Winners of the Oxford Computer Science Programming Competition Announced

The winner of the latest Oxford Computer Science Programming Competition, and recipient of the £400 prize was Thomas Ahle, a third year at Magdalen College, who wrote the Numberlink program.  The runner-up prize of £200 went to James Wallis, a first year at St Anne's College, who wrote Tentacular.   

The cash prizes were generously provided by the competition sponsor Morgan Stanley. The competition, which was open to all Oxford undergraduates, saw students writing a programme that would successfully play “Flow Free“,  the well known Android and iPhone puzzle app.

Thomas commented “It was very challenging and addictive participating in the competition this year. There was a plethora of different ways to solve it and finally arriving at something, working in competition with others was very satisfying.

Paul Lickman of Morgan Stanley visited the Department to meet with winners. 

James added “I enjoyed the challenge of trying to devise a nice solution to the puzzle: since there is no ‘perfect’ method for solving it, and the complexity of puzzles grows very quickly, it was fun trying out different possible methods.”

The competition was organized by the Department’s Mike Spivey. 

Further details of the challenge are given here: http://spivey.oriel.ox.ac.uk/corner/Programming_competition_2012
 

More information about the winning solutions is available here: http://spivey.oriel.ox.ac.uk/corner/Programming_competition_results