Room 3 - malpt Continues West Coast Supremacy!

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

As the music of The Pretenders played to open the 3pm round of the 2002 Sun Microsystems and TopCoder Collegiate Challenge, all four coders hoped they would end the match known as a "contender", rather than a "pretender".

Even though local favorite milhouse, an MIT graduate student, recovered from his food poisoning experience and had a larger cheering section, Cal-Berkeley's malpt, who attended MIT as an undergraduate, and whose girlfriend still attends MIT and was in attendance, earned 845.81 final points and a spot in Saturday's final.

"I'm relieved," said malpt, when asked about he felt after the match, and who showed the most emotion of any winner so far today by raising his hands in victory. When asked about his competition in the finals, which includes perennial TopCoder tournament finalist dmwright, malpt remarked, "I beat him in the Regional Finals, so I'm not scared."

All four coders opened the Level One problem first. po was the first competitor to complete it and gained 230.04 points. The three others, almost sensing that po had just submitted, all finished their codes in the next few minutes. malpt earned 228.66 points, milhouse gained 221.02, while ante was awarded 218.60.

Coding by degree of difficulty, all four next opened the Level Two problem. ante, who as just mentioned earned the lowest point total on the Level One problem, was the quickest to code the Level Two problem, earning 326.39 points. malpt, with 317.48 points, once again had the second highest point total for a problem. milhouse was the third quickest with 298.75, while po gained 238.07. When asked about being the slowest to code the Level Two problem, after being the quickest to code the Level One problem, po simply replied, "I just wanted to be careful."

ante and malpt were the only two coders to submit code for the Level Three problem. ante earned 612.34 points on that problem, for a total of 1157.34 overall, and the room lead after the "Coding Phase". malpt was second with 1074.47 points, after gaining 528.33 points on the Level Three problem. milhouse and po were third and fourth, with 519.77 and 468.11 points, respectively.

During the "Challenge Phase", milhouse lost 50 points when his challenge of the Level Two submission of malpt failed. po then changed the entire complexion of the match, when his successful challenge of the Level Three submission of ante, cost ante the 612.34 points he earned on the problem, and dropped him from first to second place overall. ante then tried to put himself back in contention, by trying to challenge the Level Three submission of malpt, who was now the room leader. That challenge failed, however, and cost ante an additional 50 points.

After the "Challenge Phase", the point totals were as follows: malpt (1074.47), po (518.11), ante (495.00), and milhouse (469.77).

The Level One submission of malpt and the Level Two submission of ante were the only submissions to fail the system test.