Call for Problems

We are pleased to announce the Call for Problems (CfP) for the Winter Contest 2025.

Submitters of candidate problems will be invited to become part of the Winter Contest 2025 Jury to assist in the preparations of the final contest problem set.

For questions regarding this call, please check the FAQ or reach out to us (in German or English) at cfp-2025@wintercontest.io.

Selection Procedure

The deadline for submitting candidate problems is October 31, 23:59:59 CET.

Submitter of candidate problems will be invited to join the selection committee. Each member of the selection committee will evaluate some of the candidate problems and provide feedback to the submitters. Afterwards, the selection committee meets to discuss their opinions about each candidate problem and try to decide on a selection of problems for the problem set. Selection criteria include problem novelty, and the goal of making a well-balanced problem set in terms of algorithmic topics, and degrees of problem difficulty.

Submitters of candidate problems will be invited to become part of the Winter Contest 2025 Jury. Jury members are expected to have time available leading up to the contest, in order to discuss, solve, and proofread some of the problems.

If your problem(s) are not accepted, we will destroy all records kept of them. This allows re-submission of the problem(s) for use in another contest.

More information on the submission requirements and the submission process can be found below.

Submission Guidelines

Problem submissions should adhere to the following guidelines:

• Submissions should be original, i.e., they should never have been used before in any other contest.
• Submissions should include a Problem Statement in clear English.
• The submission should include two separate, short files:
  • README.md: explaining the idea of the problem;
  • SOLUTION.md: explaining the idea of the solution and the algorithm to be used.
  Please keep the README.md spoiler-free.
• The SOLUTION.md should give an assessment of the difficulty of the problem. This is a number between 0 and 100, indicating the percentage of Winter Contest teams that is expected NOT to solve the problem (so higher means more difficult).

Additionally, you may want to include:

• an implementation of the solution (highly recommended);
• sample input and output files, one input per file;
  Note: it is possible that your problem does not conform to the standard “fixed input -> fixed output” format; for example, if multiple outputs are possible for a given input, or if the input is generated dynamically using an interactive program. This is fine as long as the problem text is clear on the subject. In case your problem requires a non-standard checker program, you are encouraged to provide it with your submission.
• a story.

We will need a variety of problem difficulties to make a well-balanced problem set. Do not hesitate to submit (relatively) simple problems for consideration.

Submission Format

Please put all relevant files of your submission in a single directory containing one subdirectory per problem, and ZIP this directory.

We will be using the official ICPC problem format. If you want to use it when submitting your proposal the format is documented here: http://www.problemarchive.org/wiki/index.php/Problem_Format

You can find example problem packages here.

Submission Procedure

Send the submission to cfp-2025@wintercontest.io.