Google Code Jam Qualification round is finished. After a successful submission of the problem A (Alien Language), B (Watersheds) and the small dataset of the problem C (Welcome to Code Jam) I failed on the large dataset of C. It wasn’t about 8 minutes given for the calculation at all. The bug has been found but it doesn’t help much - time’s up and there was only one attempt permitted for the large dataset.

The traditional conclusion: Good algorithms are better than supercomputers.

Finally my rank is 2896 (nickname ‘begoon’) from all roughly 9700 competitors, almost closer to a pensionary level, and the score is 76.

It’s great that there are three Russian flags in the top twenty.

They say it’s enough to get only 33 points for the Round 1 which means you had to solve one small dataset and one large dataset from any problem.

Does anybody participate?