the key to actually winning was happening to know that there was a secret
It wasn't a secret to the winner. ;-) So I think justice was served there. And who can prove that Ton's magic formula is the final word? It's just possible someone might have invented a more magical formula than Ton and out-Ton-ed Ton. I know I tried. :-) Update: it turns out a more magical formula was indeed available all along!

Seriously though, I agree with you that it was unfortunate that Fonality chose a problem where knowing of a previous similar golf gave a significant advantage. They didn't do it on purpose and I'm sure if they'd have known, they would have set a different problem. Having said that, I still enjoyed golfing on the non-magic-formula parts of the problem and found that to be challenging-in-the-extreme ... to the point of melting my brain at times. :-)

In reply to Re^7: Perl Golf Ethics by eyepopslikeamosquito
in thread Perl Golf Ethics by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.