Code Jam History

Code Jam Facts

• There have been seven problems in global Code Jam rounds that were not solved by anyone during the round in which they were posed. They may be our hardest problems of all time:
  1. 2008's chessboard puzzler King.
  2. From the 2010 World Finals, Ninjutsu, a geometry problem about grappling-hook-wielding assassins.
  3. The Paths of Yin Yang, a grid-based combinatorial problem with shades of Taoist philosophy.
  4. From the 2011 World Finals, the non-traditional Program within a Program, which asked contestants to program a Turing Machine.
  5. The difficult-to-wrap-your-head-around Ace in the Hole.
  6. From Round 2 in 2012, a problem that garnered 79 attempts but no solutions: Descending in the Dark.
  7. From the 2012 World Finals, the lost-in-the-woods simulator Shifting Paths.
• No contestant has ever achieved a perfect score in an onsite final.
• The fastest correct submission came from Russia's SergeiFedorov on 2010's Rope Intranet. The submission, solving the problem's Small input, came in just 2 minutes 41 seconds after he saw the problem for the first time at the start of the contest. For the fastest Large, Australia's xiaowuc1 was either quicker or more confident, submitting his final solution to the same problem just 3 minutes 14 seconds into the contest (22 seconds after his own Small), beating SergeiFedorov's Large by a healthy 9 seconds. These numbers ignore qualification rounds, where contestants start at different times.