Each team, armed with a single desktop PC and whatever reference materials they could carry, was given five hours to solve eight programming problems. A dull roar of tense whispers and clicking keyboards filled the room as contestants tackled such challenges as translating a message of garbled Morse code and developing a spreadsheet program. Teams were ranked by the number of problems they solved correctly. Among teams that solved the same number of problems, ranking was determined by the least number of penalty points. One penalty point was assessed for each minute a team took to solve each problem, and 20 penalty points were assessed for each incorrect solution submitted.
Complete standings are here.
I felt really blessed to have done so well, though I felt a little disappointed because the margin between us and first place was so small. We were extremely pleased with the outcome of the contest, and the fact that our hard work had paid off.