The International Obfuscated C Code Contest

IOCCC Winning Entries by Year

2024/burton - Prize in pentagrammatology - wordle hard mode solver
2024/cable1 - Prize in bot talk - LLM inference engine
2024/cable2 - Prize in murky waters - salmon recipe
2024/carlini - Prize in perfect timing - Intel 4004 emulation
2024/codemeow - Prize in tray planting - bonsai generator
2024/endoh1 - Prize in patient pointillism - slow ray tracer in CPP
2024/endoh2 - Prize in solid body physics - rotating rigid body simulation
2024/ferguson1 - Prize in diabolical logistics - A Pact With the Devil On the Oregon Trail
2024/ferguson2 - Prize in yil-tas - Navajo Code Talker translator
2024/howe - Nice accent eh-ward - mini vi
2024/kramer - Prize in linguistic arithmetic - natural language numerical calculator
2024/kurdyukov1 - Prize in phased periodicity - phase of the Moon
2024/kurdyukov2 - Prize in art restoration - JPEG artifact removal
2024/kurdyukov3 - Prize in virtual quietus - gaming VM and doom
2024/kurdyukov4 - Prize in embiggening - encode without literals
2024/macke - Prize in imitative rebooting - OpenRISC CPU and Linux
2024/maffiodo - Prize in creative interpretation - Jav*script interpreter
2024/mills - Prize in ℤ₃ - Infocom v3 story interpreter
2024/straadt - Prize in sound coding - layered music generator
2024/tmarrec - Prize in cyclonic coding - 3D tornado simulation
2024/tompng - Prize in quasi bijection - vortex encryptor decryptor

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2020/burton - Best one liner - Byte to binary without loops as a 1-liner
2020/carlini - Best of Show - abuse of libc - printf machine
2020/endoh1 - Most explosive - Minesweeper solver
2020/endoh2 - Best perspective - Star Wars crawler
2020/endoh3 - Most head-turning - ASCII clock
2020/giles - Most phony - DTMF encoder/decoder
2020/kurdyukov4 - Best abuse of lámatyávë - Markov chain text generator
2020/tsoj - Most misleading indentation - Asteroids
2020/yang - Best abuse of CPP - PIN-protected program generator

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2019/adamovsky - Most functional interpreter - Unlambda interpreter
2019/ciura - Most alphabetic - Pangram generator
2019/dogon - Best use of space and time - X11 Golly game of Life
2019/duble - Best collaborative graphics - Collaborative graphics editor
2019/endoh - Most in need of debugging - Backtrace quine
2019/giles - Most in need of wide space - WAV reverberator
2019/karns - Most in need of whitespace - Breadth-first search on text
2019/lynn - Most functional compiler - Haskell compiler
2019/mills - Most in need to be tweeted - Machine Learning on text
2019/poikola - Most calendrical - SHA and Prime and Fibonacci
2019/yang - Most in need of transparency - Text scrambler

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2018/algmyr - Most cacophonic - Converts text to sound using font as spectrogram
2018/anderson - Most able to divine code gaps - Visualizer of typographic rivers
2018/bellard - Most inflationary - Image compression demo
2018/burton2 - Best abuse of the rules - Tokenize and count
2018/ciura - Most likely to be awarded - Strunk and White checker
2018/endoh1 - Best tool to reveal holes - Animated GIF from text
2018/endoh2 - Best use of python - Monty-Pythonesque animated quine
2018/ferguson - Best use of weasel words - Dawkins’ weasel simulator
2018/giles - Most unstable - SDL falling sand
2018/hou - Most likely to top the charts - Converter of JSON to SVG pie chart
2018/mills - Best of Show - PDP-7/11 simulator
2018/poikola - Most stellar - Ursa Major ASCII animation
2018/vokes - Most connected - Computing strongly connected graph components
2018/yang - Most shifty - Text rotator and shifter

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2015/burton - Most useful - hex/decimal calculator
2015/dogon - Most crafty - X11 Minecraft demo
2015/duble - Best handwriting - handwriting with Braille
2015/endoh1 - Most diffused reaction - reaction-diffusion system HTTP server
2015/endoh2 - Most overlooked obfuscation - hidden text quine
2015/endoh3 - Back to the Future Award - 1984/mullender emulator
2015/endoh4 - Best one liner - visual factorization
2015/hou - Most well rounded hash - MD5 without integers
2015/howe - Most different - diff tool
2015/mills1 - For the Birds! Award - flappy bird
2015/muth - Most complete use of CPP - preprocessor Turing engine
2015/yang - Most pointed reaction - text encoder with sea star pattern that varies with C flavor

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2014/birken - Best use of port 1701 - Klingon web server
2014/deak - Most underscored argument - CPP and C99 abuse
2014/endoh1 - Most square (YODA Award) - QR encoder
2014/endoh2 - Best use of bioinformatics - ASCII to DNA transcoder
2014/maffiodo1 - Homage to a classic game - homage to a popular game
2014/maffiodo2 - Most tweetable entry - ASCII art 1-line converter
2014/morgan - Most likely to succeed - make clone
2014/sinon - Best choice of optimization - optimizer-controlled shooter game
2014/skeggs - Most dynamic - dynamic library abusing game
2014/vik - Best handling of beeps - Morse audio transcoder

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2013/birken - Best painting tool - use Tetris to paint a picture
2013/cable1 - Most partisan one liner - 1-liner party of a US President
2013/cable2 - Best of Show - OCR in quick brown fox ASCII art
2013/cable3 - Largest small system emulator - IBM PC emulator
2013/dlowe - Best sparkling utility - ASCII spark line graph
2013/endoh1 - Most lazy SKIer - SKI Combinator Calculus tool
2013/endoh2 - Most recyclable - JPEG quine that expands and inverts
2013/endoh3 - Most tweetable one liner - play music with ABC notation
2013/endoh4 - Most solid - ASCII solid rotation
2013/hou - Best use of one infinite loop - ray tracer
2013/mills - Most timely rendered - HTTP server ray tracing a timestamp
2013/misaka - Most catty - horizontal or vertical file concat
2013/morgan1 - Smallest large system simulator - X11 based Solar system simulator
2013/morgan2 - Most playfully versatile - X11 and ASCII domino matching game
2013/robison - Most poetic use of strings - multi-precision arithmetic

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2012/blakely - Most GIFted expressions - Animated GIFs of surfaces
2012/deckmyn - Most notable and best tool - Music notation printer
2012/dlowe - Best way to lose a life - Conway’s game of death
2012/endoh1 - Most complex ASCII fluid - Honorable mention - ASCII fluid dynamics
2012/endoh2 - PiE in the sky award - Pi/e quine
2012/grothe - Most conspiratorial - Shamir secret sharing
2012/hamano - Silver Award - Most elementary use of C - PDF with little dancing men
2012/hou - Most useful obfuscation - Syntax highlighter
2012/kang - Best short program - Decodes spelled out numbers
2012/konno - Best one liner - Linear cellular automaton 1-liner
2012/omoikane - Most surreptitious - Encodes text as a C program
2012/tromp - Most functional - Lambda interpreter
2012/vik - Bronze Award - Best use of cocoa - Steganography
2012/zeitak - Gold Award - Balanced use of obfuscation - Brace matcher

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2011/akari - Best of Show - Most Shrinkable - Downsampler with 3 embedded programs
2011/blakely - Most devolving - Life/reverse life
2011/borsanyi - Best data utility - Bar graph plotter
2011/dlowe - Most self deprecating - Neural network classifier
2011/eastman - Best ball - Bouncing Ball in ANSI Graphics
2011/goren - Most artistic - Magritte tribute
2011/hamaji - Best solved puzzle - Paint by number puzzle
2011/hou - Best self documenting program - Scientific calculator
2011/konno - Best one liner - QWERTY keyboard position identifer
2011/toledo - Best non-chess game - Dual player tank shooter game
2011/vik - Most sound - Tracker player

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2006/birken - EDAMAME Award - Circuit Simulator
2006/borsanyi - Most useful - Email address to gif image
2006/grothe - Most obfuscated audio - Plays audio using a monitor
2006/hamre - Most irrational - A calculator for rational numbers
2006/meyer - Best game - A two player sudoku like game
2006/monge - Best compiled graphics - Graphical fractal generator
2006/night - Best abuse of computation - A maze game
2006/sloane - Homer’s favorite - Animated donut
2006/stewart - Best computed graphics - IFS fractal generator
2006/sykes1 - Best assembler - Bedlam cube solver
2006/sykes2 - Best one liner - A clock in one line
2006/toledo1 - Best small program - Solve the knight chess problem
2006/toledo3 - Most portable chess set - An X11 chess game

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2005/aidan - Most ingenious puzzle solution - Sudoku solver
2005/anon - Best 3D puzzle - Multi-dimensional sliding tile puzzle generator
2005/boutines - Most superfluous output - Voronoi diagram generator
2005/chia - Most ambiguous language - Java parody
2005/giljade - Best 2D puzzle - 2D sliding tile puzzle solver
2005/jetro - Most sonorous output - Audio synthesizer
2005/klausler - Abuse of the rules - Anagram generator
2005/mikeash - Best use of parenthesis - Self-printing Common Lisp interpreter
2005/mynx - Best use of the WWW - Web browser
2005/persano - Best of Show - Generates animated knots
2005/sykes - Best emulator - Commodore PET emulator
2005/timwi - Most discourteous interpreter - A BF lanaguage interpreter
2005/vik - Most circuitous walk - Wolfenstein style graphics engine
2005/vince - Most beauteous visuals - Rotating GL Cube demo

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2004/anonymous - Best use of ‘Precious’ Lines - Rendering of a stroked font
2004/arachnid - Best use of vision - Curses maze navigator with only line-of-sight visibility
2004/burley - Best calculated risk - A Poker game
2004/gavare - Best use of light and spheres - A ray tracer
2004/hibachi - Best abuse of the guidelines - A CGI capable HTTP server
2004/hoyle - Most functional output - Curses based polynomial graphing with auto-scale
2004/jdalbec - Best abuse of the periodic table - Conway’s look’n’say sequence split into elements
2004/newbern - Best font engine - Renders arbitary bitmapped fonts
2004/schnitzi - Best non-use of curses - Editor animation
2004/sds - Best abuse of indentation - Space/tab/linefeed steganography
2004/vik1 - Best X11 game - X Windows car racing game
2004/vik2 - Best abuse of CPP - Calculates prime numbers using only CPP

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2001/anonymous - Dishonorable mention - optimizing dynamic x86 binary translator on any host
2001/bellard - Best abuse of the rules - A C subset programming system for x86
2001/cheong - Best short program - Computes arbitrary-precision square root
2001/coupard - Most obfuscated sound - Outputs current time as a sound file
2001/ctk - Worst driver - A driver game
2001/herrmann1 - Best abuse of the C preprocessor - A Turing machine using preprocessor
2001/herrmann2 - Most eye-crossing - SIRDS/3D generator where the source is SIRDS/3D itself
2001/jason - Best of Show - An Adventure-like game
2001/kev - Best curses game - A Pong game across network
2001/ollinger - Best primal ASCII graphics - Prints primes with a sieve graph
2001/rosten - Best abuse of the user - Makes X mouse pointer have inertia or anti-inertia
2001/westley - Best position-independent code - Sorts/scrambles that outputs as text/punch-cards
2001/williams - Best graphic game - Plays X-based missile command

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2000/anderson - Best use of flags - ASCII to semaphore code convertor
2000/bellard - Most specific output - Prints M6972593 (2^6972593-1) by Modular Fast Fourier Transform
2000/bmeyer - Best utility - An image compressor
2000/dhyang - Best layout - Saitou Hajime image that prints a prog that prints a prog …
2000/dlowe - Worst abuse of the rules - A dc-style calculator that uses embedded Perl
2000/jarijyrki - Best of Show - An X-based spreadsheet program with graphing features!
2000/natori - Best small program - Phase of the moon
2000/rince - Astronomically obfuscated - Plots the positions of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter
2000/robison - Best game - Highly Compressed Program for Playing Hygienic Checkers
2000/schneiderwent - Most timely output - Prints the aproximate time in words
2000/thadgavin - Most portable output - Prints a dazzeling moving image under multiple interfaces
2000/tomx - Most complete program - C source and shell program and Makefile

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1998/banks - Best of Show - A flight simulator!
1998/bas1 - Best encapsulation - Outputs a gzipped 3D beam maze in Postscript
1998/bas2 - Best small program - determines the size of stdin under IOCCC sizing rules
1998/chaos - Best object orientation - Rotates and zooms an object using ASCII graphics
1998/df - Best data hiding - A word guessing game
1998/dlowe - Best utility - Pootifies stdin (useful to view Microsoft html files)
1998/dloweneil - Most fun - A very addictive ASCII poot game
1998/fanf - Most obfuscated translator - Translates Lambda expressions into combinator expressions
1998/schnitzi - Best flow control - Prints a C program that sorts arguments using strange functions
1998/schweikh1 - CPP abuse - Tests to see if your compiler and headers are standard
1998/schweikh2 - Most erratic behavior - Prints random 0’s and 1’s causes some gcc’s as passes to choke
1998/schweikh3 - Most space efficient - Finds duplicate files that waste disk space
1998/tomtorfs - Best self-documenting - CRC generator

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1996/august - Best of Show - Subset of C compiler and byte code interpreter
1996/dalbec - Best numerical obfuscation - Generator of strong probable-primes to a given base
1996/eldby - Best output - Flying 3D spheres in an ASCII display
1996/gandalf - Best layout - Displays the ASCII and 8 bit character tables
1996/huffman - Best obfuscated character set utility - Braille to ASCII and vice versa
1996/jonth - Best X11 entry - X based dual player tic-tac-toe game
1996/rcm - Best RFC obfuscation - Gunzip equivalent
1996/schweikh1 - Worst abuse of the C preprocessor - Calculates Easter dates from 1582 to 2199 AD
1996/schweikh2 - Best algorithm - Search for a limited class of expressions that equal a constant
1996/schweikh3 - Best utility - Determins the memory allocation honesty of the OS
1996/westley - Best one liner - Shows the time on clock with a configurable face and style

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1995/cdua - Best output - Generate a maze on the scren and then solve it
1995/dodsond1 - Most humorous - Text to Pig Latin translator
1995/esde - Interesting algorithm - Searches for words in a file which have the same Soundex code
1995/garry - Best utility - Environment-expansion and binary output via escaped env vars
1995/heathbar - Best layout - 16 bit addition the easy/hard way
1995/leo - Best use of obfuscation - Output interesting patterns and cycles in PostScript
1995/makarios - Best short program - Emits the base 8 representation of prime palindromic in base 8
1995/savastio - Most obfuscated syntax - Infinite-precision factorial calculator
1995/schnitzi - Best one liner - Find divisors: where a core dump is a feature and not a bug
1995/vanschnitz - Worst abuse of the C preprocessor and most likely to amaze - Towers of Hanoi via the C pre-processor

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1994/dodsond2 - Most obfuscated packaging - Hunt the Wumpus (gzipped source)
1994/horton - Best utility - Plot cubic equations on a tty
1994/imc - Most obfuscated algorithm - print a random n by n magic square
1994/ldb - Best one liner - print a random line from stdin
1994/schnitzi - Best layout - flips stdin along a diagonal (source mirrored along diagonal)
1994/shapiro - Most well rounded obfuscation - print time of day on a tty
1994/smr - Worst abuse of the rules - world’s smallest self reproducing program
1994/tvr - Best X11 program - interactive fractals for the X Window System
1994/weisberg - Best short program - prints prime numbers
1994/westley - Worst abuse of the C preprocessor - Adventure/Dungeon like game played via the C pre-processor

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1993/ant - Best utility - egrep utility with Posix-like documentation
1993/cmills - Bill Gates Award - X11 program that shatters and bounces windows
1993/dgibson - Best abuse of the C preprocessor - plays the game of life using cpp
1993/ejb - Best obfuscated algorithm - tower of Hanoi and patience pizzle
1993/jonth - Most obfuscated X program - game of Tetris
1993/leo - Best game - game of mastermind (cows and bulls)
1993/lmfjyh - Most versatile source - source is the filename that prints value of FILE
1993/plummer - Best one liner - prints numbers up to a given value
1993/rince - Most well rounded - game state machine language that comes with a number of games
1993/schnitzi - Obfuscated Intelligence Award - answers questions about English text in a file
1993/vanb - Most irregular expression - calculator that prints in octal

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1992/adrian - Most educational - grep-like utility using a state machine transition language
1992/albert - Most useful program - factors multi-precision numbers with factors < MAX_LONG
1992/ant - Best utility - make utility
1992/buzzard.1 - Most obfuscated algorithm - print factorial or gcd or prime test w/Babbage-like engine
1992/buzzard.2 - Best language tool - forth-like stack machine
1992/gson - Most humorous output - anagram generator
1992/imc - Best output - Mandelbrot/Julia drawer
1992/kivinen - Best X program - X11 space invaders and dropout and knockout games
1992/lush - Worst abuse of the C preprocessor - prints Hello World using error messages
1992/marangon - Best game - game to balance a grid of digits to all 5’s
1992/nathan - Worst abuse of the rules - obfuscation by (trivial) encryption (source not exported)
1992/vern - Best of Show - plays chess
1992/westley - Best small program - print ASCII world map and mark a location by lat/long

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1991/ant - Best utility - compressed vi-like editor
1991/brnstnd - Best of Show - sorta stack language
1991/buzzard - Best output - walk thru a maze from a first person point of view
1991/cdupont - Most useful label - prints a message without vowels
1991/davidguy - Best X11 graphics - plays life on a root window w/o Xlib nor include files
1991/dds - Most well rounded - basic compiler that is heavily compressed
1991/fine - Best one liner - rot13s lines of input
1991/rince - Best game - game with sprites and boulders and dimonds and keys
1991/westley - Grand Prize - plays tic-tac-toe where output for next move that prints board

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1990/baruch - Best small program - short prog to solve N-queens problem
1990/cmills - Best game - squished blackjack game
1990/dds - Best language tool - basic interpreter that is heavily compressed
1990/dg - Best abuse of the C preprocessor - rot13 done with strange cpp macros
1990/jaw - Best entropy-reducer - compress and atob standins
1990/pjr - Most unusual data structure - the quick brown fox using CPP defines and structs of functions
1990/scjones - ANSI Committee’s worst abuse of C - trigraph-abusing self-reproducing program
1990/stig - Strangest abuse of the rules - nested-comment tester (all on command line)
1990/tbr - Best utility - simple compressed shell with silly layout
1990/theorem - Best of Show - numerically solves the equation y’=f(x y)
1990/westley - Best layout - poetic exchange between lovers that prints luvs me or not

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1989/fubar - Best self-modifying program - self-reconstructing recompiling factorial program
1989/jar.1 - Strangest abuse of the rules - Hello world as a C string
1989/jar.2 - Best of Show - lisp interpreter that is compressed
1989/ovdluhe - Most humorous output - monkey-typer following template with APE identifiers
1989/paul - Most complex algorithm - print fibonacci base 2 by simulating turing machine
1989/robison - Best minimal use of C - apl-expression interpreter (binary) written in C–
1989/roemer - Best layout - prints e with pi shaped layout with _31415 identifiers
1989/vanb - Best one liner - one-liner prints all subsets of arguments
1989/westley - Most algorithms in one program - reversible and rot13able program that reverses and/or rot13s

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1988/applin - Best of Show - massive #define that includes itself and prints primes
1988/dale - Best abuse of system calls - prints command line using lots of system calls
1988/isaak - Best visuals - table driven table of the elements cpp with self-inclusion
1988/litmaath - Best small program - sorts each arg using only argc argv and ‘while(cond)’
1988/phillipps - Least likely to compile successfully - 12 Days of Christmas recursive main() calls w/tables
1988/reddy - Most useful obfuscated C program - prints name of ‘char ((foo[16])()’ compressed
1988/robison - Best abuse of C constructs - print e in any base using only – >= and while()
1988/spinellis - Best abuse of the rules - include /dev/tty
1988/westley - Best layout - prints ‘3.141’ with circle made of ‘---’

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1987/biggar - Best abuse of the rules - program defined on the command line
1987/heckbert - Best obfuscator of programs - obfuscated fold program
1987/hines - Worst style - counts goto’s with all ids goto anagrams with all goto flow
1987/korn - Best one liner - one-liner that prints a message on a Un*x system
1987/lievaart - Grand Prize - very good Othello player
1987/wall - Most useful obfuscation - roman numeral -> decimal and vice versa conversion
1987/westley - Best layout - individually palindromic lines prints a palindrome

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1986/applin - Most adaptable program - hello world works under cc and /bin/sh and f77
1986/august - Best complex task done in a complex way - struct-heavy e-computation with memory allocation with sbrk
1986/bright - Most useful obfuscation - hex dump with cpp compressed that uses lots of << for constants
1986/hague - Worst abuse of the C preprocessor - morse code filter written with ’DIT DAH _DIT DIT_DAH’
1986/holloway - Best simple task performed in a complex way - prints hello world! via a recursive main
1986/marshall - Best layout - train engine-shaped program prints choo choo
1986/pawka - Most illegible code - prints ‘obfuscated?’ big using xyyyx idents
1986/stein - Best one liner - prints HHMMSS in UTC time
1986/wall - Grand Prize - Most well rounded in confusion - Dvorak keyboard emulator

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1985/applin - Best one liner - one-liner to print hello world with execlp
1985/august - Most obscure program - cpp obfuscated and compressed recursive primes in binary
1985/lycklama - Strangest appearing program - heavily cpped with o_oo identifiers that scrolls text right
1985/shapiro - Grand Prize - Most well rounded in confusion - two #defines one 7-liner that results in a maze
1985/sicherman - Worst abuse of the C preprocessor - rot13 w/strange #defines that create comment headers etc.

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1984/anonymous - Dishonorable Mention - prints hello world where read is write
1984/decot - Second Place - prints garbage and weird cpp defines - keywords for others
1984/laman - Third Place - prints spiralling numbers laid out in columns
1984/mullender - Grand Prize - hardcoded vax and pdp-11 code to move :-) across the screen

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IOCCC Year level tarballs

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