I gave that issue some consideration, and decided that it raised more problems than it solved. Different people may take fairly radically different approaches to solve the problem.

It can very difficult to make a judgement call on someone elses code. What I consider elegant may not be what you, or anyone else, does. I felt if I was the sole judge, I might appear arbitrary as to why I selected one and not another. In addition, getting multiple people involved in judging involves time commitments that I have no way of managing. And to be honest, I didn't feel like fielding calls of "Well, this way is better, why didn't you pick that"?

I also thought about saying "Please don't start coding until 2000/12/01", but knew that I'd have no control over that, unless I with held a critical piece of information until that date. If this turns out to be a problem, maybe next time I'll do it that way.

I'd like to do this every month. Maybe the first one won't go off without a hitch. That's why I'm asking for input, and taking feedback. I see one occurrence already of where I failed to clarify the specifications enough.

And the very real reality is that no contest is completely fair. You won't win the $1,000,000 from McDonalds if you can't go there to get game pieces, and you have no stamps to mail in for pieces with. I feel like I've tried to be as fair as possible, within reason. If someone disagrees, I'll factor that in. But I seriously doubt that no matter how it's done, everyone will be happy.