New Al Zimmermann's Programming Contest

Another one of the famous Al Zimmermann programming contests has just started. The contest runs until 12 Feb 2011, so there is plenty of time to compete. These contests are very competitive and the level is quite high, so it is difficult to stay in the top. Given that, and that I can only devote a limited amount of time to this, I will just try to compete "a little". For me, the goal will be to end within the first 10% of participants. Right now there are 125 contestants, so I should try to get in rank 12 or better. I quickly wrote a basic program and got in rank 33. Now it is time to improve it and see if I can do better than that over time. I will chart my progress below...

 

Update (14/2/2011): Oh well, the contest ended two days ago, and in the end I didn't get very far at all. My final position was 110, which with 362 contestants sets me at rank around 30.39%. I lost steam in the final weeks of the contest, when I realized that I had run out of easy ideas, and real work was not letting me try harder ones... Let's see if I can do better in the next contest (which is already set to start on Jul 9th).