The Regional Chief Judges (Andy Harrington, Ron Pacheco, and Eric Shade) rank the problems roughly as follows, with the author's name in parentheses:

Very Easy

Parity (Eric)

Easy/Moderate

Lampyridae Teleportae (Ron), Steganography (Eric, based on an idea by Ron), and The Bridges of San Motchi (Eric)

Moderate

Bulletin Board (Andy) and Sparse Serial Numbers (Ron)

Moderate/Hard

Hex Tile Equations (Andy)

Hard

Line & Circle Maze (Ron, with an alternate solution by Andy)

Parity is by far the easiest problem, and we expect most teams to solve it. Line & Circle Maze is deceptively hard, though we didn't intend to be deceptive. It's just an easy problem to visualize (lines and circles—simple!), and it's conceptually straightforward, but the details can get ugly. See the Judge's Notes for more commentary. The other six problems are harder to classify. They all have short solutions, but they all require a bit of thought, and teams who don't think them through could get derailed into long and messy solutions. On the other hand, teams who see them clearly can solve them quickly. We expect a few teams to solve seven problems, but none to solve all eight.

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