Match Editorial

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I'm the winner of Room 1 (ZorbaTHut), and it's finally pulling me out of a long slump (for now, at least), but since I'm the writer, it might be a little hard to avoid tooting my own horn, so to speak. Bear with me. I'll talk in the third person so it's not quite so unbearable.

Room 1 started out with an extremely fast submission by ZorbaTHut on the Level One - 3:47, getting 294.77 points and securing the fastest Level One submission in Div-I. John Dethridge submitted about a minute and a half later, getting 290.67 points, followed by SnapDragon a minute after that with 287.37 points, and ambrose twenty seconds later for 285.90 points. malpt and dmwright submitted within five seconds of each other after almost eight minutes of coding, getting 279.03 and 279.37 points. benetin and evd brought up the end, evd spending eleven and a half minutes for 260.29 points.

A minute and a half after evd's Level One submission, ZorbaTHut submitted his solution for the Level Two after nine and a quarter minutes of coding, getting the fastest Level Two submission as well as 499.02 points. Following him after slightly more than 3 minutes was, again, Snapdragon, spending ten and a half minutes coding the Level Two and getting 487.81 points for his work. This time dmwright tied with evd, both spending a little under thirteen and a half minutes, getting 456.36 and 457.92 points each. malpt and benetin finished last, taking 18:24 for 405.26pt and 22:30 for 367.54pt.

Before benetin submitted his Level Two, however, ZorbaTHut finished up his Level Three in only fifteen and a half minutes, getting 712.42pt, finishing the entire set in only 28 and a half minutes for a grand total of over 1500 points. Snapdragon finished approximately three minutes later, spending only 15 extra seconds on the 900 but only getting 706.56 points for it (though also beating out benetin's 550.) Snapdragon finished with a grand total of 1481.74 points, well within range of a single challenge.

However, four minutes after Snapdragon's completion, John Dethridge submitted his 900 as well, beating ZorbaTHut's time by 30 seconds for 721.57 points, a total of 1447.43, within one challenge of Snapdragon. And five minutes after that malpt beat John Dethridge's time by almost a full minute, taking barely over 14 minutes of coding time to finish with 735.89 points for the Level Three (the best score in for this problem over the entire division), 1420.18 points total, within one challenge of John Dethridge.

Unfortunately, the next person to complete all three problems - dmwright - placed him 56 points behind malpt. dmwright took 20:39 to earn 628.27 points. Next was ambrose, a mere 28 points behind dmwright. It must have been very frustrating when evd beat ambrose's time on the 900 by a minute, beating ambrose's score by less than a single point despite spending almost three minutes more on all the problems together.

By 47 minutes into the match everyone in Room One had submitted all three problems, with the exceptions of benetin and thekcc. benetin was still working on his Level Three solution, which he eventually submitted just before the end of the match for 438.21 points, getting second-to-last with a total score of 1072.04. thekcc, on the other hand, had opened all three problems and left with no submissions, clearly an attempt to lower his rating to get out of Room One (and frankly, I can't blame him - Room One is brutal.)

Challenge Phase could have been devastating, as the only person who couldn't raise their rank by a single challenge was dmwright. However, almost all the solutions were bugless. ambrose successfully challenged benetin's 900pt, dropping benetin's 8th-place to a lower-scoring 8th-place but raising ambrose two ranks, but then unsuccessfully challenged benetin's 550pt, dropping ambrose back to 7th again. benetin attempted to kill ZorbaTHut's 900 on a worst-case efficiency challenge, but failed. There were no other challenges, despite all the competitors looking for anything to use.

System tests proved the quality of the submissions - every remaining problem passed all the tests, leaving the winners ZorbaTHut, Snapdragon, and John Dethridge. Despite the fastest Level Three in the division, malpt missed placing by 27 points.

This round was good to the ratings in Room One. ZorbaTHut gained 148 rating points, Snapdragon 93, and John Dethridge 76. malpt gained the fewest, getting only 37. The only people to lose rating were dmwright (dropping 4 points from his astronomical rating of 2932, now only leading NDBronson by 17 points), benetin (losing 68 points), and thekcc , capping out his maximum drop in one round by diving 170 rating points, plummeting to rank 37 and barely going yellow.