This time around there were 23 unique solutions (not counting incremental updates) submitted by 10 contestants. Many of them are returning addicts, like Ogre, kingofthespill, Bob, BFC, squint and Andrew. Others posted their first contest entries: BioDroid, Casius, Critters and RyanM all built extremely interesting and inventive solutions, and RyanM even bested many well-established 'Dillo Runners with a score of $2706!
:arrow: Check out all the great contest solutions in this zip!
There were 2 basic ways to solve this level: going over the top and along the bottom. The former presented the important challenge of getting the armadillo across the top as cheaply as possible. The best mechanisms to do that all used the force of the rubber in some way. In the end, using this method, going over the top was considerably cheaper than the alternative.
Building the catcher was the second big challenge. Here, there were again two different routes to take. The obvious, using the bottom two anchor points to build up a tower, and the less obvious and harder to build - but much cheaper - option of creating a kind of suspension bridge from the right.
Using both cheaper options, combined with the sliding mechanism pioneered by PinkPanther, some good old welding and his superhuman tweaking abilities, BFC was able to build a solution that leaves $2762 in the bank, $54 better than the closest competitor! It really looks like a case study in efficient Armadillo Run building:
The next in line were Bob with $2708 (and $2704 using a very different, fun hopping mechanism) and RyanM with $2706. The only other person to break $2700 was Ogre, but only with a little help from Master Yoda.
Now, I'm looking forward to what BFC will come up with for the next contest. Fear not, he's not allowed to compete in that one