A: Eternal glory!
A: No. You can participate by submitting as few as one bracket file containing up to 100 million brackets (~900 MB). The option to submit up to 1,000,000 files is available for those who have the resources and wish to maximize their chances of finding the perfect bracket.
A: Use the alphabetical list of teams provided at the end of this document. For the at-large and automatic qualifier play-in games, bits are assigned based on the type of play-in game and the region it feeds into. Use the Region Order to determine the bit assignments (Bits 0–3), and the alphabetical order of team names to determine bit values. If both play-in games feed into the same region, assign bits based on the seeds: higher-seeded teams to Bit 0 (at-large) or Bit 2 (automatic qualifier).
A: No. The files must be in the specified binary format without compression to ensure consistency and verifiability.
A: You can use any programming language as long as you adhere to the file format and submission guidelines.
A: No. You can generate your brackets using any method or algorithm.
A: The winner is determined based on the order of hashes in your hashes.txt file and the position of the perfect bracket within the bracket file. See the Winner Determination section in the instructions for detailed tie-breaker rules.
A: Yes. Bits 67–71 are unused and should be set to 0 to maintain the 9-byte structure of each bracket.
A: For the Final Four and Championship games, refer to the Bit-to-Game Mapping section in the instructions. The bit values depend on the regions involved and the predefined Region Order.
A: