CCGS Informatics Club

2025 competition schedule

AT/ WITH THE SCHOOL:

Wednesday 5 February, the Perse Coding Team Challenge (PCTC) has an attractive format of two rounds, with teams of two and three respectively. Teams will have the option of also contesting the second round (finals) on Wednesday 12 March. Many of the problems are quite gentle, so there is a bit of hope for all teams to get some points! All past papers can be found on the PCTC online competition platform where you can submit your solutions for instant marking.

Thursday 20 February, the Canadian Computing Competition (CCC) individual competition. All the past problems are available at the online contest platform DMOJ where you will also find our leaderboard. These problems use input() and print() and are the natural next step after you have mastered the problems in Groklearning's Python for Beginners course!

Saturday 5 April, the Lockheed Martin Code Quest team competition 2025 is virtual (online)! If you are 13+ years old, you may sign up and prepare for the competition on Code Quest Academy where you can submit solutions to past problems 2015+. The problems are of an extraordinary quality and are conveniently grouped in four categories: Practice, Easy, Medium and Hard. We have our own class / leaderboard on this site - email Mr Honnens to get your access code!

Wednesday 9 April, the Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge individual competition. A smorgasbord of past problems are available online at Bebras 365. If you achieve a Merit certificate or better, we will make that appear as an award on your school report!

Thursday 22 May, the Computational and Algorithmic Thinking (CAT) individual competition. There are some free past papers available here. This competition is organised by the Mathematics Department, so make sure that you reply to their invitation email.

Friday 13 June, the Main Round of the University of UNSW's ProgComp competition is for teams of three students, two hours, one computer. Some past problems are available as pdf documents here. The top 6-8 teams will be invited to contest the Grand Final at UNSW on their Open Day on Saturday 6  September.

Thursday 19 June, the Coding Challenge is an individual competition based on the Oxford University Computing Challenge (OUCC). This competition also serves as the CCGS Informatics Championships. Some past problems are available online at UK Bebras Challenges. We will use the Trailblazers division for the CCGS Informatics Championships.

Thursday 28 August, the Australian Informatics Olympiad (AIO) individual competition. All the past problems are available on the online training site. Start climbing the leaderboard asap! You will need to be able to read from files and write to files in order to submit solutions to some of the older problems on this site, but the newer problems are simply using input() and print(). The AIO is the first step on the pathway to the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). More information, incl. the rules and a practice contest, can be found on the AIO contest site.

Work through the problems from the Victorian Coding Challenge. See Mr Honnens to register.

The American Computer Science League (ACSL) is a competition for teams of up to 12 students where the top 3-5 students' scores count towards the team score. It consists of four contests October - May. Junior Division is for Years 7-8, Intermediate Division is for Year 9  and Senior Division is for Year 10+. Each contest has a 30 minutes theory test and a 72 hours programming challenge. The contests have quite generous windows for you to complete the two parts:

• Contest #1: available xx  November 2025; closes Sunday xx January 2026

• Contest #2: available xx  January 2026; closes Sunday xx  March 2026

• Contest #3: available xx  February 2026; closes Sunday xx  April 7 2026

• Contest #4: available xx March 2026; closes Sunday xx May 2026

IN YOUR OWN TIME:

The  problems from the USA Computing Olympiad (USACO) contests are very similar to the AIO problems, so you should work hard at reaching the Silver level, the Gold level, and the Platinum level. On this site there are also some highly recommended on-line training resources. Some past USACO informatics champions have put together the incredible USACO Guide that teaches you all the algorithms you need on your journey from Bronze to Platinum! As of December 2020 the contest uses input() and print(), so no need to read from files and write to files :-)

Contest the three rounds of the New Zealand Informatics Competition (NZIC). Each of the three 3-hour rounds are in a one-week window, so there is a good chance you can find time in your calendar to participate in these rounds, You can even sign up and work through past problems on their training website! 

• 2025 Contest 1: Monday 7  April - Sunday 13  April

• 2025 Contest 2: Monday 23  June - Sunday 29  June

• 2025 Contest 3: Monday 11  August - Sunday 17 August

Work through the 300+ problems on the impressive Finnish Code Submission Evaluation System (CSES) website. The problems are conveniently grouped in categories to help you target a specific type of algorithm. The website is maintained by Antti Laaksonen, the author of the equally impressive book Competitive Programmer's Handbook that you can download for free from here. This book is highly recommended!! Please see Mr Honnens if you would like a printed version of this book. 

Work your way through the First Round of the Swiss Olympiad in Informatics. Sign up as a an "External" and make your way through the subtasks one at a time on your way to the full solution. You have almost three months, September-November, to solve the problems. 

Every year there are about six rounds of the South Pacific Competitive Programming Association's  SPAR contests for your team of one-three students to contest at UWA. The contests are mainly for university students preparing for the International Collegiate Programming Competition (ICPC); however, in particular the first half of the questions are well within the reach of a well-trained high school team. Past problems are available online here where you can also have your solutions judged and keep track of your progress. There are five full five-hour contests this year:

• 2025 Round 1, Saturday 8 March

• 2025 Round 4, Saturday 24 April

• 2025 Round 5, Saturday 5 July

• 2025 Round 8, Saturday xx August (= mirror of the New Zealand Programming Contest)

• 2025 South Pacific Preliminary Programming Contest, Saturday xx August

Facebook's Meta Hacker Cup is an annual opportunity for you to work your way towards the Final Round. Your journey starts with a somewhat gentle Practice Round, and from then on you will have to qualify for the following round. All past problems are available for you to practice on, and they come with solutions / editorials! You must be at least 13 years old to enter this competition.

The Swedish Kattis site has a rather attractive collection of problems that are conveniently categorised as trivial, easy, medium or hard so that you can be appropriately challenged. The problems are surprisingly good and refreshingly different.

The Italian Olympiads in Informatics training website is full of relevant problems, in English, and you can use Python! You may also contest a mirrored version of the Italian Olympiad in Informatics (OII). For this competition you will need to code in C++.

The Romanian Master of Informatics (RMI) is a renowned IOI-like international competition that you can contest online. You will need to code in C++.

Codeforces has a gentle Division 4 competition for beginners :-) All past competitions are there for you to enter virtually so that you can get some valuable practice before you start working on your title and colourful contest rating. This site is a favourite amongst international informatics students, including joshc and tourist.

The Japanese AtCoder has weekly contests including a Beginners Contest, Sundays 8:00 - 9:40 pm.

LeetCode has lots of algorithm problems for you to enjoy.  Simply sign up, head to the Problems and click on Algorithms, then sort by Acceptance in descending order. You may also want to attempt one of their regular Contests. Joshua Chen used this site extensively in his IOI training, and he still features prominently on the LeetCode leaderboard. You can find some splendid live recordings of his contest thinking/solutions on his Numb3r5 YouTube channel.

HackerEarth has a useful Algorithms path that you may want to walk down. This path is at the centre of the Year 9 elective Algorithmic Programming. 

HackerRank is one of the most established training and competition sites. This place is full of problems and certifications.

Rosalind offers an abundance of algorithm  design problems, all set in the highly motivational and relevant world of bioinformatics. The textbook track is at the centre of the Year 9 elective Bioinformatics.

Work towards a certificate in Grok Academy's Python competitions. If you get a Credit, Distinction, High Distinction or Perfection certificate, that will appear as an award on your school report! The following rules apply:

• Python.Comp (Beginners): For students in Years 7-8.  You can be awarded a maximum of one Beginners award per year - the best of your February and July competition will be chosen.

• Python.Comp (Intermediate): For students in Years 7-10.  You can be awarded a maximum of one Intermediate award per year - the best of your February and July competitions will be chosen.

  • • Python.Comp (Advanced): For students in Years 7-10.

Advent of Code is an Advent calendar of 25 programming puzzles 1-25 December helping you count down to Christmas! While you wait for this year's countdown you can practice on past problems and earn your two gold stars per problem! We have our own private leaderboard on this site - email Mr Honnens to get your access code.  Once you have conquered a star you may want to learn from some of the top coders and see how they solved that problem, e.g. jonathanpaulson, hyper-neutrino, nthistle and WilliamYFeng who all do an amazing job at both solving and explaining.