Rules

Please read through this information carefully. If you have any questions, you are encouraged to contact the judges. We will endeavour to answer any queries as soon as possible. Both students and teachers should familiarize themselves with the contest rules. Note that students may not see the actual contest problems until the beginning of the contest period.

The contest rules for the AIIO and FARIO are very similar to those for the AIO.

Contest Environment

Each student should have access to ONLY one computer. Additionally, students may bring:

• pens, spare paper, calculators and other stationery
• any number of books or other written material, including printed source code and handwritten notes.

Students are forbidden from any of the following:

• Having electronic equipment other than their computer and associated peripherals. or example, students cannot have mobile phones, tablets or smartwatches with them during the competition.
• Students cannot access any code written before the contest. For example, students may not access code for training problems or past exams. The only exception is for code that was printed or handwritten before the competition and brought in as physical notes.
• Students must not access any websites or applications other than the contest website and the exemptions listed above. For example, students are forbidden from accessing:
  • Q&A websites and forums (e.g. Stackoverflow, Reddit)
  • source code sharing websites (e.g. GitHub, Pastebin)
  • private messaging websites or applications (e.g. Messenger, Instagram, Discord)
  • Large language models (e.g. ChatGPT)
  • The informatics training site
• Students cannot use any AI powered tools (e.g. GitHub Copilot), and these must be disabled on any editors or IDEs used by the students.

Software and electronic materials

Students must write programs in C++.

Students are free to use any text editors (e.g. Sublime, Notepad, TextEdit), IDEs (e.g. Code Blocks, Eclipse, XCode) or shells (e.g. WSL, MinGW, Terminal, Bash) they have on their computer. This includes any documentation, compilers, or templates that come installed with these.

Additionally, students may also access official language documentation on the following websites:

• C++: https://en.cppreference.com/w/

Online text editors and IDEs (e.g. ideone, groklearning) are allowed, but please be very careful not to accidentally make any code you write public. Edstem can also be used, subject to the above rules (notably, no access to pre-written code).

Changes from the AIO

Unlike the AIO:

• The AIIO will consist of four problems. The FARIO will consist of three problems.
• No code templates are provided.
• There will not be a PDF containing the statements for all problems. Instead, the statement for each problem can be downloaded from their respective pages on the contest site. In the AIIO, the problems are given in roughly difficulty order, however students are encouraged to read and attempt all of the problems. In the FARIO, the problems are not given in any specific order (particularly, they may not be in difficulty order).
• The only allowed language is C++.
• There are no input and output files. Instead, your programs should read from standard input and write to standard output. The AIIO and FARIO will last for four hours, to be held in a single block. All students at the school must sit the contest at the same time.
  • The contest must begin between 8:30am and 1pm inclusive, Sydney/Melbourne/Canberra time. We strongly prefer students start at approximately 9AM in their local time. For instance, the contest may be held from 10am till 2pm, but not from 3pm till 7pm.
    • AIIO: Thursday 13 February 2025
    • FARIO: Friday 7 March 2025
  • all students from the same school must sit the contest at the same time.
  • If possible, all students should sit the contest from the same location.

Clarifications and Issues

Students may ask for a clarification via the “Communication” tab on the competition website if they are unsure about an aspect of a problem. Clarifications about a problem statement should be a single Yes/No question, and you will receive one of the following responses:

• “Yes”
• “No”
• “Answered in Task Description (Explicitly or Implicitly)” – The clarification is answered in task description (explicitly or implicitly). The student should read it again carefully.
• “Invalid Question (not a Yes/No Question)” – The question is most likely phrased so that a yes/no answer would not be meaningful. The student is encouraged to rephrase the question.
• “No Comment” – The student is asking for information that we will not provide.

Students may also ask for clarifications about non-statement related items, such as a question about the rules or a suspected issue with judging. In this case, the question does not need to be Yes/No.

What if the competition website becomes unavailable?

While we try our best to ensure that this does not happen, it is important to be prepared. In these situations, students should do the following:

1. Keep working under exam conditions.
2. Notify your supervising teacher. They can check their emails for any updates or announcements. Students may also check Edstem for announcements.
3. Students are welcome to request extra time via the “Communication” tab on the competition website. However, we provide no guarantees and any extra time granted will likely be less than the time that the competition website was unavailable (because you can still work when the competition website is unavailable). No extra time will be awarded for technical failures outside the control of the contest organisers (e.g. computer freezes, internet cuts out).
4. If your competition time ends prior to the website becoming available, you should email your code to your supervising teacher and/or the Director of Training as soon as possible. Late submissions will not be accepted.
   • If you want to request extra time, then you may continue working. However, since there is no guarantee that you will receive extra time (and if so, how much), you should regularly “resubmit” your code via email. For example, if no extra time is granted, then only submissions emailed by the end of the competition time will be accepted.

After the Competition

To ensure the integrity of the competition, you should not discuss the competition or its problems (including your score or how easy/hard you found the competition) until the following dates:

• For the AIIO: Tuesday 18 February 2025.
• For the FARIO: Until it appears on the ORAC Training Site, which will not be until at least Wednesday 12 March 2025.