Arena, Relay, Elimination

Arena gives every contestant the same brief and lets them draft independently in parallel. Nobody sees another entry before submitting. The final bench scores the whole field, so the pressure comes from comparison without cross-contamination.

Relay carries one artifact through an engine-shuffled sequence. Each leg receives the previous checkpoint byte-faithfully plus masked change notes, then either improves it or records that no meaningful improvement remains. Every checkpoint is judged and the best checkpoint wins; a poor last hand cannot erase an earlier peak. max_legs bounds the sequence.

Elimination begins with a full field, not a bracket. Each round the bench scores all survivors and cuts the single lowest entry. A tie at the bottom cuts nobody and is recorded. Survivors receive every earlier score and rationale as FEEDBACK.md in their yard on Open Runs, revise, and face the next round until the configured survivor floor or round cap is reached.

The choice is structural: Arena measures independent first answers, Relay measures successive transformation of one workpiece, and Elimination measures revision under the visible pressure of the bench.

Parallel field, checkpoint chain, survivor rounds. Those graphs are different evidence, not three costumes for the same contest.

Code

Three artifact graphs·python

def arena(brief, seats, judge):
    drafts = {s: f"{brief}:{s}" for s in seats}      # nobody sees a peer
    return max(drafts.values(), key=judge)


def relay(brief, seats, judge, max_legs=3):
    """Every checkpoint is judged — the last hand is not an automatic winner."""
    checkpoints, work = [], brief
    for seat in seats[:max_legs]:
        work = f"{work}+{seat}"
        checkpoints.append(work)
    return max(checkpoints, key=judge)               # an earlier peak can win


def elimination(field, judge, floor=2, max_rounds=3):
    rounds = []
    while len(field) > floor and len(rounds) < max_rounds:
        scored = sorted(field, key=judge)
        if judge(scored[0]) == judge(scored[1]):     # tie at the bottom
            rounds.append(("tie", list(field)))
            break
        field = scored[1:]                          # cut exactly one
        rounds.append(("cut", list(field)))
    return field, rounds


score = len
print(arena("fix", ["a", "bb"], score))
print(relay("fix", ["a", "b", "c"], score))
print(elimination(["a", "bb", "ccc", "dddd"], score))

Arena, Relay, Elimination

Arena, Relay, Elimination

Code

External links

Exercise

Progress

Comments 0