PyRaspThe daily contest
Every UTC day has one objective. The day flips at 00:00 UTC: a new objective takes the board, and the previous day's objective moves to the practice archive. The same objective stays all day, so you can start whenever suits you.
Before you press Start
The day's page shows only enough to decide whether to play:
- the objective's title and difficulty (Easy, Medium or Hard);
- the budget your build must stay under;
- the time limit;
- how many makers have started, and how many have solved it;
- a countdown to the next objective.
The summary and the full statement stay hidden until you start. Once you have an attempt running, the Task tab holds the complete statement, the budget, the time limit and the seconds-per-dollar rate — the Workspace tour covers the tabs and buttons.
Starting
Sign in, then press Start. The button shows the day's limit, for example Start · 1 h on the clock. The server records the exact start time and sets your deadline:
| Difficulty | Time limit |
|---|---|
| Easy | 60 minutes |
| Medium | 120 minutes |
| Hard | 180 minutes |
You get one attempt per UTC day. Pressing Start again, or reopening the page, returns you to the same attempt — there is no restart and no way to reset the clock. The deadline is your start time plus the time limit.
The server clock
The countdown you see in the workspace is driven by the server, not your device: the timer's tooltip reads "Time left (server clock)", and the deadline is a timestamp the server stored when you started. Changing your computer's clock, sleeping the machine, or closing the tab changes nothing about how much time you have left. The timer turns red in the last five minutes.
At zero the attempt becomes timed out: the workspace says "Time is up", Submit is disabled, and the server refuses further submissions for it. Your build stays readable. When the day ends, the objective becomes untimed practice — see leaderboards and ties for the archive.
If you close the tab
The attempt keeps running. This is the point of the server-side deadline: nothing you do in the browser can pause it, and nothing about the browser can make it run faster or slower. Your two files are saved in the browser as you type, so when you reopen the attempt they are where you left them, with the remaining time recomputed from the server deadline. If a submission was still waiting for the judge, the workspace picks it up and keeps showing its result — see submissions and verdicts.
Going deeper
- The clock that scores you is a pair of server timestamps: the moment of your Start and the moment your accepted submission arrived. Waiting for the judge uses none of your time.
- Run and Run tests never touch the clock or the server — only Submit does.
- The workspace compares the server's current time (sent with the day and attempt data) to your device's, so the countdown stays right even if your device's clock is wrong.