Problem numbers are from the 2000's ACM-ICPC Live Archive. Difficulty ratings are mine. (If you disagree with my ranking of a problem, I would be interested to know why.)
You can use the "Search" link on ACM-ICPC Live Archive site to find a problem based on its number.
These problems should be easy to solve by anyone with one semester's programming
experience.
Solutions are typically 20-30 lines of code.
Even if you're really good, you should try these. How fast can you
get a correct solution? The winning team will typically do one of these in less
than 10 minutes.
Note that competitions frequently make the first problem trivial (especially the Greater New York Region), but this is not
always the case. Occasionally you will find the trivial problem is the last
one!
| Problem |
Region | Year | Comments |
| 2083 - u Calculate e |
GNYR |
2000 | Formatting is annoying. Don't do this one if you don't know how to specify the precision for display. Handle earlier cases separately from the later ones. |
| 2281 - Color Me Less |
GNYR |
2001 | |
| 2865 - Biker's Odometer |
GNYR |
2003 | |
| 3142 - Bullseye |
GNYR |
2004 | |
| 2107 - Double, Double, Toil and Trouble | Mid Atlantic | 2000 | |
| 3108 - Filling Out the Team |
Mid Atlantic | 2004 | The spec lies. It claims that you may leave a space at the end of the line, but if you do you get a presentation error. |
| 2731 - Wacmian Numbers |
Oceana |
2003 | |
| 2732 - CD Titles |
Oceana |
2004 | |
| 3003 - Jelly |
Oceana |
2005 | |
| 3279 - Dice | Oceana |
2001 |
These problems generally don't require any more coding skills, but they do require a little more thinking or organization. Code is still only about 30 lines.
| Problem |
Region | Year | Comments |
| 2248 - Desert Bitmap |
Oceana |
2001 | Would be trivial except for two-dimensional array |
| 2282 - P,MTHBGWB |
GNYR |
2001 |
|
| 3493 - 01000001 |
GNYR |
2005 | |
| 3494 - The Bank of Kalii |
GNYR |
2005 | |
| 2007 - Tag Checker |
Oceana |
2000 | |
| 2247 - Prime Digital Roots |
Oceana |
2001 | Have to already know how to find primes. |
| 2483 - House Numbering |
Oceana | 2002 | |
| 3004 - Change |
Oceana |
2004 | Don't use doubles! |
These problems require a little more code, problem solving or knowledge of common algorithms such as Depth First Search.
I include problems that are easy if you know how to use the generic sort algorithm for a vector, overloading the < operator, etc., because you typically need more than one semester's programming knowledge to solve them.
| Problem |
Region | Year | Comments |
| 2085 - Digital Roots |
GNYR |
2000 |
|
| 2086 - Scramble Sort |
GNYR |
2000 |
|
| 2559 - Number Base Conversion |
GNYR |
2002 |
Note that the first example converting from base 62 to base 2, their answer is missing a leading bit of 1. So don't worry. |
| 3143 - An Excel-lent Problem |
GNYR |
2004 |
|
| 3145 - Flipping Pancake |
GNYR |
2004 |
|
| 3501 - Sequence Sum Possibilities |
GNYR |
2005 |
|
| 2006 - Most wanted word |
Oceana |
2000 |
|
| 2484 - Book Pages |
Oceana |
2002 |
Hard to rate this one. Once you figure it out, it's certainly easy. |
| 3280 - Abbreviations |
Oceana |
2005 |
|
| 3281 - Contest |
Oceana |
2005 |
Problems rated difficult take a fair amount of code or require what seems to me to be more insight or algorithmic knowledge than those rated moderate. Generally I will place any problems here that require good math skills.
| Problem |
Region | Year | Comments |
| 2869 - It's Logical |
GNYR |
2003 | |
| 3147 - Model Rocket Height |
GNYR |
2004 | |
| 3078 - Alphacode |
E. Central | 2004 | |
| 3282 - Orchards |
Oceana |
2005 |
Note: I have successfully submitted solutions to all problems listed here.
the 2000's ACM-ICPC Live Archive Around the World
Maintained by John Sterling (jsterling@poly.edu). Site last updated November 14, 2010