Room 4 - Go Joe!
3 from the West and 1 from the Midwest Advance to the Finals.

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

Three is a very popular number in the 2002 Sun Microsystems and TopCoder Collegiate Challenge. It was easy to determine that out of the 16 semifinalists, there were three competitors each from Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology. Through the first three rounds, one student each from those schools, derkuci from Cal Tech and dmwright from Stanford, has advanced to the finals. What wasn't common knowledge, however, was that there was another group of three involved in the tournament, the contingent from the state of Michigan. DjinnKahn is a student at the University of Michigan, milhouse is a Michigan resident, and the 6pm round winner, Joe, is a student at Michigan Tech. Following the pattern set by derkuci and dmwright, who were the one member of their groups of three to advance to the finals, Joe seemed destined to make the finals, after DjinnKahn and milhouse were eliminated earlier in the day.

The 6pm round turned out to be the closest match of the day, with Joe surviving the failure of his Level One and Two problems to advance to the finals with 510.29 final points. Joe, who was the second seed in the MidWest at the beginning of the Collegiate Challenge, is the only finalist who is not from the West Region.

"Surprised and ecstatic" were the first words Joe used when asked to describe how he felt about advancing to the finals. "However, I am a little nervous about the finals," added Joe. "Matching up against the likes of TopCoder veterans dmwright and malpt will be quite a challenge."

ZorbaTHut, the Northeast Regional Champion, actually would have won the match had he not attempted an ill-fated challenge. Entering the "Challenge Phase" with 525.69 points from his Level One and Two submissions, which would eventually pass the system test, ZorbaTHut attempted to challenge the Level One submission of Joe, which he noticed had been submitted with only seconds left in the "Coding Phase". ZorbaTHut ended up being unsuccessful in his challenge, thereby losing 50 points. That one move has cost ZorbaTHut anywhere from $4,000 to $99,000 he could have additionally won in the finals, since the Level One and Two submissions of Joe ended up failing the system test, leaving him with just the 510.29 points he earned on the Level Three problem. Had ZorbaTHut not challenged the Level One submission of Joe, he would have won the room by 15.40 points, 525.69 to 510.29. Instead of advancing to the finals, ZorbaTHut finished third with 475.60 points. Wasteland successfully coded the Level One and Two problems for 489.35 points and a second place finish, while evd earned 449.66 points, also from successfully coding the Level One and Two problems.

"I thought there was a bug and thought it was a good idea at the time," said ZorbaTHut, when asked about his unsuccessful challenge. "Looking at it now, I see that I didn't need to do anything."