Each yearly competition consists of four contests. All students at each school may compete but the team score is the sum of the best 3 or 5 top scores. Each contest consists of two parts: a written section (called "shorts") and a programming section. Written topics tested include "what does this program do?", digital electronics, Boolean algebra, computer numbering systems, recursive functions, data structures (primarily dealing with heaps, binary search trees, stacks, and queues), lisp programming, regular expressions and Finite State Automata, bit string flicking, graph theory, assembly programming and prefix/postfix/infix notation.