QHOUSE - Editorial

PROBLEM LINK:

Practice
Contest

Author: Kamil Debowski
Tester: Niyaz Nigmatullin
Editorialist: Kamil Debowski

DIFFICULTY:

EASY

PREREQUISITES:

binary search

PROBLEM

0n the two-dimensional plane, there is a shape consisting of a square and an isosceles triangle that satisfy a few given conditions.
The conditions implied that the shape must look like this:

Sides of the square and the triangle could be shorter or longer but generally the shape must be similar to the one from the drawing above.
In particular, the point (0,0) is exactly in the middle of the bottom side of the square.

The problem is interactive and there is nothing given in the input initially.
We can ask queries.
In each query we choose a point with integer coordinates and the system will tell us whether the chosen point belongs to the shape (i.e. it’s inside or on the boundary) or not.
Our task is to find the total area of the shape within 100 queries.
Coordinates can be up to 1000.

EXPLANATION

Let’s assume that we have as many queries as we need.
So for each points with allowed coordinates (up to 1000), we know whether it’s outside or not.
Let’s think how to easily compute the answer (the total area), without hard geometry.
So for example, we know that following points are inside (or on the boundary) of the shape:

![drawing points][1]

To know the side of the square, it’s enough to take a look at points on the x-axis.
The last point on the right is (2,0) so the side of the square must be 4.
We can find the highest point of the triangle in the similar way: there is a point (0,7) so the height of the triangle is 7 - 4 = 3 (remember that the square has side 4).
The last information we need is the base of the triangle.
To compute it, we should find the rightmost point.
In this drawing it is (4,7), so the length of the base of the triangle is 7 * 2 = 14.
Knowing the base and the height of the triangle, and the side of the square, we can easily find the total area.

But we can’t ask so many queries.
Fortunately, we care only about some particular points.
First, we need the rightmost point on the x-axis.
To find it, we can ask about points (0,0), (1,0), (2,0), …, till we get a response “NO”.
Know we know the side of the square (let A denote it).
Similarly, we can ask about points with x = 0 to find the highest point.
The last and trickiest part is to find the righmost point of the base of the triangle (it was (4,7) in the example above).
Fortunately we already know the y-coordinate that it must have!
Earlier we found the side of the square A, and from the statement we know that the bottom of the triangle has the same y-coordinate as the top of the square.
So its y-coordinate must be equal to A.
So we can ask about points (0,A), (1,A), (2,A), … and this way we will find the rightmost point of the triangle and thus the base of the triangle.

The described algorithm needs to iterate over some consecutive points three times.
So it would need up to 31000 queries for coordinates up to 1000.
This approach is enough to solve the first subtask, but not enough for the full score.
To improve it, we can replace iterating over points with the binary search, what reduces the number of queries to about 3
log(1000) what is much smaller than 100.

IMPLEMENTATION

In interactive problems it’s useful to write a function to ask queries.
Thanks to that, in the main part of code we don’t have to care about flushing etc.

bool ask(int x, int y) {
	printf("? %d %d\n", x, y); // print the query
	fflush(stdout); // flush the output
	string response;
	cin >> response; // read the response from the input (a string "YES" or "NO")
	return response == "YES"; // return true if we got "YES"
}</pre>

It’s also good to extract the binary search into another function.
Let’s see a piece of code that considers the sequence of points (0,y), (1,y), …, (1000,y) and finds the last point that is inside the shape:

int findX(int y) {
	int x_low = 0, x_high = 1000;
	while(x_low < x_high) {
		int x_mid = (x_low + x_high + 1) / 2;
		if(ask(x_mid, y)) // if this point is inside
			x_low = x_mid;
		else
			x_high = x_mid - 1; // if it's outside, the x-coordinate is too big
	}
	// now x_low == x_high
	return x_low;
}

Likely you will need a similar function to find the y-coordinate of the highest point (the top point of the triangle).

Finally, we can combine everything into the solution:

int half_square_side = findX(0); // y = 0, find biggest x
int square_side = 2 * half_square_side;
int half_triangle_base = findX(square_side); // y = square_side, find biggest x
int triangle_base = 2 * half_triangle_base;
int top = findY(0); // x = 0, find biggest y
int triangle_height = top - square_side;
printf("! %d\n", square_side * square_side + triangle_base * triangle_height / 2);

POSSIBLE MISTAKES

You must remember about characters “?” and “!” before printing a query or the answer, and about flushing the output.
One more thing is that you shouldn’t choose the range of coordinates (in the binary search) to for example 1005 instead of 1000, because it can lead to asking a query about a point with coordinates greater than 1000.
Such a point must be outside the shape obviously, but you will get WA — the statement says that coordinates in queries can’t exceed 1000.
[1]: https://codechef_shared.s3.amazonaws.com/download/upload/LTIME45/RRIIK7T.png

AUTHOR’S AND TESTER’S SOLUTIONS:

Setter’s solution can be found here.
Tester’s solution can be found here.

3 Likes

Can we optimize the number of queries like the way we do in egg and floor problem . For example we have minimum and maximum value 1 and 1000 respectively. So we relate this to egg and floor problem then we have a maximum floor = 1000 . Then we will get optimal coordinate to check for is 44 then if it lies under it then again apply the same problem but for maximum value 44 then we will get optimal coordinate 8 and like that .

Is there any problem with this method …

For those who don’t know egg and floor problem and how to calculate optimal coordinate read this

Please have a look at my


[1] I did what i tried to explain above. I have used above logic for  calculating x coordinates of base of both square and triangle .


  [1]: https://www.codechef.com/viewsolution/12945390

CAN ANYONE HELP ME PLZ WHY IS MY SOLUTION GETTING WA FOR ALL TEST CASES PLZ GIVE ME ONE REASON , MAY BE I AM MISSING SOMETHING IMPORTANT CodeChef: Practical coding for everyone

Well. Once we know the side of the square A, the remaining binary searches will need about log(1000-A/2) + log(1000-A) queries. You can use this info to run the first binary search (over A) a bit better - not necessarily asking about the middle each time. I don’t see a connection to the egg and floor problem.

1 Like

In egg and floor problem we go to each and every floor and check whether egg breaks or not.To optimize it we check ith floor if it lies under it then we go from 0 to i-1 floor and if it lies above it we move to i + i - 1 floor and check if it lies under it or not if yes then we move from i+1 floor to i + i -1 floor .I am thinking about this problem but with 1000 floor and going (44,0) first if it lies under it then again apply the same problem but with 44 floor and if lies above it then i move to (44 + 44 - 1,0) coordinate then if it lies below then i’ll check for (45,0) to (87,0) like this .

But there are two eggs in that problem. What does it have in common with this one?

1 Like

but in this problem if the point was actually inside the shape(house) does that mean you saved your query?

@kingofnumbers - no, it doesn’t mean that