Round 1 and sub-rounds: the whole deal

[Google Code Jam Team]

There's been some confusion as to how Round 1 works, so I thought I'd do my best to clear it up.

You should now have received an email telling you which your assigned two sub-rounds are.  Unless things changed after I last checked, we managed to accommodate the preferences of everyone who submitted them.  Now, here are some possible scenarios:

1. You compete in your first assigned sub-round, and place in the top 840!  You have advanced to Round 2.  You cannot compete in your other assigned sub-round.  This is a change, but it was causing a great deal of confusion the old way.  You can still practice on the other sub-rounds' problems later once the rounds are over.

2. You compete in your first assigned sub-round, but don't place in the top 840; OR you didn't compete in your first assigned sub-round.
  a) You then compete in your second assigned sub-round, and place in the top 840!  You have advanced to Round 2.
  b) You don't compete in your second assigned sub-round, or didn't place in its top 840.  You have been eliminated, and we look forward to seeing you again next year.

And some things that could happen during the rounds:

1. Fewer than 840 people score points in a sub-round.  In that case, we will advance only those contestants who scored points.
2. There is a tie, and no clear person in 841st.  Since we have no mechanism for breaking such a tie at this point (the qualification round doesn't give us an ordering of contestants), all people in the tie will advance.  I'll get back to you about tiebreakers for later rounds.

Google Code Jam team