Code Decode

 A Coding Based Treasure Hunt

2018

A problem isn't completely solved as long as there is a better solution.

"Hey Edwin, I have come across a coding event. I was thinking maybe you and someone else could team up to represent our school?" said my computer science teacher in school.

I loved coding. I definitely said "yes". We were exposed to JAVA as a subject for a little more than a year before the event, and almost the whole class was familiar with the basic integer problems, string manipulations and 2D array traversals. However, I had solved quite a few medium level problems on HackerRank by then, purely out of interest. Although there was less than a week to prepare, I felt more than ready for it. 

The event was called "Code Decode". It was an inter-school (2 per team) competition; a treasure hunt, except that to get the clue to the subsequent locations, one either had to predict the output of a Java snippet using pen-and-paper, count the total number of iterations, get the final values of variables, or type and run some code across a hidden input and decode its output.

The interesting event started with several teams from various schools in Bangalore. Everyone raced to find clues and solve this athletic treasure hunt, because a clue could point to any of the hundreds of rooms, in the 4-story building. Some were computer labs, the others classrooms, but we had 3 hours. 

Eventually, we got a clue which led us to the room where the treasure hunt had started. We ran like there is no tomorrow. On reaching the room, we were told that the treasure hunt ended there. Little did we know that it was the final clue and by finding it in 2 hours, we got there first (the 2nd team took another 20 mins to finish). They congratulated us on winning.

They had a beautiful trophy which we took with us back to school. It presently shines under a blue LED, on a glass stand, in the Principal's room.

Many were proud that day because only I had expected more than nothing.