MATLAB Programming Contest Blog

April 7th, 2006

Mashup Winner and Obfuscation

We’re now in Daylight and everyone’s code is visible and tweakable. In an attempt to hide his secrets, DrSuess submitted ScrambledEggs, an entry he had obfuscated by replacing all of the variable names by nonsense. This didn’t stop the other contestants, though. It was further obfuscated in Rotten Eggs by Alan Chalker, then tweaked in Rotten to the Root by Nick Howe, and tweaked again in I didn’t start the fire6 by our Mashup prize winner Anders Skjäl.

Obfuscation is considered unsportsmanlike by some, but there are at least two ways to deal with it. The first is to ignore the obfuscated entry, focus on the best clean entry in the rankings, and to try to beat the obfuscator in spite of his antisocial behavior. Another tactic is to build a de-obfuscator. Is anyone up for the challenge? In any case, don’t be discouraged. Obfuscation has shown up in other contests and has never lasted long.

Watch for the announcement of another mid-contest challenge this weekend.

By Matthew Simoneau

17:05 UTC | Posted in Blockbuster | Permalink |

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2 Responses to “Mashup Winner and Obfuscation”

  1. Markus replied on April 7th, 2006 at 18:05 UTC :

    The title of this contest is “Blockbuster”, and the organizers should ensure that it does not change to “De-Obfuscator”. The rules of this contest are that code is shared after twilight, and obfuscation can in my opinion be seen as breaking the rules. Please ban obfuscated entries from now on and save the contest from becoming unattractive for many motivated programmers.

  2. Markus replied on April 7th, 2006 at 18:14 UTC :

    Christian Ylamaki is the true Mashup Winner with his entry “Optimal last move2″.

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The MATLAB Programming Contest is a semi-annual competition where contestants submit MATLAB code to try to solve a challenge. For more information, see the overview.

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