ICPC @ ETH Zurich

This season, ETH participated in two contests in Portugal: SWERC in Lisbon and EUC in Porto.

ETH Stands Out at SWERC 2024

This ICPC season (2024-25) was the first time that the South West European Regional Contest (SWERC) was multi-site. This meant that the contest took place simultaneously across three different sites: Lisbon, Pisa, and Lyon. This was motivated by the huge number of teams wanting to take part in SWERC. This year there have been 140+ teams, the biggest SWERC ever!

The ETH teams chose Lisbon as contest location and enjoyed the beautiful city. ETH could register three different teams since there was enough space due to the contest being multi-site.

The teams selected the creative and matching team names BaguETHe, forETHought and morETHanusual. For the first time ever, the teams were sponsored by QuantCo, who covered their travel and accommodation. A big thank you to them! If you’re interested in internships or job opportunities, be sure to check them out!

On the days before the contest the participants and coaches explored Lisbon next to checking in and doing the practice contest. It is a beautiful city both at day and night time, visiting is highly recommended! The teams explored the city center and visited the castle (Castelo de São Jorge) from where you have a great view over the city.

The contest went exceptionally well. BaguETHe had a great start and then got overtaken by morETHanusual and forETHought. In the end every team got a first solve and all teams received a medal (2x Bronze, 1x Silver). You can see the final standings here: https://swerc.vps.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/domjudge/public. Additionally, morETHanusual directly qualified to EUC and the ICPC World Finals!

Congratulations to all teams!

moreETHanusual ranks 3rd at EUC 2025

After an impressive showing at SWERC, ETH’s success continued at the European Championship. On 28th of February team morETHanusual (Andon, Hadyn, Wuwei and coach Constantin) traveled to Porto. Since the team had already qualified for the ICPC World Finals, the contest outcome did not matter as much.

On the first day they visited the beautiful city of Porto and tested and enjoyed the local food. On the second day they attended the practice contest and the sponsored talks and booths.

When the contest started morETHanusual solved two previously unsolved medium difficulty problems getting two successful first solves. Afterwards they looked at the “easier” problems and quickly shot up in rank. After around 2h they were in first place with 6 solved problems. They stayed there for more than an hour until the University of Utrecht overtook them. Then during the freeze morETHanusual solved a 7th problem.

In the end they achieved 3rd place and a silver medal with highest honors (standings). Congratulations for this great performance and the first time ETH received a medal at EUC!

morETHanusual will compete again at the ICPC World finals in Baku, Azerbaijan at the end of August. Another big thank you to QuantCo for sponsoring the ETH teams the entire way on their journey to ICPC World Finals!

On October 12th, Ahmet and Theodor traveled to Shenzhen to compete in the ICPC Challenge Championship powered by Huawei. Before the contest day, they participated in the excursion in Huawei’s Ox Horn Campus with other participants. That campus features twelve zones modeled after European cities such as Heidelberg, Český Krumlov, Verona, Budapest, and Tallinn, connected by a tram system inspired by Switzerland’s Jungfrau Railway.

The 5-hour competition brought together top competitive programmers, with Theodor finishing 40th and Ahmet 51st. In addition to the contest, Huawei recognized past ICPC coaches, presenting Ahmet with the Outstanding Mentorship Award.

Participants also met with Huawei’s founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei, with meeting minutes available here. The event concluded with technical talks, visits to Shenzhen’s main attractions, and a party at Songshan Lake.

ETH Team Selection Contest for ICPC 2024-25 will take place on October 26th.

Please visit https://vis.ethz.ch/en/events/813/ for more details and registration.

After attending the programming camps in Paphos and Wroclaw, the dETHroners team, consisting of Michal, Paula, Theodor, and coach Ahmet, traveled to Astana to participate in the 48th Annual World Finals of the International Collegiate Programming Contest.

The level of competition was particularly high for the strong teams, and dETHroners finished with a rank of 19 out of 141 universities. Although the ETH team solved the same number of problems as the other bronze-medal team, they missed out on a medal due to time penalties. However, they were awarded ‘Highest Honors’, a distinction given to all teams that solved 7 problems during the contest but didn’t receive a medal because of time penalties. Several top European teams also solved 7 problems, and the European region winner was determined by time penalties as well, with ETH achieving Rank 4 in Europe.

The high-rise skylines of the city, the cold weather, chaotic traffic, great food, and fun activities at the event venue—like making necklaces with a giant hammer—and the transportation bus generously offering us free wifi (no further details on this :)) all created unforgettable memories from the World Finals.

We’ve heard two rumors about next year’s World Finals location. One suggests it will be in South America, and the other hints at Shanghai. Let’s see which one is true—until then, see you next time!

Today, we had the last CPC Meetup of this semester. For this special session, Marc discussed the slope trick, and Paula presented on finding cycles in planar graphs where every vertex has a degree of at least 3. We concluded the meetup with pizza. See you next semester!

On May 11th, we organized the largest competitive programming contest in ETH’s history. Over 100 people participated in teams of up to three members. Most teams consisted of ETH CS Bachelor’s and Master’s students, but there were also a few ETH PhD teams.

After the contest ended, we held an Apéro combined with a problem tutorial session, where we presented the solutions to our problems.

Thanks to QuantCo, we had crazy prizes lined up for the top 3 teams and the best ersti team. They also sponsored the snacks&sandwiches during the contest and the Apéro after the contest. Their support was essential for the success of the contest.

• mETHroners (3D Printers + ANC Headphones)
• Mr Malnars Lethal Peppers (ANC Headphones)
• uhh this should actually be first place, sorry, system error (ANC Headphones)
• 2musiketeers (ANC Headphones as the best Ersti Team)

JetBrains sent us vouchers for their merchandise store, and we came up with the following categories to award them.

• Wrong answer on test 151 for getting first AC in the second minute
• ML and AC for getting the last AC three minutes prior to the end of the contest
• one forall for the first AC in Glitchy Language Model
• börhack for getting AC after 10 unsuccessful attempts on Broken Polybahn
• Bitwise Bandits for the most number of Mates on the table during contest.

Check out the blog post on Codeforces. You’ll find the problem set and tutorial slides there.

We were around 11 people who worked hard to bring this contest to life. Organizing a competitive programming contest for 100 participants was no easy task. We had to prepare the problem set, manage logistics like arranging food and drinks, reserve a suitable room, get the API to work for the scoreboard and prizes, and handle the printing.

Thanks to all members of CPC who helped for the contest(in alphabetical order): Ahmet, Antti, Benni, Constantin, Jan, Justina, Marc, Mihnea, Oleksandr, Oliver and Sascha.

We will organize a team competitive programming contest on May 11th. Don’t miss out on the chance to win some incredible prizes sponsored by QuantCo and JetBrains! Registration follows here.

On the 19th of April the joint World finals for 46 and 47th edition were held in Luxor, Egypt. It was an unusual World Finals as Covid had postponed previous editions so two were held jointly. ETH Zurich had teams qualify for both, in the 46th edition the team mETHodical was represented by Andrzej Turko, Christopher Burckhardt, Paula Vidas and their coach Bernhard Linn. In the 47th edition the team gETHyped was represented by Theodor Moroianu, Andon Todorov, Marc Dufay and their coach Antti Röyskö.

There were 11 problems given and the two contests shared 5 problems of which they had 5 hours to solve. ETHz team mETHodical made it to the 44th place out of 124 teams in the 46th edition with 6 problems solved, and ETHz team gETHyped made it to the 38th place out of 130 teams in the 47th edition with 5 problems solved. This year Peking University took first place in the 46th edition and National Research University Higher School of Economics took first place in the 47th edition. The coach for mETHodical, Bernhard also achieved 4th place in the ICPC Challenge for Coaches.

Congratulations to the teams!

Over the past weekend, we traveled to EPFL to participate in the Helvetic Coding Contest. The contest was well-organized, with lots of balloons, unlimited El Tony Mates, and fantastic prizes. A big thank you to the organizers!

The results were as expected. The professional category was won by the team “Felt smart(might unparticipate later)” consisting of Antti and Oleksandr from ETH. They dominated the contest from the start, never relinquishing their lead and solving 20 of 21 problems. The team “Breakfast Master Toaster” from ETH consisting of Michal, Priska and Andrei won the student category by solving 16 of 21 problems. Congrats to both teams!

We participated in the ICPC EUC last weekend in Prague, where we competed against the top 13 teams from each European region. dETHroners(Teo, Paula, Michal), finished 11th out of 52 teams. While this event offered teams a chance to qualify for the ICPC World Finals 2024 in Kazakhstan, dETHroners got their spot by smashing the SWERC in Paris earlier this year.

On Friday morning, Teo, Michal, and Ahmet were so eager that they hit Zurich airport super early. Meanwhile, Paula arrived just in time, having timed her arrival two minutes before boarding perfectly. Once in Prague, we hopped on trams that seemed to have witnessed the invention of the wheel. Further, we did an extensive sightseeing thanks to Michal’s guiding skills. Almost geting lost in a train station? But hey, we did not get stuck in the train station this time 🙂

The opening ceremony was a blast, filled with Czech humor and a Soviet Theremin Concert. And who could forget the surprise guests: Boston Dynamics Robots… most of them managed to walk, at least.

The Czech Technical University was like a fantasy world: elevators called “paternosters” and doors straight out of a hobbit’s dream. Of course, snapping pics by those hobbit doors was important—memories to show after 20 years?

During the contest, the coaches had to listen to a one-hour answer by the ICPC Executive Director explaining why ACM stopped sponsoring ICPC. Fortunately, Ahmet was preoccupied with the mirror contest alongside the Coach of Universität des Saarlandes.

Overall, everyone was impressed by the Prague organizers, who managed to avoid any major issues this time, unlike the two-hour power outage during the last contest in Prague. Some attendees were puzzled by the decision to hold the contest under a glass ceiling though!