Since this is the end of an era, I just wanted to express my utmost gratitude for all the years you all have been doing this and the enjoyment I’ve had throughout. Other obligations prevented me from competing this time, but I’ll always look back fondly on the previous contests. I look forward to whatever else you all do to engage the user community in the future!

Bittersweet moment. Looking forward to what the future will bring!

So, yes, you may submit until the very end.

There is some strategy involved in this. As Ned noted in the blog back in November, “Once we get so close to the end of the contest that your code can’t be scored until after the deadline has passed, nobody can see and modify your code before the end.”

Thanks for playing!

Helen

Best
Oleg

y—h—-all–w
o-this-for–t-o
r-has—-each-r
keep——–and
-d-p—–list–
given-u—n—-
-t-news-bits—
job-week–some-
-r—i—–f–g
—c-g–want–a
–math–o–w–v
–another-maybe
–j-l-e-d–r-e-
-good-r-same-s-
–r—e——t-

Missing words: |better| |challenge| |crossword| |helpful| |intern| |know| |knows| |multiply| |newspaper| |position| |possibly| |puzzle| |would| |you| |your|

I knew in this other kind of ranking I would have gained some positions… :-)

see you on the next contest

Highest No. of 1st places:
1= Alex P. (18)
1= Alfonso Nieto-Castanon (18)
3 Abhisek Ukil (12)

Highest No. of 1st places in daylight;
1 Alex P. (18)
2 Abhisek Ukil (12)
3 Sergey Y. (11)

I have also got the ranking as suggested by Francesco, but it would possibly be a bit long for this comment… 97 unique participants. The top ten are:
Alfonso Nieto-Castanon (Place of the best submission: 1)
Nicholas Howe (6)
Magnus S (8)
Abhisek Ukil (9)
Dimitris Kaliakmanis (10)
Yitzchak (12)
Fel (13)
Michael C. (14)
Alan Chalker (17)
the cyclist (20)

The only Francesco in that ranking comes in at 56th place with the best submission on place 1074.

Does anybody else want to know her/his place in the player ranking?

I agree with Magnus and his suggestions. Another one that comes to mind is the ‘highest no. of 1st place’ prize. That would be a carrot many tweakers will seek and can be easily implemented using the All the Leaders stats.

Also like there is a ‘invite your friend’ page for Matlab web seminars, it would be nice to have one for the contest as well.

One thing to Matlab Contest GREAT Team:

we have the submissions classification: 1 rank for each submission,

is it possible to have also a player classification?

i.e. 1 rank = 1 player (only the best submission of this player)

Looking at the statistics page, the number of submissions is quite low during daylight (except for the last 15 minutes, of course). Maybe another prize for ‘Most hours lead’ or ‘Most hours lead during daylight’ would be a possibility to encourage more activity in daylight.

Alfonso would have won ‘Most hours lead’ as well this time with 29:16 (hh:mm) ahead of Alex P. (26:41) and Nicholas Howe (20:06).
Sergey Y would have won ‘Most hours lead during daylight’ with 17:18 with Michael Völker second at 15:07 and myself third at 12:36.

For the sake of posterity, I have been able to figure out the scoring formula and am posting it here as I traditionally do. As usual, it’s very similar to the recent contests:

score = k1*result + k2*e(k3*runtime) + k4*max(complexity-10,0) + k5*nodes

Where:

k1 = 0.01
k2 = 0.002
k3 = 4/30 (0.1333333)
k4 = 10
k5 = 0.01

Good luck to everyone in these final minutes of the contest!

Only moves can be used to make this vine have the best score possible. Longest possible vine will hit the bottom left corner of the board.

When I was newer to the contest it was always a thrill to see my name listed as a runner up even if I didn’t win a prize. So let me congratulate Alfonso, Robert Macrae, Kurt Janssens and Martin F. for being in the hunt and giving me something to shoot for! The contest is more fun the more people enter, and it looks as though one of those names is a new one.

For those looking to jump into the contest at this point, I plan to post to the newsgroup a summary of the techniques used in my Twilight code. I probably won’t get to it until this evening, though — gotta work on the Early Bird prize. ;-)