The 1986 contest was named: "The Third International Obfuscated C Code Contest"
Look at the README.md file for the given winner for information on how to compile the winner and how to run the winning program. Look at the winning source and try to figure how it does what it does! You may then wish to look at the Author's comments for even more details.
The rules for 1986 suggested categories due to the success of the 1985 judging method. The maximum size was increased from 512 to 1024 bytes. Larry Bassel joined as the second official judge.
A poll was taken for the worst code for BSD and System V program. The Bourne Shell (/bin/sh) won for both systems. The BSD finger program took third place.
Rules and results were posted to net.lang.c and net.unix-wizards. Micro/Systems Journal started regular publishing of the winners. The practice of making first announcement of the winners at the Summer Usenix BOF started this year. A notice was posted to net.announce.
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Copyright (c) 1986, Landon Curt Noll & Larry Bassel. All Rights Reserved. Permission for personal, educational or non-profit use is granted provided this this copyright and notice are included in its entirety and remains unaltered. All other uses must receive prior permission in writing from both Landon Curt Noll and Larry Bassel.