PROBLEM LINK:
Practice
Contest: Division 1
Contest: Division 2
Contest: Division 3
Contest: Division 4
Author: utkarsh_25dec
Testers: tabr, iceknight1093
Editorialist: iceknight1093
DIFFICULTY:
TBD
PREREQUISITES:
Sprague-Grundy and elementary game theory (optional)
PROBLEM:
Chef and Chefina play a game on N piles of stones.
On their turn, a player either removes one stone from a pile, or splits a pile into two strictly smaller piles.
Chef starts first. Under optimal play, who wins?
EXPLANATION:
tl;dr
Let x be the number of piles with an even number of stones, and y be the number of piles with exactly one stone.
Chefina wins if and only if both x and y are even.
There are a couple of different ways to come up with a solution to this problem.
Grundy numbers
The ‘easiest’ way (but also the way that requires some knowledge) is to directly apply the Sprague-Grundy theorem and compute Grundy numbers.
It’s clear that each pile is independent, so we can simply compute the grundy number of a single pile, then xor everything together and check whether the final result is non-zero.
Let g(x) denote the grundy number of a pile of x stones.
If you compute grundy numbers for a few small pile sizes using, say, brute-force, you might notice the following pattern:
- g(0) = 0
- g(1)= 1
- For x \geq 1, g(2x) = 2 and g(2x+1) = 0.
This allows us to compute g(x) for any x in \mathcal{O}(1) time, and the problem is immediately solved.
A direct strategy
Let’s first try to solve for a single pile of stones.
- If the pile has 0 stones or 1 stone, the winner is obvious.
- If the pile has a positive even number of stones, Chef can always win by splitting it into two equal-sized piles, and then mirroring Chefina’s moves.
- If the pile has an odd number of stones (and \geq 3), Chef can never win.
- If Chef removes one stone from the pile, it has an even number remaining so Chefina wins with the previous strategy.
- If Chef splits the pile, the one of the resulting piles will be odd and the other even.
- If the odd pile has size \geq 3, Chefina splits the even pile into 2 equal parts and passes the turn to Chef, who again cannot win: he loses on the smaller odd pile recursively, and he loses on the split even piles since Chefina mirrors his moves there.
- If the odd pile has size 1 and the even pile has size 2, Chefina makes the piles (1, 1) and hence wins.
- If the odd pile has size 1 and the even pile has size x\geq 4, Chefina splits the even pile into 1 and x-1. Now if Chef takes one 1 Chefina takes the other; and otherwise Chef has to play on a smaller odd pile which is again losing.
This tells us that on a single pile, Chef wins if it’s either a single stone or even-sized.
Further, Chefina’s winning strategy often relies on mirroring Chef’s moves.
Let’s attempt to generalize this to multiple piles.
- If there’s an even number of 1-stone piles, Chef can win half of them and Chefina wins the other half, so it’s in Chefina’s favor since she’ll make the last move.
- If there’s an even number of even-sized piles, once again they win half each so it’s in Chefina’s favor.
In particular, if there’s an even number of 1-sized piles and an even number of even-sized piles, Chefina will always win.
What about the other cases?
It turns out that Chef can always win them!
Proof
Suppose there are x piles of size 1 and y of even size.
If (x+y) is odd, it’s obvious that Chef can always win since he has strictly more winning piles.
Now, suppose x and y are both odd.
There’s at least one even-sized pile, so take it; let it have K stones.
- If K = 2, remove one stone from it. This increases x by 1 and decreases y by 1, so they’re both even. It’s Chefina’s turn, so she loses.
- If K \geq 4, split into two piles of sizes (1, K-1). Again, this increases x by 1 and decreases y by 1, so once again x and y both become even and Chefina loses.
TIME COMPLEXITY
\mathcal{O}(N) per testcase.
CODE:
Setter's code (C++)
//Utkarsh.25dec
#include <iostream>
#include <cstdio>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <algorithm>
#include <cmath>
#include <vector>
#include <set>
#include <map>
#include <unordered_set>
#include <unordered_map>
#include <queue>
#include <ctime>
#include <cassert>
#include <complex>
#include <string>
#include <cstring>
#include <chrono>
#include <random>
#include <bitset>
#include <array>
#define ll long long int
#define pb push_back
#define mp make_pair
#define mod 1000000007
#define vl vector <ll>
#define all(c) (c).begin(),(c).end()
using namespace std;
ll power(ll a,ll b) {ll res=1;a%=mod; assert(b>=0); for(;b;b>>=1){if(b&1)res=res*a%mod;a=a*a%mod;}return res;}
ll modInverse(ll a){return power(a,mod-2);}
const int N=500023;
bool vis[N];
vector <int> adj[N];
long long readInt(long long l,long long r,char endd){
long long x=0;
int cnt=0;
int fi=-1;
bool is_neg=false;
while(true){
char g=getchar();
if(g=='-'){
assert(fi==-1);
is_neg=true;
continue;
}
if('0'<=g && g<='9'){
x*=10;
x+=g-'0';
if(cnt==0){
fi=g-'0';
}
cnt++;
assert(fi!=0 || cnt==1);
assert(fi!=0 || is_neg==false);
assert(!(cnt>19 || ( cnt==19 && fi>1) ));
} else if(g==endd){
if(is_neg){
x= -x;
}
if(!(l <= x && x <= r))
{
cerr << l << ' ' << r << ' ' << x << '\n';
assert(1 == 0);
}
return x;
} else {
assert(false);
}
}
}
string readString(int l,int r,char endd){
string ret="";
int cnt=0;
while(true){
char g=getchar();
assert(g!=-1);
if(g==endd){
break;
}
cnt++;
ret+=g;
}
assert(l<=cnt && cnt<=r);
return ret;
}
long long readIntSp(long long l,long long r){
return readInt(l,r,' ');
}
long long readIntLn(long long l,long long r){
return readInt(l,r,'\n');
}
string readStringLn(int l,int r){
return readString(l,r,'\n');
}
string readStringSp(int l,int r){
return readString(l,r,' ');
}
int sumN=0;
void solve()
{
int n=readInt(1,100000,'\n');
sumN+=n;
assert(sumN<=300000);
int A[n+1];
int even=0,one=0;
for(int i=1;i<=n;i++)
{
if(i==n)
A[i]=readInt(1,1000000000,'\n');
else
A[i]=readInt(1,1000000000,' ');
if(A[i]%2==0)
even++;
if(A[i]==1)
one++;
}
if(even%2==0 && one%2==0)
cout<<"CHEFINA\n";
else
cout<<"CHEF\n";
}
int main()
{
#ifndef ONLINE_JUDGE
freopen("input.txt", "r", stdin);
freopen("output.txt", "w", stdout);
#endif
ios_base::sync_with_stdio(false);
cin.tie(NULL),cout.tie(NULL);
int T=readInt(1,1000,'\n');
while(T--)
solve();
assert(getchar()==-1);
cerr << "Time : " << 1000 * ((double)clock()) / (double)CLOCKS_PER_SEC << "ms\n";
}
Tester's code (C++)
#include <bits/stdc++.h>
using namespace std;
#ifdef tabr
#include "library/debug.cpp"
#else
#define debug(...)
#endif
struct input_checker {
string buffer;
int pos;
const string all = "0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
const string number = "0123456789";
const string upper = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
const string lower = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
input_checker() {
pos = 0;
while (true) {
int c = cin.get();
if (c == -1) {
break;
}
buffer.push_back((char) c);
}
}
int nextDelimiter() {
int now = pos;
while (now < (int) buffer.size() && buffer[now] != ' ' && buffer[now] != '\n') {
now++;
}
return now;
}
string readOne() {
assert(pos < (int) buffer.size());
int nxt = nextDelimiter();
string res;
while (pos < nxt) {
res += buffer[pos];
pos++;
}
// cerr << res << endl;
return res;
}
string readString(int minl, int maxl, const string &pattern = "") {
assert(minl <= maxl);
string res = readOne();
assert(minl <= (int) res.size());
assert((int) res.size() <= maxl);
for (int i = 0; i < (int) res.size(); i++) {
assert(pattern.empty() || pattern.find(res[i]) != string::npos);
}
return res;
}
int readInt(int minv, int maxv) {
assert(minv <= maxv);
int res = stoi(readOne());
assert(minv <= res);
assert(res <= maxv);
return res;
}
long long readLong(long long minv, long long maxv) {
assert(minv <= maxv);
long long res = stoll(readOne());
assert(minv <= res);
assert(res <= maxv);
return res;
}
void readSpace() {
assert((int) buffer.size() > pos);
assert(buffer[pos] == ' ');
pos++;
}
void readEoln() {
assert((int) buffer.size() > pos);
assert(buffer[pos] == '\n');
pos++;
}
void readEof() {
assert((int) buffer.size() == pos);
}
};
int main() {
ios::sync_with_stdio(false);
cin.tie(nullptr);
input_checker in;
int tt = in.readInt(1, 1000);
in.readEoln();
int sn = 0;
while (tt--) {
int n = in.readInt(1, 1e5);
in.readEoln();
sn += n;
vector<int> a(n);
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
a[i] = in.readInt(1, 1e9);
(i == n - 1 ? in.readEoln() : in.readSpace());
}
int b = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
if (a[i] == 1) {
b ^= 1;
} else if (a[i] % 2 == 0) {
b ^= 2;
}
}
if (b) {
cout << "CHEF" << '\n';
} else {
cout << "CHEFINA" << '\n';
}
}
assert(sn <= 3e5);
in.readEof();
return 0;
}
Editorialist's code (Python)
for _ in range(int(input())):
n = int(input())
a = list(map(int, input().split()))
grundy = 0
for x in a:
if x == 1: grundy ^= 1
if x%2 == 0: grundy ^= 2
print('Chef' if grundy > 0 else 'Chefina')