Ton's brilliant magic formula won the original roman tournament
by only three strokes.
It is also worth noting from the
fonality golf post mortem
that TedYoung (presumably a first time golfer) produced a score of 116.50 before
finding Ton's magic formula ... and that a score of 169.51 was enough to win a prize.
Also, Jasper, who is part of the Perl golf community, "forgot" about
Ton's magic formula, yet was still able to finish in ninth place with a score of 125.
So not knowing this formula did not "shut out" people from winning a prize.
Moreover, searching for perl golf (via google and/or SuperSearch) would have
uncovered the original perl golf roman numerals game easily enough (as Ted
Young did).
Perhaps the rules should have been clarified to state, as Ton says, that golfers
are expected to research and learn from prior art and that it is not cheating
to do so.
In summary, I do not blame Fonality for this and, despite the prior roman art,
the wide range of scores and creative approaches showed that there was
a lot of golf played in this competition outside the magic formula.