This post is part 2 of the QHack 2023 series
We hope you've enjoyed what QHack — the one-of-a-kind celebration of quantum computing — has served up for you so far. A few days ago, we began releasing tutorial problems onto the QHack coding challenge platform.
As of this morning, the real deal is here! Twenty piping hot coding challenges are live. If you haven't already, visit the QHack website to register. Once you've created an account and joined a team (which can be just you or up to 4 members), you can access the problems from our coding challenge platform.
This year, by solving our challenges you can follow our heroes, Zenda and Reece, as they fix coffee machines, make circuits from photocopiers, entangle a robot swarm, and defeat an evil sentient quantum computer! You can read about their adventures in more detail below. There'll also be a ton of fun prizes on offer for the top teams, including hardware credits, thousands of dollars worth of electronics, virtual mentorship, and QHack swag, all thanks to our generous sponsors. See more details on the QHack prize page!
Coding Metastory
Let's give a quick rundown of the heroes, villains, and juicy quantum computing content you can expect to find in our problems. Each category consists of five loosely connected challenges, increasing in difficulty. None of them strictly depend on the others, and they may be attempted in any order. If you like a good linear yarn, feel free to go through them in order. If you prefer your narratives nonlinear, there is no disadvantage to doing the challenges in any order, and you can always check out the Coding Metastory page to get a sense of the overall arc!
Office Hijinks
These days, quantum computing is everywhere, even in the office! At Trine's Designs, workers use quantum computing for whimsical and occasionally ridiculous purposes. Two star employees, Zenda and Reece, get to build clocks, fix coffee machines, do network planning, and even unmask a lazy coworker! Join them in a world of patently absurd patents and low-stakes hijinks.
Bending Bennett's Laws
The eccentric inventor behind Trine's Designs, Doc Trine, has a new invention: timbits! But ever the fan of excursions, diversions, divagations and explanations, she insists that Zenda and Reece must cover the basic laws governing quantum information before learning about timbits. They will encounter reversible computation, encryption, causality, and find out how to use a photocopier to simplify quantum circuits! But beware: this shaggy doc story may leave a 'bit' to be desired.
A Tale of Timbits
Doc Trine has been apprehended by freelance security analyst Ove A. Heard, and placed in a hyperdimensional jail for future crimes against time. To determine Trine's location and rescue her, Zenda and Reece will need to build useful tools from the janky old equipment lying around the office. You can aid them in their quest to dust off an 8-ball, identify mystery boxes, build a quantum radar and even assemble an entangled robot swarm. Your reward: timbits, a resource powerful enough to solve NP problems and punch a hole in the spacetime continuum!
The Fall of Sqynet
Zenda and Reece fall through a crack in spacetime to discover that Sqynet, a conscious quantum computer, is threatening to wipe out life in our galaxy as we know it. The Rebel Alliance has entrusted Zenda and Reece with a treacherous task: destroying Sqynet once and for all. Having collected some data about Sqynet's hardware, let's now help them devise some strategies to vanquish this galactic threat!
Register on qhack.ai and dive into the QHack Coding Challenges to join Zenda and Reece's adventures!
About the author
David Wakeham
Having fun at the intersection of quantum algorithms, symmetry, statistical learning theory and large language models.