XAVIER PLOURDE

ABOUT

I started Competitive Programming in 2019, and eventually reached a peak rating of 2353 (International Master) on Codeforces.
In Fall 2022, I started a Competitve Programming club at Berkeley, and my team placed third at ICPC Regionals in both 2022 and 2023.

PROBLEMS I'VE AUTHORED

As president of my high school computer science club, I created over 150 original problems for implementation-based practice contests, as well as 24 competitive programming problems for contests that were open to participants worldwide.
Here are some of the highlights:

MAXIMUM DONUT     Difficulty: Hard

Use prefix sum arrays and a clever formula to find the largest "donut" shape in a 2D grid

INFECTIOUS LETTERS     Difficulty: Easy

Find which characters in a string are "infected" using some observations

BIRDWATCHING     Difficulty: Medium

Use an ordered map to find the best way to place cameras to take pictures of birds

NUMBER PLACEMENT     Difficulty: Medium

Use Depth-First Search and the Sieve of Eratosthenes to place prime numbers in a grid

MAXIMUM PLUS SIGN     Difficulty: Medium

Similar to maximum donut, use prefix sums to find the maximum plus sign in a grid

PLANE AND SIMPLE     Difficulty: Hard

Use Knapsack Dynamic Programming to optimally place luggage on a conveyor belt

NOTABLE CONTESTS I'VE DONE