The British Informatics Olympiad is the computing competition for schools and colleges. We are proud to present BIO 2003, sponsored by Lionhead Studios.
The 2003 British Informatics Olympiad Final

The 2003 British Informatics Olympiad final took place at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, from 11-13 April.

The competition consisted of two stages. On the morning of Saturday 12th, two written questions were set:

• Compression (pdf) (1 hour) - structured question-and-answer task.
• Pinball (pdf) (45 minutes) - free essay question.

After a break for lunch we moved to a computer room (thanks to Trinity College, Cambridge). Languages available were C++, Pascal and Visual Basic. The following questions were given to the finalists at the start, in no particular order:

• Wonky widgets (pdf)
• Humps (pdf)
• All square (pdf)
• Scary numbers (pdf)

Students were advised, at the start of the programming session, that they were not to attempt all of the questions. Scary numbers was the most popular, followed by Humps and Wonky. No submissions were received for All square (other than ones which always printed IMPOSSIBLE).

No worked solutions or test data for these problems are available - sorry!