OK, I had a go at this last year and got through to round 2 but failed miserably after that.

I'm going to have another go this year but this time I'm armed with a better arsenal of algorithms and ideas.

Take a looky here... http://code.google.com/codejam

I've just whizzed through a couple of the round 1 problems from last year and I remember I struggled to think how to solve them before.

Start practising!