Nothing personal, Leonid Volkov, but this is the single most stupid
and ugly problem on this site or part of any contest I've ever
attended. I liked the other 7 problems at the contest though.

Hey, it's probably not what one should say about the problem. The
problemset is certainly to be viewed as one whole thing, and the
problem about pawns and king is one usual part of the problemset.

It is a typical problem, that tests the ability of the team to work
as a team. One team member should try to solve this problem on a
sheet of paper, finding out all the possible cases, while 2 other
team members are to solve the other problems. Then, with the solution
fully written on the paper, that third team member would easily get
accepted for this problem. A good structured and accuratly written
solution is not longer than 2Kb.

The wrong way to solve this problem is to solve it before the
terminal in the last hour of the contest. By this tactics, it will
have no chance, since there are lots of interesting cases, that will
be overseen, and the code will become unstructured. The usual case:
you write some code, get WA, fix something, get WA, fix something... -
 doesn't work for this very problem, since there are lots of cases
that are to be solved at once before the first submit!


So was the idea of the author :-)

>

Okay, maybe I am not looking at it the right way, since I am still
in high-school contests (went at IOI 2002) and I am used to working
alone rather than part of a team. I guess I am thinking at it as a
problem instead as part of a problemset (still because of the
different kind of contests I am working for). Still, the problem
does not require any knowledge (other than simple programming) nor
any bright idea. Just checking out all the cases (and there are a
lot of cases)


> Hey, it's probably not what one should say about the problem. The
> problemset is certainly to be viewed as one whole thing, and the
> problem about pawns and king is one usual part of the problemset.
>
> It is a typical problem, that tests the ability of the team to
work
> as a team. One team member should try to solve this problem on a
> sheet of paper, finding out all the possible cases, while 2 other
> team members are to solve the other problems. Then, with the
solution
> fully written on the paper, that third team member would easily
get
> accepted for this problem. A good structured and accuratly written
> solution is not longer than 2Kb.
>
> The wrong way to solve this problem is to solve it before the
> terminal in the last hour of the contest. By this tactics, it will
> have no chance, since there are lots of interesting cases, that
will
> be overseen, and the code will become unstructured. The usual
case:
> you write some code, get WA, fix something, get WA, fix
something... -
>  doesn't work for this very problem, since there are lots of cases
> that are to be solved at once before the first submit!
>
>
> So was the idea of the author :-)