UCT team wins the South African ACM ICPC Regional Contest

The 16th South African Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC) Regional Contest took place on 4 October 2014. 86 teams each consisting of three undergraduate or young honours students from across 5 different time zones in Sub-Saharan Africa—concurrently held in Benin, Cameroon, Kenya, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Togo and various sites in South Africa—competed to solve as many problems as they could in 5 hours nonstop. The UCT team “I Can’t Pronounce Catachtonic” composed of Yaseen Hamdulay, Robert Spencer, and Sean Wentzel came first overall, having solved 5 problems. They will compete against the top-1% of other regions in the ACM ICPC World Finals in Morocco in May 2015. The Cape Town site of the contest was held at UCT, and was packed with 17 teams on total, comprising 11 UCT teams, 6 teams from Stellenbosch University, and three coaches. It was a heated competition for the other top-places. The teams that came second and third both solved 3 problems, with the UCT team “If Cats Programmed Computers”—composed of Alexander Borysov, Kieren Davies, and Dylan Nelson—in third place due to the time difference in solving the problems. The other teams solved 2, 1, or 0 problems. More information on past editions at UCT, problems the students have to solve, photos etc. is available here [acm.cs.uct.ac.za]. The ACM ICPC is the oldest and most prestigious programming contest, and more information about it can be found here [http://icpc.baylor.edu/].