Match Editorial

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SRM 102 was the first TopCoder match without cash prizes, although many of the Room One regulars, along with 350 other coders competed anyways. Hopefully this strong interest in single-round matches among the top members (and indeed among all members) will continue in the upcoming weeks and months.

The coding pace in room one is usually fast and furious, and SRM 102 was no exception. John Dethridge and ZorbaTHut both pulled out to an early lead by solving the Level 1 problem in about 4 minutes for scores of 245.17 and 245.86 respectively out of a possible 250. radeye and Yarin followed a minute later for 243.34 and 241.38 points. jonmac was the last person to finish this first problem, but it only took him 10 minutes, and he still had a very respectable 221.74 points for his effort.

Everyone then moved on to the Level 2 problem. radeye moved into the lead at 19 minutes into the competition with his Level 2 submission which earned him 414.35 out of a possible 500 points, and 657.69 points in total. Yarin was the next to submit (4 minutes later), giving him 615.76 total points. ZorbaTHut, benetin, and SnapDragon were in a close battle for third after their Level 2 submissions with 568.94, 564.90, and 559.66 points respectively. malpt opened the level 2 problem, but decided to move on to (and solve) the level 3 problem first for 584.27 points before returning to finish and then submit (and re-submit) the level 2 problem for 150 points. John Dethridge used dynamic programming (instead of brute force) to solve the level 2 problem, and this may have cost him some time, as he required 45 minutes to complete it and only received 223.15 points.

radeye was able to preserve his lead with a very fast level 3 solution at 34 minutes into the competition, for 793.13 out of a possible 1000 points. This gave him an astounding 1450.82 out of 1750 possible points. ZorbaTHut completed a level 3 solution in slightly less time, for 800.85 points, but his combined score after the coding phase was 1369.79 putting him in second place. SnapDragon was in third after coding with 1330.99 points, and benetin was fourth with 1251.67 points. John Dethridge gained ground on the final problem, finishing the coding phase in fifth with 1122.89 points. Both dmwright and jonmac were unable to complete the level 3 problem.

Only one challenge resulted in the coding phase, coming from John Dethridge on jonmac's level 2 solution. ZorbaTHut was not able to pass the system test for his level 2 solution, nor was SnapDragon for his level 3 solution. This allowed benetin to move into second place, and John Dethridge to move into third, while radeye was able to hang on to first place, receiving an impressive rating gain of 134 points.