It is once again that time of year. SANS Holiday Hack opens today (11/07/24) at Noon EST. As previous posts on this blog outline, I am a massive fan of this competition and will once again be trying my hand at it. This year the team has made several changes designed to improve the competition for less experienced players as well, so I encourage anyone interested to give it a shot.
New Changes
- Multi-Act Structure
- Instead of the whole competition releasing at once this year it will be drip-fed to players over a multi-week period. Prologue launches today 11/07, Act I launches 11/11, Act II launches 11/18 and Act III launches 12/2
- Skill Levels
- Challenges will now include an Easy Mode and Hard Mode to accommodate more players
- Challenge Skipping
- Challenges can be skipped to allow players to continue with the story
- Solution Sharing and Streaming
- Prologue, Act I, II, and III can all have their solutions shared or streamed one week after their release. Act III solutions need to be kept private until the end of the competition
- Scoreboard
- A public scoreboard of all competitors will keep track of player progress. Players will also have the ability to create group leaderboards to compete against their friends
Thoughts on the Changes and Plan of Attack
Overall, I think these are good and welcome changes to the SANS Holiday Hack. Challenge Skipping and Skill levels especially provide an easier curve for new people looking to get their feet wet in competition. Personally, I don’t plan to take advantage of these unless absolutely necessary to continue forward. A huge part of why I compete is the feeling of satisfaction when you solve a particularly hard challenge, and I feel that lowering the difficulty or skipping the problem entirely would cheapen that experience for me. As for Solution Sharing, I do intend to post my solutions here when I have them completed. I hope that this change will provide valuable learning experience for competitors getting stuck and lead to more personal growth. A huge part of how I started competing was waiting until the end of the competition and reading other people’s solutions to understand their thought process.
Overall if you’re reading this, I encourage you to give the competition a try. It’s one of the easiest all years to pick up and start and I find there’s no better way to get into the holiday spirit.
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