Registered users may participate in regular online contests held at the Timus Online Judge. Contest rules resemble the rules of International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC). No additional registration is required for participation in a contest, you may just enter the website when the contest starts and begin to solve problems.

After the contest has started, you may visit the link Current contest to view the problem statements. Usually, there are about 10 problems with statements in English and in Russian (or in English only). The contest usually lasts for 5 hours. You may only submit solutions when the contest is running. After that the contest problems are copied to the problem set. See the manual describing how to use the problem archive. Compilers available during the contest are the same compilers that are used for judging solutions to the problems in the archive.

Participants may view the current standings during the contest. Standings page contains all participants who have submitted at least one solution. If you don’t have enough experience in solving problems, you may use the standings page to choose the easiest problems. Standings are “frozen” one hour before the end of the contests. Final results are available after the end of the contest.

You may participate in a contest on your own, or as a member of a team. However, you should only use a single account during the contest. It is forbidden to share source codes or solution ideas with other participants. Violation of this rule will result in disqualification. You may not post solutions or ideas on the Webboard. However, if you’ve noticed an ambiguity or mistake in the problem statement, please use the Webboard to report it.

If you want to get emails about the upcoming contests, specify this during the registration. If you are already registered, you may subscribe to emails on Update your info page. Schedule of upcoming contests is available here.

Scoring of the contests

Participants are ranked by the number of solved (accepted) problems. If two participants solved the same number of problems, the one that has less total time is ranked higher. In case of a tie, the participant who solved his last problem earlier is ranked higher.

The total time is the sum of the time consumed for each problem solved. The time consumed for a solved problem is the time elapsed from the beginning of the contest to the submission of the first accepted solution plus 20 penalty minutes for every previously rejected solution for that problem (except compilation errors). There is no time consumed for a problem that is not solved.