CCC rules and integrity

Every skill this course teaches assumes you will use it under one specific set of rules: the ones the CCC itself writes for the contest you sit. This lesson states the 2026 rules as facts, the same way a problem statement states a bound: not as advice, but as the conditions the contest runs under.

What the internet is for during the contest

The 2026 rules allow internet access for four purposes: editing your code, compiling it, submitting it to the grader, and consulting official programming language documentation. For Python, that documentation is the Python Language Reference at docs.python.org; the rules name that reference page specifically.

Every other use of the internet is forbidden. The rules name email, chat, web search, and code forums explicitly, and they name generative AI tools such as Copilot or ChatGPT explicitly too. None of these are a gray area the rules leave open to judgment; each one is stated outright as not allowed.

Documentation here means a reference you look something up in, not a place you ask a question and get an answer written back to you. A search engine's results page, a chat window, and an AI assistant all return an answer shaped around your specific problem. The official reference only returns what is already written down, the same for every reader, which is what keeps the contest's help identical for everyone sitting it.

The rules do allow you to use any editor or integrated development environment you like, including an online one, since none of that is the internet use they restrict. The one exception sits inside that same freedom: an AI-based tool built into an editor or IDE is banned there too, the same as anywhere else.

Why outside code and outside help are forbidden

The rules also forbid using any source code you did not write during the contest itself. That covers code you wrote yourself beforehand and code you found somewhere else, whether it exists as a file on a computer or as notes on paper. A personal template or a snippet saved from an earlier problem both count as outside code, even though nobody else wrote them.

The reason is simple: the contest measures what you can produce yourself, in three hours, from the problem statement in front of you. A solution assembled from code written at another time, or written by someone else, measures something different, whatever the intention behind bringing it in. The same reasoning covers working with another person during the contest: the result would say less about you and more about the pair or the group behind it.

A short list of physical items is allowed instead: most calculators, rough paper, graph paper, rulers, compasses, and paper translation dictionaries. An electronic translator is not on that list. Neither is printed source code of any kind, including a printout of code you wrote yourself before the contest; the ban on outside code covers paper as well as files.

Breaking these rules, whether by using a forbidden tool or by working with someone else, has real consequences beyond that one contest. The rules describe the affected submission as void, the student's school is notified, and the student can be barred from every future CCC. University of Waterloo admission offers already made can be withdrawn, and in serious cases the school itself can be barred from running the contest again.

One timed window, then a waiting period

You write the CCC at your own school, in person, under a teacher's supervision, even though your answers go to the grader online. The CCC gives every participant a single three-hour window. Your own timer starts once you confirm your information on the grader, so two people starting minutes apart still each get their own full three hours. There is no pause button and no extension once that timer has started.

The window covers both the Junior and Senior contests together: choosing to attempt both does not grant extra time beyond the same three hours. Once your three hours end, submissions to that contest close for you, whatever you were still working on.

The 2026 CCC has one official contest date. After the contest ends, the rules ask participants not to discuss the problems online for 48 hours.

A common misunderstanding is thinking that a rule only applies while you are being watched. Every rule in this lesson holds whether or not anyone happens to be checking at that exact moment. The honesty the contest depends on is the same honesty you would want from anyone else's result you are compared against.

This lesson covered what the 2026 rules allow you to use during the contest, and what they forbid. It also covered why outside code and outside help are treated as a problem regardless of intention. Last, it covered the shape of the contest's single timed window and the quiet period that follows it.