Cheating in contest Crack me if you can!

marksman2 · June 5, 2020, 5:49pm

Hello everyone,

Crack me if you can! (Link: Contest Page | CodeChef) was held on Codechef on 05 June, 2020. It was held by a indiviual guy @ameya13.

The question set contains 5 questions, out of which one shows wrong output for sample test cases (Tony and the triplets), another one have test cases out of constraints (BT engine) and one question have ambigious statement (Interview Day). I was unable to concentrate to read the last question (Pencryption Password).

There were many high rated participants like @EgorK, @vladprog, @alexwice and many other yelow-orange coders. Checkout the standings: CodeChef: Practical coding for everyone.

Now, one noticeable thing is that there are many WA verdicts. (Of course, due wrong test cases). Still, @mayur2305 and @starkk99 managed to solved them without any wrong submission (also really fast) and got rank one and two respectively. Third rank holder was @maoni, and this is his/her first contest using this ID. There are no previous submissions. ID was made for this contest.

Now the thing which bothers me is that @starkk99 and organiser @ameya13 are from the same college. Also, @mayur2305 was teammate of @ameya13 in many contests. (Check: https://www.codechef.com/users/ameya13/teams).

I think this much evidence is enough prove that this round was full of cheating. All all this was done for 250 laddus! I request @admin @vijju123 to cancel the laddus for this round.

Edit 1: starkk99 edited his college information for this contest. Ranklist shows his original college and profile shows different college.

Edit 2: These are details of time taken (minutes:seconds) by top 3 participants to submit each problem (Problems are taken order of number of submission of each problem):

@mayur2305: 01:17, 01:19, 01:42, 05:05, 03:30
@starkk99: 02:56, 00:49, 07:22, 01:07, 00:57
@maoni: 04:10, 00:41, 05:37, 02:23, 01:40

All three of them completed contest under 15 min, before any clarifications regarding wrong test cases and ambigious statements.

Next and the only guy to do all of the problmes was @hitesh_0301. Took him above an hour.

Edit 3: Submissions are visible now. Their are codes are completely same, except for the template part. Also, @ alooooo_lelo is also having the same codes! He ended on rank 5.

gourav111 · June 5, 2020, 5:55pm

their team name was voritex which is the same question name in the contest. I don’t think this is evidence but additional information

manani · June 5, 2020, 5:58pm

Codechef should only allow Trusted participants to win laddus.
Where trusted participant means participants already participated in some contests before winning laddus. (Just a suggestion) @admin

Thank you,
Manan

anon83049510 · June 5, 2020, 6:27pm

yeah man! @mayur2305 is from same college as @ameya13 and @starkk99 is , it’s just he changed his college name.
if u go through his profile u will find his real college ( check his past teams)

and my wild guess is that @maoni is none other than @ameya himself!!

ameya13 · June 5, 2020, 6:29pm

Hello @marksman2,

If you saw this correctly, you can see that many players whom you are talking about left the contest after some time. They did not even try to solve those problems. So how are you justifying?

Also, One thing I want to tell you that, it was giving in the BT engine question that if the input is out of constraints you have to print “-1”.

For the question Triplets, I made an announcement as soon as I got to know about it.
(Sorry for this)

Now, you are saying that we have cheated.
If we would have cheated, don’t you think that @mayur2305 and @starkk would have make all the submission from a fake account?

Why would we openly cheat, If our intentions were to cheat in this contest.
(It’s not a great deal to make a fake account and make a submission through it.)

anon83049510 · June 5, 2020, 6:36pm

well u are first timers i guess
lol

dhussa_09 · June 5, 2020, 6:39pm

3rd account created was fake and it was you.The third winner.
and they 2 are your roomates i came to know.
how can one solve all 5 question in just 10 min which reqiures at leat 8 mis to read
dont lie you r caught.
i request codechef @admin to deactivate your account.

anon83049510 · June 5, 2020, 6:41pm

and it’s true your statements were not well prepared, it was like u did it in hurry-burry
all the statements were shabby!!!

galencolin · June 5, 2020, 6:49pm

@admin do please look into this, this is hella suspicious

marksman2 · June 5, 2020, 6:56pm

Hello @ameya13

These are details of time taken (minutes:seconds) to submit each problem in order of number of submission of problems:

@mayur2305: 01:17, 01:19, 01:42, 05:05, 03:30
@starkk99: 02:56, 00:49, 07:22, 01:07, 00:57
@maoni: 04:10, 00:41, 05:37, 02:23, 01:40

All three of them completed contest under 15 min, before any clarifications regarding wrong test cases and ambigious statements.

Next and the only guy to do all of the problmes was @hitesh_0301. Took him above an hour.

This surely looks like a case of cheating.

anon76919024 · June 5, 2020, 6:59pm

Sample input for second problem was wrong.
I don’t think there can be so much coincidence that both of your teammates who are themself 3* should be able to beat 7* like egor and 6* like vladprog maybe one was possible but not 2. It was a simple cheap plot that you guys used. Moreover, it is already quite clear still you came in your defense without having any shame

marksman2 · June 5, 2020, 7:14pm

And the members of the team are : organiser and top 2 participants.

boom786 · June 5, 2020, 7:16pm

These guys are shame to the CP community.

galencolin · June 5, 2020, 7:18pm

Okay, let’s see just how bad these excuses are.

If you saw this correctly, you can see that many players whom you are talking about left the contest after some time. They did not even try to solve those problems. So how are you justifying?

According to @marksman2’s comment here, people finished in under 15 minutes. It took me that long to even understand the statements, they were so bad. The only reason that the real high-rated competitors left is because they saw that there was no chance of winning top 3 and didn’t want to keep trudging through your mess of a contest.

Also, One thing I want to tell you that, it was giving in the BT engine question that if the input is out of constraints you have to print “-1”.

Why would you ever set a problem like that? Saying else print -1 when invalid command pressed doesn’t even imply that, because you don’t define what an “invalid command” is. No rational competitor would ever assume that you would intentionally violate your own constraints and expect the submission to recognize that, that is, unless they have help from the organizers of course.

If we would have cheated, don’t you think that @mayur2305 and @starkk would have make all the submission from a fake account?
Why would we openly cheat, If our intentions were to cheat in this contest.
(It’s not a great deal to make a fake account and make a submission through it.)

The fact that you even make that argument shows why it’s actually less suspicious for people to cheat with their real accounts (or fake ones with a few participations). Nothing you say does anything to de-link the obvious motivations for cheating that @marksman2 brings up such as being on the same teams or in the same college.

We can even further elaborate on the fact that a 3-star managed to beat a 7-star (who has been LGM on codeforces) and many others by a mile. A 15-minute full-solve is quite hard to pull off without a huge amount of experience/skill. Sure, there’s variation in the rating system, but there’s no way that someone with such an “impressive performance” here would ever stay as a 3-star. Something seems to suggest that their performance wasn’t so impressive, after all…

None of this adds up. Any more excuses, or will you just admit it?

aryan12 · June 5, 2020, 7:35pm

@ameya13 be like – I have cheated and told 2 of my colleagues the questions and answers to the problem(of course, I will lie in discuss about this if they catch us)

Simple Proof, not to make it complicated:

15 minutes, and 5 questions. Lets see the last question itself(Pencryption Password). Even Gennady(everyone knows about him, I don’t have to introduce him, I hope so) would have taken 10 minutes in solving this problem. Why? Very simple, he would taken > 10 minutes to comprehend(make sense) the “passage”, and lets say 2 minutes to solve the question. 12 minutes, 1 question done. And he is Apollo according to you, if you think he can do the rest 4 questions in 3 minutes . And you don’t have the guts to say it publically, I am better than Gennady.

zephxr · June 5, 2020, 7:35pm

Bro before finally uploading the contest.Can’t you check if the input output is correct or not?Its so frustrating that i wasted my 1 hour just because of wrong input output.

If i talk about problems.Please check the english once. before making the problem.

For example:

“Tony stark loves triplets. He finds the 3 pairs very interesting as to why 3 Pyramids of Egypt, Bermuda triangle, etc.”

shahayush2507 · June 5, 2020, 7:38pm

@ameya13 why dont you make the solutions public and let us see for ourselves …

aryan12 · June 5, 2020, 7:39pm

I guess this perfectly describes your future at codechef

AdmitCheating();
while(AmIAlive()) {
     GetBanned();
     MakeNewAccount();
}
if(!AmIAlive()) {
    cout << ":-(" << endl;
}

zappelectro · June 5, 2020, 7:43pm

I had a good laugh. Thanks xD

marksman2 · June 5, 2020, 7:44pm

Tomorrow’s Codechef contest Get In The Voritex Room 1.0 is being organised by the same one of the guys!

My logic behind this guess:

Contest name: Get In The Voritex Room 1.0, first question of todays contest was Voritex and string.
Name of organiser is shown as cppxorjava, CPPxorJAVA was a string given as the test case in today’s question Voritex and string. Moreover, this guy is from the same college.

What is a good option here? To cancel the contest or anyone have better ideas?