2023 December Contest -- Final Results

The 2023 December contest featured algorithmic programming problems covering a wide range of techniques and levels of difficulty.

A total of 16732 distinct users logged into the contest during its 4-day span. A total of 14350 participants submitted at least one solution, hailing from 132 different countries:

 5794 USA 5763 CHN  483 CAN  377 KOR  151 ROU  139 IND  127 ISR
  124 MYS  120 SGP  103 TWN   72 HKG   68 POL   63 DEU   58 VNM
   53 IRN   46 AUS   44 GBR   40 EGY   37 JPN   33 BLR   31 FRA
   29 ABW   28 GEO   23 UZB   21 ARM   20 SLV   18 ZAF   18 NZL
   18 BRA   17 HRV   16 NLD   16 CUB   13 IDN   13 CHE   12 TUR
   12 TKM   11 SRB   11 PAK   11 ESP   11 BDI   10 THA   10 SYR
   10 KGZ   10 ASM    9 BGD    9 AUT    9 ARE    8 UKR    8 PHL
    8 COL    8 CHL    8 AZE    7 AIA    6 TUN    6 SWE    6 RUS
    6 MEX    6 KAZ    6 AGO    5 ITA    5 IRL    5 GRC    5 FIN
    5 EST    5 ANT    5 ALA    4 PRK    4 MNG    4 MLT    4 LTU
    4 HUN    4 CYP    4 ATG    4 ARG    4 AND    4 ALB    4 AFG
    3 MKD    3 MAC    3 KEN    3 HTI    3 CCK    3 BGR    2 YEM
    2 VGB    2 QAT    2 PRT    2 NOR    2 MCO    2 GHA    2 BWA
    2 BLM    2 BEL    1 ZWE    1 VUT    1 VEN    1 URY    1 UGA
    1 TTO    1 TJK    1 SWZ    1 SMR    1 SAU    1 PSE    1 NPL
    1 NGA    1 NER    1 NAM    1 MNE    1 MAR    1 LUX    1 LSO
    1 LAO    1 KHM    1 ISL    1 IOT    1 HMD    1 GUY    1 GUM
    1 GMB    1 GAB    1 FSM    1 FJI    1 DNK    1 DJI    1 CZE
    1 CRI    1 CMR    1 CIV    1 BLZ    1 BHS    1 BHR
A total of 67 platinum USA pre-college participants competed during the "certified" contest window. For the entire contest, there were 38095 graded submissions, broken down by language as follows:

20207 C++17
 7673 C++11
 5342 Python 3.6.9
 4633 Java
  195 C
   45 Python 2.7.17

Below are the detailed results for each of the platinum, gold, silver, and bronze contests. You will also find solutions and test data for each problem, and by clicking on any problem you can practice re-submitting solutions in "analysis mode". If you are logged in, you will also see your own specific results below alongside the contest(s) you took.

USACO 2023 December Contest, Platinum

The platinum division had 673 total participants, of whom 403 were pre-college students. Results for top scorers are here. Congratulations to all of the top participants for their excellent results!

1

Cowntact Tracing
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

2

A Graph Problem
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

3

Train Scheduling
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

USACO 2023 December Contest, Gold

The gold division had 1375 total participants, of whom 836 were pre-college students. All competitors who scored 800 or higher on this contest are automatically promoted to the platinum division. Detailed results for all those promoted are here.

1

Flight Routes
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

2

Minimum Longest Trip
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

3

Haybale Distribution
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

USACO 2023 December Contest, Silver

The silver division had 3841 total participants, of whom 2595 were pre-college students. All competitors who scored 750 or higher on this contest are automatically promoted to the gold division.

1

Bovine Acrobatics
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

2

Cycle Correspondence
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

3

Target Practice
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

USACO 2023 December Contest, Bronze

The bronze division had 12591 total participants, of whom 8913 were pre-college students. All competitors who scored 700 or higher on this contest are automatically promoted to the silver division.

1

Candy Cane Feast
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

2

Cowntact Tracing 2
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

3

Farmer John Actually Farms
View problem  |   Test data   |   Solution

Final Remarks

Welcome to the 2023-2024 USACO season! I'm happy to see that our first contest ran smoothly and involved a record number of users. Quite a few participants scored highly and promoted, despite a challenging lineup of problems. It's encouraging to see such strong interest in algorithmic problem solving -- especially given that recent innovation and momentum in areas like AI will likely be driving demand higher and higher for students with superior computing talent.

For those not yet promoted, remember that the more practice you get, the better your algorithmic coding skills will become -- please keep at it! USACO contests are designed to challenge even the very best students, and it can take a good deal of hard work to excel at them. To help you fix any bugs in your code, you can now re-submit your solutions and get feedback from the judging server using "analysis mode".

A large number of people contribute towards the quality and success of USACO contests. Those who helped with this contest include Mihir Singhal, Agastya Goel, Chongtian Ma, Suhas Nagar, Eric Hsu, Benjamin Qi, Claire Zhang, Spencer Compton, Brandon Wang, Nick Wu, Jichao Qian, Nathan Wang, Danny Mittal, Andi Qu, Ho Tin Fan, Benjamin Chen, David Hu, Richard Qi, Andrew Gu, and Anand John. Thanks also to our translators and to Clemson CCIT for providing our contest infrastructure. Finally, we are grateful to the USACO sponsors for their generous support: Citadel, Ansatz, X-Camp, TwoSigma, VPlanet Coding, EasyFunCoding, Orijtech, and Jump Trading.

We look forward to seeing everyone again for the 2024 January contest.

Happy coding!

- Brian Dean ([email protected])
Professor and Director, School of Computing, Clemson University
Director, USACO