_We're starting a series of articles describing tricks useful in programming contests_

Being flexible and easy to code, the square root trick is a pretty popular among the Romanian programming contests community. It even has a name :): "jmenul lu Batog" which means Batog's trick. Bogdan Batog introduced it to a few high school students more than 10 years ago and the trick entered romanian coding contest folklore.

Being flexible and easy to code, the square root trick is a pretty popular in the Romanian programming contests community. It even has a name :): "jmenul lu Batog" which means Batog's trick. Bogdan Batog introduced it to a few high school students more than 10 years ago and the trick entered romanian coding contest folklore.

Let’s check out a few problems.