The British Informatics Olympiad is the computing competition for schools and colleges. We are proud to present BIO'99.

The 1999 British Informatics Olympiad Final

The 1999 British Informatics Olympiad final took place at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, from 26-28 March.

The competition consisted of two stages. On the morning of Saturday 25th, two written questions were set:

• A piece of cake (1 hour) - structured question-and-answer task.
• References (45 minutes) - free essay question.

After a break for lunch we moved to a computer room (thanks to Cambridge University's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics). Languages available were Turbo C++ 3.1 and Turbo Pascal 7.0 and - a special exception for this final only - QBasic 1.0. The following questions were given to the finalists at the start, in no particular order:

• Card shuffling
• Zig-zag numbers
• Spy vs spy - part one.

Those who submitted a correct solution to Spy vs spy - part one were then given the question

• Spy vs spy - part two.

We gave the finalists 4 hours to solve these problems. Suffice it to say, no-one was able to solve all four questions in the time available!