Rules and information:

• The contest starts at exactly 10:00:00, and ends at exactly 15:00:00. Recall the phrase: "Early is on time and on time is late."
• Teams may consist of 1 to 3 contestants, all of which are students (BS, MS, PhD) at the same university. Participating solo is not forbidden, but also not recommended. An extra brain doesn't hurt.
• Teams must solve the problems on their own, without outside communication with another form of intelligence. In particular LLMs (such as ChatGPT, CoPilot, tabnine, claude) are forbidden, not because we believe they will solve the problems for you, but because a good chunk of people perceive using them as cheating.
• Teams may however use the internet, books, movies, songs or other resources to seek knowledge or inspiration for a solution method. Note that this is not allowed in later rounds (NCPC, NWERC).
• Teams share one computer for the contest. You must bring the computer.
• The scoreboard follows the ICPC rules. Each solved problem will score you 1 point (and a balloon). The team with the highest number of points wins. Ties are broken by time penalty, lower is better.
• If you do not solve a problem, it will not contribute to your time penalty.
• If you solve a problem, the number of minutes since the start of the contest will be added to your time penalty and an additional 20 minutes for each incorrect submission to that problem. Additional submission after solving the problem will not alter the time penalty.
• Your goal is therefore to maximize the number of problems solved whilst minimizing your time penalty. This encourages you to be quick, but also careful.
• An hour before the contest ends, the scoreboard will freeze. This ensure the outcome is most likely unknown until after the contest.
• There will be approximately 12 problems.
• Each problem will have a statement in English and Icelandic.
• The hardest problem is extremely difficult, even for experienced programmers and problem solvers.
• The easiest problem is quite accessible, even for beginners.
• The problems are NOT ordered by difficulty, they are ordered alphabetically by name.
• Your team will receive printed copies of the statements, but they will also be accessible in the Kattis system.
• You may submit in any language supported by Kattis. Only the standard library of the language will be accessible. Note that some languages are inherently slower than others. We guarantee, for each problem, that a solution exists within the time and memory limits in C++ and for all but one in Python 3.
• You may ask for clarifications on the problem statements through Kattis if something is unclear.
• If you have trouble using Kattis, we will assist you with use of the system.