submitted codes will be tested with basic Java and Python compilers' functionalities.
20 Each team will be assigned the same machine at the same location during both the mock and the main contests. Therefore, all the teams are strongly advised to attend the mock contest. Any issues during the mock contest should be notified to the judges via the clarification system.
21 Any member of a team, if late, may not be allowed to enter the contest premises AFTER THE START OF THE CONTEST.
22 The decision of the judges is final.
23 Please be aware of the fact that all contest rooms are under CCTV surveillance.

NOTE : Available Languages (In CodeMarshal): C, C++, Java, and Python3. Check https://algo.codemarshal.org/ for more details.