The bookworm problem is an old example of intended increase of problem condition. So it makes sense to supsect this problem also. I don't understand reference to the problem 1484. It is more difficult to code algorithm that produces output 1.1(0001) instead of 1.(0001), the mistake who some have made. So I'll consider this reference spurious.
Does that mean the CURRENT statement is not the statement used in the contest?What is the reason to assign origin of delays to midnight if it only adds a single if statement to a solution?

Actually, English future-in-the-past ("would leave") is intended to serve as a key (If Russian statement was written first, reference to "этого момента" was removed). Of course, if English isn't person native language it is not easy to understand.

Even more, the statement contains "meteorological, economic, and geopolitical reasons" which is obscuring and misleading evidence. If author had written that "a bug caused software malfunction and flights would leave later" it would be much clearer. In the bookworm problem, we have to apply common sense. In this problem, we have to neglect it (the obscuring reasons list), and the only valid key is verb tense. It is worth mention in naming problems authors are not so precise with English grammar (articles are missing when they are required), which is, of course, liberate way of using English language.
Of course, we might ever come to problems requiring knowledge of assembler, nuclear physics, linguistics or even biology. I don't say if it would make contests better of worse, but that would make them different.

Hmm... In turn, I didn't understand the problem you are talking about :) I mentioned problem 1484 "Film Rating" which doesn't contain anything about printing rational numbers. So the reference isn't spurious actually.

No.

It means you wrote a good code if adding a single "if" statement" was enough. And again I should say that we didn't "assign origin of delays" for fun.

I don't understand your jokes about nuclear physics. The problems don't require any special knowledge, just a bit of common sense, that is true. Your criticism is accepted and we will pay even more attention to English statements in future, however you mentioned yourself that a statement was correct, although probably unclear for some coders. Even if so, understanding problem statements and finding non-trivial was, is and probably will be the part of ACM ICPC contests. Try practicing on World Finals problemsets, for example.

Edited by author 13.10.2008 13:36

Edited by author 13.10.2008 13:36

My reference (1468) was spurious, then. Pardon.
On other hand, one could write code where adding modulo operation wouldn't been enough to accomodate for simplest delays without origin, so it is vice-versa argument.

Has background story been changed since the solution and the tests were written?
This one requires total lack of common sense, indeed. Common sense SAYS "meteorological, economic, and geopolitical reasons cannot begin in a single moment. Especially at midnight."
You did it well with masking key feature. Not easy to imagine what could be done further. If you had intention to make it perfectly clear, you would write something like "At airport entrace, Son-on-Sam accidentally broke some device, and that caused entire scheduling network in a kind of chaos".
Well... obscuring problem statements was, is, and will be... I cannot imagine you do it without joy at all...
Just don't be offended if someone doesn't share your joy or humour.

> "because of meteorological, economic, and geopolitical reasons, all flights would leave the ith airport Di minutes later".
> То есть "would leave" я должен перевести как "с этого момента будут вылетать"?

Посмотрите на это, как на обычную ситуацию из жизни.
В расписании есть некоторое количество рейсов - допустим, по рейсу каждый час (0:00, 1:00, ..., 23:00).
Вдруг в полночь объявляют, что по различным причинам все рейсы будут отложены на десять часов. Тот рейс, который должен был вылететь в полночь - вылетит в 10:00; который должен был вылететь в 1:00 - вылетит в 11:00 и так далее.
И как вы хотели бы это перевести, если вам не нравится нынешний вариант? Как вы себе это представляете? Что делать с рейсом, который вылетел в 23:00 - приказывать ему возвращаться для того, чтобы он смог вылететь в 9:00? А рейс, который вылетел в 15:00 и уже давно успешно приземлился в аэропорте назначения?
В условии, конечно, есть подлянка; но никаких недосказанностей нет, всё предельно корректно.

> Your criticism is accepted and we will pay even more attention to English statements in future
You should not, the statement is clear, and anyone should be able to understand the current version as it was meant by you.
He is just mad about this because he hadn't realized that point later.

> although probably unclear for some coders
ACM is not for coders. ACM is for versatile people, who can read, understand, solve problems... and, last of all - who can code their solutions.
If this resource was intended for the coders, the problem discussed would have been formulated like "given are some numbers **description_of_numbers**, you should do **description_of_manipulations_with_these_numbers** and print a result".

Who is mad? You throw insults at me. This is inappropriate.
According to my original understanding of the problem, flights were delayed before the point Son-of-Sam arrived to the 1st airport, just he was unable to learn it before. Many contestansts have done similar mistake. In fact, both interpretations (wrong and correct) have only remote resemblance to real world.

>ACM is not for coders
Today is not the insults day.

The only my post here that was intended to contain a joke is where dean's pyramid was mentioned. The reference to nuclear physics etc. was to meant to say this problem requires uncommon skill. Of course most of top contestants have well developed common sense as well as various uncommon senses. Probably lawyers have similar skill, so if we find group where that skill would be common, the group would have only remote connection to ACM ICPC.

No. The whole statement was written first, solutions and tests second.

I had no intention to mask the key feature or to make it perfectly clear. I had intention to write a correct statement, which corresponds to the problem I wanted to prepare.

I am not offended by this discussion at all :) I have also solved problems with untrivial moments in statement and felt joy after receiving Accepted. Especially if I understood that my first idea of problem was wrong and everything I needed was actually written in statement, but I haven't noticed it at first glance. I do feel joy when I see other teams overcome the same difficulties and in turn feel joy after receiving their Accepted. I think that solving this kind of problems is very useful and important both in ACM competitions and in life.

Now I suggest we are close to understanding each other's point of view and should soon close this topic :)

Which statement was written first, Russian or English?There are weird names occuring in both statements, which suggests that you were also doing something at same time, with intention or no. You could take common names. Because the contest was held very well, the first assumption to any thing is that was intended.
Seemingly contradicts what have you written before about correctness of the problem was only intention.
There is a point of view that frauds are useful because they keep people's awareness at higher level. I wouldn't state such thing which has more to do with ethics.
In any case, acm.timus.ru, unlike many online contesters, has many problems were sarcasm is outside common scope.

Very good problem!
Conditions actual and realistic.
Time ordering is so applicable thematic that I wanted
to solve the problem from first attempt using intuitive
mining about time matter but couldn’t.
That because I am not top coder only.