Room 1 - Upset City!
Well rested derkuci advances to finals.

Friday, April 19, 2002
By Adam Loss,TopCoder Staff Writer

While they yawned and wiped the sleep out from their eyes, the four coders in the 8am round of the 2002 Sun Microsystems and TopCoder Collegiate Challenge performed before a crowd reminiscent of a Montreal Expos home game, although the tension filled atmosphere provided as much passion as Game Seven of The World Series.

At about 9:50 am, everyone's eyes had cleared enough to see that Cal Tech's derkuci had pulled off a huge upset and advanced to Saturday's final with 600.27 final points. derkuci, who began the competition as the 13th Seed in the West region, defeated DjinnKahn (466.07 final points), who was the top-seed in the MidWest region and the Regional Champion, ambrose (180.11), the top-seed in Southeast region, and zoidal (93.30), the MidWest's second seed.

The competition started with all four coders opening the Level One problem. After compiling and testing for over 20 minutes, DjinnKahn , followed minutes after by zoidal, stopped coding the Level One problem and opened the Level Two problem. "It was just too tedious," said zoidal. "I had already spent plenty of time on it, and needed to move on." ambrose was the first to submit code for the Level One problem, and earned 180.11 points. derkuci stuck with the problem for a long time and ended up earning 140.90.

Following suit, everyone next opened, compiled and submitted the Level Two problem. ambrose was the quickest to submit and earned 476.36 points. derkuci was the fourth to open the problem, but earned the second highest point total, 459.37. DjinnKahn earned 416.07 and zoidal earned 407.77.

All four coders had enough time to open the Level Three problem, but only ambrose, 491.61 points, and zoidal, 483.41, were able to submit their codes before the "Coding Phase" ended. As a matter of fact, zoidal submitted his Level Three code with just seconds remaining.

At the end of the "Coding Phase", ambrose led with 1148.08 points. He was followed by zoidal (984.48), derkuci (600.27), and DjinnKahn (416.07).

Although there was a lot of activity during the "Challenge Phase", the DjinnKahn challenge of the Level Two submission of ambrose was the only success of the phase. That challenge cost ambrose the 466.07 points he earned on that problem, and caused him to drop to second place. zoidal was the leader heading to the "System Test Phase".

The Level One submissions of derkuci, ambrose, and zoidal all passed the system test. derkuci also had his Level Two submission pass, as did DjinnKahn , but zoidal failed. ambrose and zoidal, the only two to submit code for the Level Three problem, saw their codes fail. "I thought my Level Two submission was right, but it ended up timing out," said zoidal. "I knew my Level Three submission was wrong."

"I feel great," said derkuci. "I brought my lap-top with me and last night went to the library and practiced two problems in the TopCoder practice rooms. I then got a good nights rest to sleep off the jet lag. I usually go to bed at 3 or 4am, but last night was in bed at 11pm."