Best of PPCG 2019 – Now Accepting Nominations!

Question

You have chosen the categories for PPCG's "Best of 2019". We're going with 16 categories this year. Since all you amazing people have offered up a collective total of 16,000 rep in bounties, we can include all categories with a positive score.

So here is what we'll do: I will post one community wiki answer for each of the 16 categories. Nominations should be edited into these answers in any order (e.g. feel free to add late nominations to the top so that they're more visible). They should include a prominent link to the nominated post, the corresponding user, as well as a bit of text about why the post was nominated and would deserve the award. Self-nominations are welcome.

In a week, we will turn this post into the actual vote by adding comments to each answer which correspond to the different nominees. If needed, this period may be extended.

Especially during the first few hours of the nomination process, I would recommend writing up a nomination elsewhere and just copying it into the post in one go, because there will probably be quite frequent edits, and SE has no way of merging conflicting edits.

Answer 1

Wild card

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

• I (@KevinCruijssen) nominate all @stasoid's answers for the Add a language to a polyglot challenge. 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.
• I (@S.S. Anne) nominate ceilingcat for his helpful and constructive comments. 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 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).

• I (@KevinCruijssen) nominate @Grimmy with this 05AB1E answer. After a pretty lengthy and impressive challenge description, they showed this to-the-point 4-byter which literally all other answers (except for one) ported since it's the shortest approach. To quote the top two comments: "Hmm, that doesn't bode well for this challenge if it can be simplified that easily" and "You have approximately 1 byte of code for 800 bytes of challenge explanation. :p".

Answer 3

Best Above-and-Beyond Answer

Repost of last year's

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

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I (@KevinCruijssen) nominate @KamilaSzewczyk's Malbolge answer here. 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 double (pun intended) as impressive and insane, thus worthy of being nominated here.

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I (@user41805) nominate Deadcode's ECMAScript regex (+ molecular lookahead) answer to the divide input by the square root of 2 challenge. Quoting the first line of the submission,

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

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I (@Lyxal) nominate another one of @KamilaSzewczyk's Malbolge answers here. 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, I'd say it deserves a nomination.

To quote the last line in the answer:

It's working!

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I (@a'_') nominate one of @KamilaSzewczyk's Seed answers here. 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 Merseene twister; thus the answer is worthy of being nominated here.

Answer 4

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.)

Nominations

• 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.
• 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.

Answer 5

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.

• I (@Bubbler) nominate Construct a pentagon avoiding compass use, asked by @Ad Hoc Garf Hunter. 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.

• I (@Bubbler) nominate Biggest Irreducible Hello World by @Mason. 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.

• I (@user41805) nominate Can a neural network recognize primes? by A. Rex, the first neural-networks challenge that eventually led to 4 more neural-networks challenges in 2019.

Answer 6

Most Unconventional Non-esoteric Language

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

Nominations

• I (@RGS) nominate Arnauld for his work with JavaScript. Arnauld consistently posts in JS and consistently posts very competitive answers, more often than not with some really interesting mathematical touches.
• I nominate Galen Ivanov for his work in Red. He is currently the only active person using Red to answer challenges, often producing fairly competitive answers.

Answer 7

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.

• I (@Bubbler) nominate @Anders Kaseorg's answer to Construct a pentagon avoiding compass use. 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 8

Most elegant spec

Repost of 2018

Writing an interesting challenge is tough, not just in thinking up a good idea, but in specifying it clearly enough without taking pages of text. This category is for challenges whose specification is a pleasure to read, summing up exactly what is required succinctly and unambiguously.

Answer 9

Best Explained Answer

Awarded to a user who explains a complex solution in the best way.

Answer 10

Unique idea

Awarded to the first person that doesn't use the algorithm that all answerers up to that person of the challenge use in the challenge.

Answer 11

Trickiest Challenge

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

• I (@KevinCruijssen) nominate @DiscreteGames' Make a Bowl of Alphabet Soup challenge. It didn't seem to hard at first (definitely not trivial either though), but actually was surprisingly tricky to create a solution for.

Answer 12

Rookie of the Year - Challenges

Repost of 2018

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).

• I (@KevinCruijssen) nominate @DiscreteGames' Would this string work as string? challenge. 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.

• I (@Lyxal) nominate @IshaqKhan's Swapping "Good" and "Bad" challenge. 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.

• I (@a'_') nominate @ouflak Check if a string is entirely made of the same substring. 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.

• I (@user41805) nominate Stefan Mesken's Machine Learning Golf: Multiplication challenge. It's the second neural-network challenge, and it has resulted in answers that hardcoded the computation in interesting ways.

Answer 13

Most Collaborative Answer

goes to one that incorporates significant ideas from as many users as possible

Answer 14

Most unexpected approach

Awarded to the author of the solution to a challenge that is completely different from the obvious approaches, especially if it beats all other answers.

Answer 15

Best tip

Best answer to a tips question.

Nominations

(Self-Nomination): My (@Lyxal) answer here to tips for golfing in Keg. 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.

(Exclusive-Nomination): I nominate @Arnauld's answer here for is it possible to make a clamp function shorter than a ternary in JS?. It was the most upvoted answer to a tips question in 2019 with an impressive 23 upvotes.

Answer 16

Most Clever Optimization

When an existing answer is optimized with a bizarre and surprising change.

An off-site real-world example would be the fast inverse square root hack.