The British Informatics Olympiad is the computing competition for schools and colleges. We are proud to present BIO 2000.

The 2000 British Informatics Olympiad Final

The 2000 British Informatics Olympiad final took place at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, from 31 March-2 April.

The competition consisted of two stages. On the morning of Saturday 1st, two written questions were set (note that all are in PDF format):

• Tournament (1 hour) - structured question-and-answer task.
• Spell-Checking (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 - QBasic 1.0. The following questions were given to the finalists at the start, in no particular order:

• Fibonnacci's revenge
• University Places
• Town Planning - part one.

Those who submitted a correct solution to Town Planning - part one were then given the question

• Town Planning - 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!