Cast your vote for "Best of CGCC 2019!"

Question

Final phase

You have chosen the categories and the nominees for 2019, now it is time to pick the winners!

Each of the seven categories is represented by an answer to this question, and each of these answers contains all nominations by the members of our community.

Voting mechanism

Each nominee has been added as a comment to its category's answer. In each category, the nominee whose comment has the highest number of votes by December 1,00:00 UTC will be declared the winner of that category.

Further details

Starting now, please do not edit the answers.

Please do not add comments to the answers.

Votes on the question and on answers are meaningless; only votes on comments count.

Feel free to vote for multiple nominees of the same category, including your own posts.

Answer 1

Best Non-Code-Golf Answer

Best answer to a challenge whose winning criteria did not include any code-golfing. King of the Hill, Fastest Code, etc. would be eligible. Proof Golf, atomic-code-golf, etc. are also included. Anything that's not the standard "shortest code length" is eligible.

NOTE: Although there is only one nomination for this category, it has been posted for recognition.

Construct a pentagon avoiding compass use by Anders Kaseorg

Nominated by Bubbler

They achieved the optimal primary score (2 circles) with awesome secondary score (only 13 lines!) using some advanced concepts from projective geometry (which we'll hardly ever see on a recreational programming site here).

Answer 2

Best mathematical insight

On this site we often see answers in languages specifically designed for short code, or designed to be fast. Sometimes, a nice golfing trick or speed-up technique surprises us with its ingenuity, beyond the standard use of that language.

And occasionally an answer shows up that uses an unexpected approach to greatly simplify the problem, and makes us wonder how the author could ever think of that. This usually involves some far-from-obvious mathematical equivalence, or a particularly simple approach to the problem that was not evident at all (once revealed, other answers often follow the same approach).

This category is for the answer with the best mathematical insight or unexpected approach that led to greatly simplifying the problem, in any challenge type (code golf, fastest code, or others). The insight should have led to a significant improvement according to the challenge's metric (code length, run time, or whatever applicable).

NOTE: Although there is only one nomination for this category, it has been posted for recognition.

What's this constructed number's starter? by Grimmy

Nominated by Kevin Cruijssen

After a pretty lengthy and impressive challenge description, Grimmy wrote an incredibly short, to-the-point 4-byter which literally all other answers (except for one) ported.

To quote the top two comments:

Hmm, that doesn't bode well for this challenge if it can be simplified that easily

You have approximately 1 byte of code for 800 bytes of challenge explanation. :p

Answer 3

Best Non-Code-Golf Challenge

Best challenge whose winning criteria did not include any code-golfing. King of the Hill, Fastest Code, etc. would be eligible. Proof Golf, atomic-code-golf, etc. are also included. Anything that's not the standard "shortest code length" is eligible.

Construct a pentagon avoiding compass use by Wheat Wizard

Nominated by Bubbler

As far as I know, this was the first (and is still the only) challenge asking about compass-and-straightedge construction, and it is a very well designed one, at least in my opinion. This challenge also established a good ruleset for possible future challenges of the kind.

Biggest Irreducible Hello World by Mason

Nominated by Bubbler

This was the first proper code-bowling challenge that allowed arbitrarily high scores while not allowing trivial solutions. The challenge was a huge success, getting a few answers with impressive scores.

Can a neural network recognize primes? by A. Rex

Nominated by user41805

The first neural-networks challenge on PPCG that eventually led to 4 more neural-networks challenges in 2019.

Answer 4

Wild card

For a deserving challenge, answer or user that isn't a good fit for any of the other categories.

139 answers to Add a language to a polyglot by stasoid

Nominated by Kevin Cruijssen

This challenge was created in 2016, but @stasoid has been adding new languages every few weeks for the past 2+ years. It's insane to think that this single program can run in 280+ different programming languages, of which 139 of those languages (so roughly halve) were added by @stasoid alone.

ceilingcat for his helpful and constructive comments

Nominated by S. S. Anne

Although he doesn't often post answers, he does post many comments that have helped improve countless solutions. I wouldn't be as good of a code-golfer as I am now without @ceilingcat.

Answer 5

Best Above-and-Beyond Answer

Every once in a while, an answer takes the challenge to the extreme. This prize will be awarded to an answer which went far beyond the expectations of the challenge. This could include a code golf answer that brute-forced/proved the shortest program in some language a graphical-output popcon answer of extreme size and quality a KOTH answer of high complexity which absolutely dominated the competition

The nominees are:

“DDoouubbllee ssppeeaakk!!” by Kamila Szewczyk - Malbolge

Nominated by Kevin Cruijssen

To quote the Malbolge docs themselves:

The day that someone writes, in Malbolge, a program that simply copies its input to it's output, is the day my hair spontaneously turns green. It's the day that elephants are purple and camels fly, and a cow can fit through a needle's eye.

And what @KamilaSzewczyk does in the DDoouubbllee ssppeeaakk!! challenge is at least doubly (pun intended) as impressive and insane, thus worthy of being nominated here.

---

Divide input by the square root of 2 by Deadcode - ECMAScript regex (+ molecular lookahead)

Nominated by user41805

Quoting the first line of the submission,

Regex was never designed to do mathematics. It has no concept of arithmetic.

---

Divide Numbers by 0 by Kamila Szewczyk

Nominated by Lyxal

Even though it may seem like it was written in Polish ("When I opened your program, Chrome attempted to translate it from Polish" -- quote from a comment on the answer), this 362MB answer has stuck with me all year as one of my favourites. I've known right from when I saw it that I would nominate it for a best of CGCC category.

Sure, it's over 20 million times longer than the winning Jelly answer, but for such a volatile language such as Malbolge competing in such a task as theoretically diving numbers by 0, It earns it's nomination.

To quote the last line in the answer:

It's working!

---

“DDoouubbllee ssppeeaakk!!” by Kamila Szewczyk - Seed

nominated by a'_'

A comment has once been posted in "Tips for golfing in Seed" along the lines of:

... There are only two people who know how to golf in Seed, and both of them decided to not share their tips ...

Kamila knowing how to golf in Seed is unique and supernatural, with no one else other than feersum knowing how to golf in it, since it involves reverse-engineering the Mersenne twister; thus the answer is worthy of being nominated here.

Answer 6

Best first-time Challenge Writer

For the best challenge written by someone who has not written a challenge prior to 2019 (i.e., not necessarily a new user, just a new challenge writer).

Would this string work as string? by DiscreteGames

Nominated by Kevin Cruijssen

It was his/her first post, yet is the third most upvoted challenge of 2019. A clear spec right from the get-go, without people needing to comment all kind of questions and suggestions for spec-changes; additional test cases; or things that weren't clear, like we usually see with new users. And it's a fun challenge, with a variety of different approaches in the answers as well.

Swapping "Good" and "Bad" by IshaqKhan

Nominated by Lyxal

I know that I use for planning esolangs, and, with 7k views, it was a breath of fresh air to see such a well-written and simple challenge.

Check if a string is entirely made of the same substring by ouflak

Nominated by a'_'

It's quite rare for a new user to post such a simple and interesting challenge. With 25 votes (very impressive for a first challenge), it was an impressive unique challenge.

Machine Learning Golf: Multiplication by Stefan Mesken

Nominated by user41805

It's the second neural-network challenge, and it has resulted in answers that hardcoded the computation in interesting ways.

Answer 7

Best tip

Best answer to a tips question.

Tips for golfing in Keg by Lyxal

Self-nomination

It was the most upvoted tip on the question, and it is the second most upvoted answer to a "Tips for golfing in " question in 2019.

Is it possible to make a clamp function shorter than a ternary in JS? by Arnauld

Anonymously nominated

It was the most upvoted answer to a tips question in 2019 with an impressive 23 upvotes.

Answer 8

Most Unconventional Non-esoteric Language

Goes to a user who uses a language not normally associated with programming challenges.

Arnauld - JavaScript

Nominated by RGS

Arnauld consistently posts in JS and consistently posts very competitive answers, more often than not with some really interesting mathematical touches.

Galen Ivanov - Red

Anonymous nomination

He is currently the only active person using Red to answer challenges, often producing fairly competitive answers.

Answer 9

Trickiest Challenge

It should look simple and tempt you to start coding right away, but coming up with a good solution should be hard.

NOTE: Although there is only one nomination for this category, it has been posted for recognition.

Make a Bowl of Alphabet Soup by DiscreteGames

It didn't seem to hard at first (definitely not trivial either though), but actually was surprisingly tricky to create a solution for.

Answer 10

Most helpful Sandbox commenter

Rewards a kind soul who took the time and effort to read through challenges in the Sandbox and give helpful feedback.

(I guess a bounty here would be awarded to one of the winner's questions or answers of their choosing.)

Adám

Anonymous Nomination

I nominate Adám for this award, as he is always willing to read through challenges and highlight parts which are unclear. He is also willing to check sandboxed posts on demand, so to speak, if asked in TNB, which is why I'm nominating him.

Bubbler

Nominated by Lyxal

I nominate Bubbler for this award, as they are always reading through the sandboxed challenges and provides helpful comments for challenges. They will be commenting on the challenge whenever the challenge is mentioned in TNB. Also they are very helpful and would mention everything in the challenge that is unclear or needs improvement.