the key to actually winning was happening to know that there was a secret

Seriously though, I agree with you that it was unfortunate that Fonality chose a problem where knowing of a previous similar golf gave a significant advantage. They didn't do it on purpose and I'm sure if they'd have known, they would have set a different problem. Having said that, I still enjoyed golfing on the non-magic-formula parts of the problem and found that to be challenging-in-the-extreme ... to the point of melting my brain at times. :-)

And if a person would also have found the magic formula if he hadn't known the existing one, I don't think you can say he got an unfair advantage from it. I know I would have found it, and Juho might or might not have, but at least he has come up with magic formulas before. And third place was easily possible without the magic formula.

And let's be very clear that all this was an accident. When making up golf challenges, one tries very hard to come up with new ones where old golfs cannot be reused. Nobody wants a perl golf where the real work consists of searching the web instead of programming.

There was a second way of winning: make up your own secret. Nothing stops anyone from thinking of the magic formula for himself. It's also perfectly possible there is an even better way to go from number to roman that nobody discovered yet.

For the record, Ton was proved right - a better formula was indeed available, as beautifully demonstrated by primo.

Nobody wants a perl golf where the real work consists of searching the web instead of programming.

Which was my entire point from the beginning.

xoxo,
Andy