Welcome to Al Zimmermann's Programming Contests. You've entered an arena where demented computer programmers compete for glory and for the adulation of their peers.

I run one or two contests per year. Each contest asks that you come up with your best solutions to a set of computationally intensive problems, generally involving sophisticated heuristics. Although I speak of "programming contests", technically you don't need to write a computer program to enter. You can enter whether you use a computer, manual calculations, or tea leaves to solve the problems. You send me solutions, not programs.

To enter a contest, you must register. Once registered, you submit your solutions through this website. You get instant feedback and your name immediately appears on the contest's standings page where, if you've done well, you can start to bask in some of that aforementioned glory.

Upcoming Contest
Contest Starts Ends
Brooklyn Bridge 5 Oct 2024 15:00 4 Jan 2025
A contest's description is not available until the contest begins.
All times are in UTC. Please log on to see times in your local time zone.


Previous Contests
Contest Started Ended First Place Second Place
Description Standings Final Report Stepping Stones 6 Aug 2022 5 Nov 2022 Rafaël Bocquet Spencer / Spencer
Description Standings Final Report Oddly Triangular 7 Sep 2022 8 Sep 2022 Tomas Rokicki Benjamin Butin
Description Standings Final Report AP Math 25 Sep 2021 27 Dec 2021 Jarek Wroblewski Hans-Werner & Matthias Paulsen
Description Standings Final Report Monochromatic Triangles 19 Jun 2021 18 Sep 2021 Hans-Werner & Matthias Paulsen Rikuya Tomii
Description Standings Final Report Sums of Powers 28 Mar 2020 18 Jul 2020 Martin Piotte Rafaël Bocquet
Description Standings Final Report Reversing Nearness 27 Jul 2019 26 Oct 2019 Tomas Rokicki Martin Piotte
Description Standings Final Report Hexagonal Neighbors 3 Nov 2018 2 Feb 2019 Tom Sirgedas Tomas Rokicki
Description Standings Final Report Primorial Soup 23 Sep 2017 23 Dec 2017 Jarek Wroblewski Jeremy Sawicki
Description Standings Final Report Polygonal Areas 10 Dec 2016 11 Mar 2017 Tomas Rokicki Tom Sirgedas
Description Standings Final Report Non-Coplanar Points 5 Mar 2016 4 Jun 2016 Tim Foden Tomas Rokicki
Description Standings Final Report Sums and Products II 28 Nov 2015 27 Feb 2016 Tomas Rokicki Gil Dogon
Description Standings Final Report Sums and Products I 14 Nov 2015 13 Feb 2016 Tomas Rokicki Oleg Vlasii
Description Standings Final Report Delacorte Numbers 4 Oct 2014 3 Jan 2015 Hermann Jurksch & Hugo Pfoertner Arch D. Robison
Description Standings Final Report Alphabet City 18 May 2014 17 Aug 2014 Ivan Kazmenko Igor Dimitrijevic
Description Standings Final Report Graceful Graphs 21 Sep 2013 21 Dec 2013 Tomas Rokicki Jarek Wroblewski
Description Standings Final Report Factorials 19 Jan 2013 20 Apr 2013 Tomas Rokicki Hermann Jurksch
Description Standings Final Report Topswops 13 Nov 2010 12 Feb 2011 Jarek Wroblewski Tomas Rokicki
Description Standings Final Report Son Of Darts 20 Jun 2009 20 Jun 2010 John Morris Herbert Kociemba
Description Standings Final Report Retaining Water 13 Mar 2010 12 Jun 2010 Walter Trump Hermann Jurksch
Description Standings Final Report Point Packing 11 Jul 2009 10 Oct 2009 Hugo Pfoertner Hermann Jurksch
Visit our former web site for older contests.


Unsolicited comments about Al Zimmermann's Programming Contests

"Perhaps the best way to proactively procrastinate I have yet to find!"
– Benjamin Laken, Madrid, Spain

"Here I am, so much actual work to do, but totally entranced by yet another Al Zimmermann programming contest."
– Tom Rokicki, Palo Alto, California

"Your competitions are, without doubt, the best. I may have lost months of my free time but, by Jove, it has been worth every second."
– Mathew Davies, Luton, England

"For this I sent him to college? Oy."
– Al Zimmermann's mother