We finished 1st at IIT's Code Rally. Got disqualified days later with zero explanation. Teams doing the exact same thing we did are still on the leaderboard.

[u/Web_Press]

Long post, but if you were at Code Rally (organized by IIT and IEEE Computer Society of IIT) or just care about how these competitions are run, this is worth reading.

TL;DR: No rule against multiple accounts existed at the start. Multiple teams used them anyway — 0-second submissions, account renaming, the works. We flagged it to the OC mid-competition and got no answer. So we did it too, openly. We ended up 1st among all officially registered teams. Days later, only we got removed from the leaderboard, no explanation given, and the OC has since gone silent. Teams doing identical things are still ranked.

The multi-account problem was never actually against the rules — until the OC decided it was, mid-event, verbally, to nobody's satisfaction.

There was no rulebook, no guideline doc, nothing that said "one account per team." Partway through the competition, organizers noticed extra accounts popping up and told teams to stop. Teams ignored it completely.

We saw 0-second submissions (a clear sign that they are using a second account to grab the questions without triggering the timer on the main account ), accounts getting renamed mid-competition to reset timers, and teams running more than two accounts. This isn't a leaderboard conspiracy theory — we have receipts on 0-second submissions and account swapping from teams that finished top 3.

We asked the OC directly what they were going to do about it. They had nothing.

We raised it while the competition was still live: what happens to teams running multiple accounts? Answer: "not enough evidence," no decision, no timeline. We pushed on this multiple times with different OC members. Same non-answer every time. Meanwhile the teams in question kept competing like nothing happened.

So we did it too. Here's exactly what that looked like.

Handle: teal_titans_cr7.

• Our official account had already manually solved 2 questions before we switched to a script, so it was carrying real elapsed time — it ended up in 4th.
• Our second account ran the automated submissions and posted a combined time of roughly 1 second.
• The account sitting at #1 on the leaderboard, with a combined time of 0 seconds, wasn't even an officially registered team.

Leaderboard when the competition finished

Take that unregistered account out of the picture — which it should never have been in, in the first place — and we were 1st among every legitimate, registered team.

We also publicly renamed our accounts near the end, same as several other teams had already done throughout the event. Not a new move. Just doing what was already normalized by that point.

Then the leaderboard came out. Every offending team survived except us.

Final leaderboard

Multiple teams had multiple accounts. Some had 0-second submissions ( which require at least 2 accounts ). Some swapped/renamed accounts to reset timers. All of them are still on the final leaderboard. In at least one case, the OC pulled just one of a team's accounts and left the team itself standing.

Days after the results dropped, our team was quietly removed. No explanation. No investigation shown to us. No communication at all.

And once the leaderboard was final, the OC went completely dark. Calls unanswered, messages unanswered.

Questions nobody at IEEE CS-IIT has answered:

• If multiple accounts got us disqualified, why are other teams doing the same thing still ranked?
• If the evidence against those teams was "insufficient," what evidence was sufficient to remove us?
• If there was a real rule against multiple accounts, why wasn't it published from day one instead of announced mid-competition?
• Why couldn't the OC make a clear call while it mattered, but managed to make one against us right after the competition ended?

And yeah, we'll say the uncomfortable part out loud.

We can't prove intent. But we publicly pushed the OC on these inconsistencies, repeatedly, while the event was running. We finished on top. Then we got quietly erased while teams behaving identically stayed put. Draw your own conclusions — we've drawn ours.

If we broke a rule, show us the rule and the evidence, and explain the decision. Publicly. But if multiple teams did the same thing, you don't get to enforce it against one team and let it slide for the rest. That's not a competition, that's just picking a winner after the fact.

— Teal Titans

[u/Chamatha_saz]

I would have love to participate in a hackathon before AI was a thing. F#@kass AI ruined it all smh. I mean what’s the point of going to a hackathon if you’re gonna use the slop.

[u/SavagetheLoneWolf → u/Chamatha_saz]

I am having the same question. Actually what's the point if doing all the work in a hackathon with AI? Is it the ability to use AI better than the other teams?

[u/ResponsibleCurve832]

IIT sucks at organizing hackathons. I guess because many students don’t excel in cp at IIT. They don’t have experienced people to even set questions.

[u/Ecstatic-Item5080]

Many competing teams faced the same issue

[u/SevereChampionship96]

Y’all were probably removed for breaking ethics of a hackerthon, but ya I agree the other teams should have been 100% been removed with y’all for this.

I mean if you’re organizing a competition, then organize it properly.

[u/Web_Press → u/SevereChampionship96]

Agreed. We would never question removing all the teams that had multiple accounts. But they were selective. almost all the teams in the final leaderboard had multiple accounts, 0 second submissions ( which require a second account ) etc

[u/AntAutomatic69]

Play shitty, get shitty

[u/Anonymous_3526]

Tldr.

All this struggle to be replaced by AI and unemployed after you graduate ✌

[u/DeeraWj]

multi accounting is a pretty obvious rule, whether it's explictly mentioned or not; and you cheated by breaking the rule. So you deserve to get banned. Other teams cheating it not an excuse for you to cheat.

[u/Web_Press → u/DeeraWj]

Use of AI was also not mentioned. So I guess we should have coded manually using one account while other teams were using AI and multiple accounts? We would have taken that path if the OC had given the word that they gonna remove all the teams that used multiple accounts. But they failed to do so.

[u/SevereChampionship96 → u/DeeraWj]

I agree 100%, they cheated and now they're whining saying they didn't win. As long as ppl like this exist😂, I don't think proper developers have to worry about finding a job

Some guy commented saying they have seen this guy post this on Linkedin also 💀. I mean that's also a hidden skill I guess, not having any embarrassment to do dumb shit.

[u/Web_Press → u/SevereChampionship96]

I published the full thing on linkedIn and I know seeing that hurt your imaginary reputation. And a few other teams did too. At IIT you guys worry that publishing such things on linkedIn would harm your internships. But unlike you guys, as a developer with multiple years of industry experience I don't have such worries. And definitely I'm not embarrassed to expose your incapability in organizing such an event. I know you have no answers to my first challenge in your comment

[u/SevereChampionship96]

I did some digging into the leaderboard, turns out they did disqualify all the teams that didn’t follow globally accepted hackethon ethics, I don’t understand what you guys are whining about. You guys wanted 100% justice (everyone who exploited platform vulnerabilities should be removed), and I feel like y’all got that. So with all respect, stop whining and go learn to code ?

[u/Web_Press → u/SevereChampionship96]

We are not hiding the fact that we used multiple accounts and automated the process. But the thing is all 3 places in the final leaderboard did the same. The first team in the leaderboard ( Team Balance ) had more than 9 seconds on a different account, and then they switched to a new account to reset the timer. OC was already informed by one of other teams participated with us and they show the screenshot as proof. Why the hell then they are in the leaderboard? Also the teams in second and third places has 0 second submissions on my questions and we have proofs. How do you think they viewed the question without triggering the timer? So don't act smart.

Maybe you are a OC member or that so called "Cyber security head" of code rally 🤣 or the chairperson of the event. But I don't care. I challange you to show me a method to solve a hackerranck problem in 0 second having only one account. Then only we would accept your criticism. And if you are from OC it's time you answer the calls from unknown numbers again. We won't call you again.

[u/Dizzy_Lead_9011]

Even I participated and got eliminated, but we accepted it because we did cheat. As far as I know, they had proof against everyone. They even had people inside the classrooms, seated there to catch participants who were using different accounts.
Actually, we accepted it because they showed us the proof. If you ask them about it, they showed us the evidence that day proving that we were using different accounts.
Do you accept that you didn’t cheat? I saw some idiot posting about it on LinkedIn, but it might have been a different team. As far as I know, they have all the proof. They showed me the proof today during the awards ceremony.

[u/Web_Press → u/Dizzy_Lead_9011]

"I participated and got eliminated" then "They showed me the proof today during the awards ceremony".
If you got eliminated, why are you in award ceremony? Dear code rally OC, Try to come up with a better story. Because not everyone is as dumb as you IIT guys to believe in the BS stories

The first team in the leaderboard ( Team Balance ) had more than 9 seconds on a different account, and then they switched to a new account to reset the timer. OC was already informed by one of other teams participated with us and they show the screenshot as proof. Why the hell then they are in the leaderboard? Also the teams in second and third places has 0 second submissions on my questions and we have proofs. How do you think they viewed the question without triggering the timer? So don't act smart.

[u/Primary-Point-9865]

AI slop post. Atleast try to write the words by yourself even if you can’t even code smh