This time we had 24 solutions from 13 authors. Dudiobugtron was nice enough to provide screenshots of some solutions, which I'll show shortly. The approaches were more varied than I expected, though all the really competitive ones used a rotating arm with a moving weight.
Here are some of the less optimized but more interesting solutions:
Our resident alien Kingofthespill built this UFO - I don't want to know how much tweaking it took to get this to work.
Protestboy built this one. It's a really interesting variant in that it keeps balanced and does not break even with the powerful expansion of the rubber.
This bridge was built by Rob Garford. He solved the problem with this kind of approach (the weight of the moving ball) very nicely. Also check out his other bridges, including a slider!
Skrying is known for liking to use rockets, and if that doesn't solve the problem some more rockets certainly will!
And now, without further ado, the winning solution:
?rjan (hmpf, I always have to copy and paste
) already showed promising results in the last contest, but this time he has truly outdone himself. This solution, "The dying Pelican", leaves $5730 and wins the contest. However, he didn't stop here but also solved the level in 4 other ways, including the awesome "Bat".
Here is the zip containing all the solutions, have a look!
Thanks to dudiobugtron for the level and hosting the contest - and the .end file! Also thanks to all those who participated. See you again soon.