ICPC North America Qualifier
2024 – 2025 NAQ
Date: Saturday, October 5, 2024
Time: 2pm-7pm Eastern, 11am-4pm Pacific
2024-2025 North American Qualifer (NAQ) Information
The 2024-25 ICPC North America Qualifier is a programming contest scheduled to precede all ICPC North America Regional Contests. If you are a coach, you can use the NAQ in place of a local competition to help you determine teams for your regional ICPC contest, or you can use it as extra practice. The contest does not automatically qualify (or promote) any team to a regional competition.
Important Dates
- Contest Date: Saturday, October 5 2024, 2pm-7pm Eastern, 11am-4pm Paciic
- Registration opens: September 6 2024
- Registration ends: October 2 2024
- It will not be possible to accommodate new registrations or make changes to existing registrations after registration has closed. Please register early.
Team Registration
- We will use your registration information to create teams on Kattis.
- Please note that you must register for this contest specifically to participate; registering for a regional contest does not automatically register you for this contest, and vice-versa.
- Coaches may register as many teams as they like.
- Each team may have anywhere from 1 to 10 competitors.
- If you are in doubt about how many teams to register, please register more up front as it will be impossible to add teams after registration closes. Please try to be somewhat realistic for our planning purposes.
- Coaches can create empty teams as placeholders but should fill them with the actual students that will compete before registration is closed. “Empty” teams will not get competition login credentials.
- If you are a coach who is competing, please remember to register as a ContestantCoach, not as a Coach.
Sites
- There is one contest with 12 “sites.”
- The 12 sites correspond to the 11 regions of North America, plus one extra site for contestants who are not eligible to compete in ICPC in North America (e.g., high school students or people whose school is not in an ICPC North America region).
- Please register for the site that corresponds to your region.
- The NAQ is an online-only contest on Kattis.
- If your contestants have Kattis accounts, they may log on to the contest site at any time: 2024-25 ICPC NAQ Kattis Contest Site. If your contestants do not have Kattis accounts they will be created and emailed to them when registration has closed.
Billing and Fees
- The NAQ is free.
If the coach does not already have an existing ICPC account, the coach may create one here.
If you have questions, first please consult the FAQ on this page.
If after that you still have questions, please contact the contest directors, Fredrik Niemelä or David Van Brackle.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the NAQ?
The North America Qualifier is an online (distributed) programming contest, offered as a drop-in replacement for so-called “qualifying” contests (e.g., school-level, pre-regional competitions).
Can I register after registration is closed?
No, due to the number of expected people participating and the limited support. Please make sure to register for the correct contest before the deadline.
Where do I register?
What contest should I (a coach) register my team for?
The site corresponding to your region. Note that this is the “North America Qualifier,” not a regional competition. As the names of different contests may look similar, please make sure you register for the North America Qualifier and the site corresponding to your region.
What if I am not a part of ICPC?
Please then register for the ICPC-Ineligible site. This is for contestants who are (e.g.) in high school or are otherwise ineligible to participate in a North American ICPC region.
Is this a qualifying contest, a practice contest, or something else?
We are calling this a qualifying contest for the regional competitions. It can be (but is not required to be) used to help choose teams for the regional programming competition.
Must students participate in teams of three?
Coaches may make teams of one to 10 contestants, but no prescribed number is required. The coach decides for their school and teams.
Must I participate?
No. If you don’t find this useful for your situation, feel free to ignore it.
I already offer a contest. Why should I use this one?
There are several benefits. It will save you work and increase registration for your region, which helps allocate wildcard slots for the ICPC World Finals.
How will results be used?
Results of the NAQ may be used however the coaches choose to use them. The results do not dictate anything about which contestants get to go to regionals, for example. However, one way we envision a coach may use the results is to select the top-finishing team(s) for the regional competition.
Where should I go to compete?
Please compete wherever you are. This is an online competition to meet in a common location, but coaches should organize that independently.
What resources does a local site need to provide?
For each team: a computer with internet access, a web browser, and whatever development environment(s) you wish.
What judging system will be used?
Kattis. You can create a free account and try out Kattis at open.kattis.com.
Do I need to provide / can I provide my own judging?
No, it will be done through Kattis and our centralized contest management.
Can I provide my own problems?
We welcome your offer to contribute problems to official problem sets for future years – if you wish to do this, please contact Fredrik Niemelä. This year’s problem sets have already been selected.
What programming languages will be supported?
C, C++, Java, Python 3, and Kotlin.
How many problems will there be?
The number of problems varies from year to year, but there are usually a dozen or more problems of varying degrees of difficulty.
What will be the difficulty level of the problems?
We are aiming for a wide range, with multiple easier problems for novice programmers.
How will the contest run?
Contestants will submit code and receive responses via the web. Coaches/facilitators should ensure the integrity of their own contestants (such as internet usage during the contest, appropriate books, and materials, etc.).
Is this one contest or multiple contests?
While we will use one set of problems offered at one time, each participating school will be in its own contest with its own set of results. Results will not be collated across schools.
Will there be a practice portion of this contest?
You can practice using the Kattis system at https://open.kattis.com. You can create a free account and submit problems to the judging system, just like in the qualifier. The actual qualifier will be hosted at a different website with different credentials.
Will you publish solutions?
In years in which we hold both Fall and Spring NAQs, the same problem set will be used for both the Fall and Spring competitions. The problems and solutions will be published after the last contest has finished.
Acknowledgements, Solutions, and Contest Archive
Acknowledgments
- Judges: Aaron Johnson, Austin O’Brien, Boazhong Tian, Bob Roos, Chalam Chitturi, David van Brackle, Etienne Vouga, Haselhoff, Jeff Ifland, Jim Lembke, Landon Van Berkum, Larry Pyeatt, Mark, Michael Gerten, Sharon Barak, Simantra Mitra, Yongwhan Lim
- Problem Authors: Ben Reed, Bob Bradley, Bob Roos, Brent Yorgey, Dwayne Towell, Howard Whitston, Jeff Ifland, Larry Pyeatt, Nick Wu, Travis Meade (submitted many problems, we used 4)
- Also contributing: Nick Wu, Tom Rokicki
- Thanks to the Kattis staff for supporting the contest. Particular thanks to Fredrik Niemelä and Greg Hamerly.