A2:

It's very important for us to know how many students are participating in this contest. If we posted bridge costs on the Scoreboard, you (and a lot of others) would probably not register or submit a design until you had created a bridge good enough to be posted to the Scoreboard. A lot of students might be participating in the contest, but we would only know about the few who submitted winning designs.

We recognize that you would like to get feedback about your design. That's why the contest website tells you your standing in the contest every time you submit a new design. At the end of the Qualifying Round, we will post the costs of the top 40 bridge designs.

We are committed to protecting your privacy.

In the past, it has been common for large numbers of teams from a single school to enter the contest with nearly identical designs. This practice tends to monopolize the Scoreboard, preventing other competitors from seeing how they stand in the contest. This year, only the top two teams from any given school will be listed on the Scoreboard. See Rule 5.7 for details.

We will make an exception to this rule, however, in cases where the bridge design submitted by the third-ranked (or higher-ranked) team from a given school is substantially different from the bridges submitted by the top two teams.

Rule 5.7 does specify that only the top two teams from a given school will be listed on the contest Scoreboard; however, this rule also specifies that additional teams will be allowed to remain on the Scoreboard if their bridge design submissions are substantially different from the designs submitted by the higher-ranked teams from the same school.

We enforce this rule by manually examining the relevant bridge design submissions twice per week. After each of these reviews, teams that are being removed from the Scoreboard are notified by e-mail.

Thus, if you see more than two teams per school on the Scoreboard, the additional teams might have been reviewed and authorized (because their designs are different), or they might not yet have been reviewed (because we only do these reviews twice per week). Either way, rest assured that the rule is being enforced.