The ICPC maintains the official rules that apply by default to all regional contests. Individual regions may clarify and/or extend these rules as they see fit. Most of the clarifications and extensions for the Mid-Central USA regional contest are defined in the following two documents, which are provided to each team on the day of the contest.

1. Error Messages
2. Notes to Teams

Additional rules are described below.

• Late Registration
• Electronic Devices
• Reference Materials
• Registration Priority

Late Registration

There is no late registration. If you do not register via the ICPC web site by the posted deadline, you cannot participate.

Electronic Devices

Except for simple watches, teams may not have any electronic devices in their possession during the contest. This includes, but is not limited to, phones and other communication devices, calculators, calculator watches, PDAs, electronic translators or dictionaries, e-books, audio players/recorders, video players/recorders, scanners, and printers. Mere possession of such a device will result in immediate disqualification, regardless of whether or not it was used.

Reference Materials

The World Finals only allow teams to have 25 pages of reference material in PDF format, which is verified and printed out for the team for its use during the contest. For the Mid-Central USA regional contest, teams may bring any amount of printed reference material, including printouts of source code. However,

teams may not possess any machine-readable media (other than diskettes provided by the site) during the contest. Violation of this rule will result in immediate disqualification, regardless of intent or whether the media were actually used.

We suggest bringing a language reference manual, a good data structures and algorithms textbook, printouts of the problem statement and solution for any practice problems you worked on, and any notes you or your coach may have created.

Registration Priority

Our primary goal is to maximize the number of teams that participate in the contest; our secondary goal is to maximize the number of schools. Prior to 2003, we allowed every school to officially register two teams, and unofficially register low-priority "practice" teams whose scores were not recorded. We will now permit schools to officially register more than two teams subject to the following rules:

(1) Schools may register as many teams as they like before the registration deadline. The ICPC web site automatically time-stamps each registration and marks it "pending". (2) No registrations will be allowed after the deadline; see above. (3) Until the deadline, teams will be "accepted" in the order that they registered, up to a maximum of two teams per school, as long as space is available. (4) Third, fourth, and higher teams from a school will always be left "pending" until after the deadline. (5) After the deadline, if any space is available, third teams will be accepted in the order that they registered, then fourth teams will be accepted in the order that they registered, and so on.

There is no limit on the number of teams that may compete from a single institution assuming that sufficient space is available. However, a school's teams may only compete at a single site.