2026 CCSC Midsouth Programming Contest

We hope to see you April 10, 2026 for the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges: Midsouth Conference Programming Contest.

Directions and maps.

To participate, please register for the conference using this form. Space is limited.

If you have questions please contact Dwayne Towell via email.

Schedule

Friday, April 10 4:30 - 5:30pmsetup, instructions
Friday, April 10 4:30 - 5:15pmpractice contest
Friday, April 10 5:00pmpizza and snacks
Friday, April 10 5:30 - 8:30pmcontest runs
Friday, April 10 7:30pmscoreboard freezes
Saturday, April 1111:00am - Noonresults, debrief, prizes for top teams
Saturday, April 1112:30pmluncheon


CCSC:MS Programming Contest Rules

The following rules are designed to clarify the difference between acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior. This is not a complete list. We reserve the right to define new rules as necessary to make this a fair and enjoyable contest. In general, these rules should be familiar to ICPC participants with the notable exception of Lifelines.

All contest submissions, including problem submissions and clarifications, are the property of Lipscomb University. We reserve the right to use and publish these submissions as we choose.

Rules

Teams may have at most three members, who must be undergraduate students.

Teams have only one computational device: the computer we provide. No phones, calculators, smart watches, or any other potentially computational devices are allowed.

Contestants may bring non-machine readable resource materials such as books, manuals, and program listings.

Contestants are not to communicate with anyone except members of their team and contest personnel.

Coaches are not allowed in the locations where teams are competing.

The contest is scheduled for three hours; however, the Contest Director may alter the length of the contest in the event of unforeseen difficulties.

Disqualification

Doing something that the Contest Director deems unacceptable will get you disqualified. You will be required to leave immediately and will not be allowed to participate further. Examples of ways to get disqualified:

Submissions

Teams submit solutions to problems via Kattis.

Submissions are automatically judged and the results delivered online.

All input will be from standard input. All output should be to standard output. This means "<" will be used to redirect input into your program.

Clarifications

Normally when a team believes that the judges are wrong, the team has not considered a possible variation of the input data or has misunderstood the problem.

Normally when a team believes that a problem statement is ambiguous, the team has not read the problem carefully or considered all the implications of a statement.

However, if you believe a problem statement is in error or is ambiguous, you may submit a clarification request via the contest website.

If you believe a mistake was made judging your run, you may submit a clarification request via the contest website.

Clarifications which result in a "no comment" or "please read the problem statement" are sent only to the submitting team, anything else will be announced to all teams.

In the event that the Contest Director determine an error in judging has occurred, we will do what we can to rectify the situation. For example, all submissions will be rejudged in sequence to give you credit for solving the problem at the earliest point that your problem ran correctly.

Scoring

The team with the most problems solved wins. Fewest penalty minutes are used to resolve ties. Each minute, or fraction of a minute, a problem remains unsolved is considered a penalty minute. Each incorrect submission counts as an additional 20 penalty minutes. Penalty minutes for unsolved problems are NOT included.