When to end the torture? On one hand, I want to give more people a chance to enter. Some may have been away the last couple of days; others may have been too busy to get to it yet. OK, there is some ego in this too -- I might get in the Guinness Book of Records as Arbiter of the biggest golf game in history;-).
On the other hand, I am acutely aware of the pain I have inflicted on the competitors (and myself -- I am starting to run out of excuses as to why I can't go to the beach today) and it seems humane to end it as quickly as possible. Plus, it is a pretty boring leaderboard if all players are tied at the same score, which is what will happen if we prolong it indefinitely. My inclination is to set a cut-off date of Sunday 9-December. At that point, no further entries will be accepted and all solutions made public. Given that tsanta.pl has many loopholes, a panel of experts will than examine the leading solutions for correctness (disqualifying an entry that fails for files longer than 100 lines, for example). To avoid an obvious conflict of interest, I suggest that only non-competitors be invited to the panel. Suggestions are welcome as to who to invite, but two names that spring to mind are Merlyn and Uri Guttman. Actually, Uri has a "Perl code review" service at his Web site; maybe I should submit some of the more surreal entries for his candid opinion :). Please let me know when you think we should end the game. Santa the Arbiter.
