The Northeast North America Regional Competition
				of the
      2003-2004 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest
			   sponsored by IBM
           
       Eastern Preliminary Site : Western New England College,
		      Springfield, MA (Oct. 25)
       Boston Preliminary Site: Distributed locations (Oct. 25)
Western Preliminary Site: Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY (Oct. 18)
       Northeastern Preliminary Site: University of Prince Edward Island,
		       Charletown, PEI (Oct. 17)
Championship Site: Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY (Nov. 8)
				   
The Northeast North America Region follows the rules of the International Contest
except as noted below:

		    REGIONAL CONTEST SPECIAL RULES


Regional Contest Location and Attendance:

1.  The ACM Northeast Regional Programming Contest sponsored by IBM,
    hereinafter called the "Regional Contest", will be held in a
    two-tier format, with a ?-site Preliminary Round Competition.  The
    Championship Round site will be at a location to be established.
    Note that each Preliminary Round competition represents a
    different competition with different problem sets and judges, and
    that placements are determined within each site without regard for
    events at the other sites.  Twelve teams will advance to the
    Championship Round competition (the 2 highest placing teams from
    each Preliminary Round competition, plus 6 additional teams
    allocated proportionately to sites according to the number of
    teams competing), unless any Preliminary Round site shall host
    less than 10 competing teams in which case the allocation of teams
    advancing from the Preliminary Round sites shall be proportional
    to the numbers of teams competing at each of the Preliminary Round
    sites.

2.  Contestants are drawn from the following geographic region: states
    of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
    Rhode Island, and New York (excluding greater New York
    metropolitan area) in the United States, and Canadian provinces of
    Quebec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and
    Labrador, and New Brunswick, except as noted in the International
    Rules.

3.  No more than one team from any school will be allowed to enter the
    Championship Round.  This rule does not apply to the Preliminary
    contests.

Scoring of the Contest

1.  Solutions to problems submitted for judging are called runs.  Each run 
    is judged as accepted or rejected, and the team is notified of the 
    results.  Rejected runs will be marked as follows:

         (1)  Syntax Error
         (2)  Run-Time Error
         (3)  Run-Time Limit Exceeded
         (4)  Incorrect Output
         (5)  Incomplete Output
         (6)  Incorrect Output Format

2.  A public scoreboard will be maintained; however, in order to maintain 
    competition and suspense, it will not be updated during the last hour 
    of the contest.

3.  Placement is based first on number of problems solved.  If more than 
    one team correctly solves the same number of problems, placement will 
    be determined by the total time taken to complete them.  The total 
    time will be calculated as the summation of the net solution time of 
    each problem solved (which is the time of correct submission minus the 
    starting time of the contest).  Unlike the International Contest,
    no time consumption penalty for rejected runs is assessed.

4.  In the event that the judges shall judge a program solution to be 
    incorrect, and at a later point in time, review such decision and deem 
    said submission to be correct, the time of solution to be noted and 
    utilized for scoring purposes will be that of the original submission 
    that was originally judged to be incorrect but subsequently found to 
    be correct.

5.  In the event that the judges shall judge a program solution to be 
    correct, and at a later point in time, review such decision and deem 
    said submission to be incorrect, any later correct solution to said 
    program shall receive a time of solution that is determined by 
    calculating the amount of time elapsed between the notification of the 
    team by the judges of the solution being incorrect and the original, 
    erroneous notification of it being a correct solution, and subtracting 
    that amount of time from the actual submission time of a subsequent 
    correct solution.

Contest Environment:

1.  The languages of the Regional Contest will include C, C++ and
    Java.  Additional languages may depend on the contest site.

2.  Each team will have available a single terminal to a minicomputer or a 
    single microcomputer, the nature of which will vary depending upon 
    contest site.  All teams at a site will have equivalent computing 
    equipment.