It is my second time to be a member of the board of judges for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition here in Manila. The first one was several years ago at the University of Asia and the Pacific and the second was this afternoon at the Ateneo de Manila University.

Topping the 99 teams are teams from Ateneo de Manila University, University of Tokyo and if I am not mistaken, University of Hong Kong (sorry if it is another university but I am sure that they’re from Hong Kong).

One of the UP teams, however, came in at a dismal fourth among local teams with Ateneo de Manila on first and third and De La Salle University on second. Better luck next time, guys! I reckon you need more serious training sessions for next year’s competition.

Three questions were submitted by judges from the University of the Philippines, 4 from De La Salle and one from Ateneo de Manila University. I submitted one of the 3 questions from UP and although the board judged it as the sole easy problem among all the problems fielded, it became one of the more difficult one to solve. I found it rather absurd considering how easy it was! Heck, the one from a colleague got even more correct solutions and to think that we considered his problem as medium-difficult. I guess looks can really be deceiving…

The question now is — how many among the 17 teams who solved my problem came from UP Diliman? I think out of the 6 teams from UP Diliman, 1 came home without even solving one! Ha – coaches, you better tell who these students are…

Anyway – good luck next time! And one more thing, the answers to some of the problems are sometimes too simple and/or obvious that people would rather resort to more complicated ways of solving them.