On this page you will find the complete problem set of the 1996 contest. It even includes the complete set of test data used during the contest, sample solutions for each problem and comments from the chief judge. For completeness, the same information is also provided for the practice session problem set.
This year's problem set was compiled by Erich Oswald (Chief Judge) from contributions by Matthias Ruhl, Manuel Bleichenbacher, and Rolf Strebel. (Additional problems have been submitted by Hans Domjan, Miguel Revilla, and Robin O'Leary.)
If you would like to participate in next year's contest, it might be a good idea to have a look at the problems posed this year (or any other year, for that manner). Solving problems from past contests is likely to improve your chances of winning a regional contest.
The problem set is available in the following formats:
The practice problem set was used for the practice session, where the
teams could get accustomed to our contest environment, i.e. to computers,
editors, compilers, and the problem submission system. The problems themselves
are easy to solve and not much of a challenge. They were taken from the
practice session two years ago and were only modified to be consistent with
the general format used in the real problem set.
The practice problem set is available in the following formats:
The Chief Judge's comments on the problem set give you some insights into the problems and explain what pitfalls to avoid and how to solve the problems. Of course you'll learn more if you first try the problems yourself.
You can have it all. Just download the gzip-compressed contest
archive (30 kByte), decompress and unarchive it on your local machine
and rebuild the programs and test data. The archive includes at least one
sample solution for every problem, the test input, and test output files
or programs for checking the output. For completeness sake, the practice session archive (1.4 kByte) is also available
in the same format.
Comments and Questions
about the problem set are always welcome. Just send me email.
The Southwestern European Regional Programming
Contest 1996 was sponsored
by Microsoft and supported
by Union Bank of Switzerland