Computer science/mathematical science majors Jon Adams,James Koppel and Jonathan Paulson— a team otherwise known as the Jimmy Jons—finished in third place in the regional competition for the Association for Computing Machinery's InternationalCollegiate Programming Contest.

Two other CMU teams, (-.(-.-).-) and Fun Guy Taquitos,solved five of the problems and finished 6^th and 7^th,respectively.

Four Carnegie Mellon University teams competed at the ACM-ICPCEast Central North American Regional Programming Contest in Cincinnati  Oct. 22. A total of 122 teams from 60 collegesand universities throughout western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, easternOntario, and Indiana participated in Cincinnati and at three other sites.

The first-place team from the University of Waterloo solvedall nine of the problems in the competition, while the Jimmy Jons and a teamfrom the University of Toronto each solved eight problems. The Toronto team edgedout the Jimmy Jons for second place by solving its problems faster.

The top finisher from the regional is guaranteed a spot at theACM-ICPC  World Finals in Warsaw in May. Butoften two or three teams from the regional receive invites to the final, said CoachDanny Sleator, professor of computer science, so the Jimmy Jons are awaitingword from the organizers.

The members of (-.(-.-).-) are Ben Alpert, a computerscience major; Mike Mu, a computer science and electrical and computerengineering major, and Patrick Xia, a PhD student in computer science. The teamname is a representation of three ninjas.

Fun Guy Taquitos members are Peter Liang, a computer sciencemajor, and William Ng and Franklin Ta, both computer science and mathematicalsciences majors.

The fourth CMU team, the Dragons, includes Charles Guo andAjay Ravindran, both computer science majors, and Lidong Zhou, a computerscience and mathematical sciences major.

In addition to Sleator, the CMU coaches include Eugene Fink,senior systems scientist, and PhD students Richard Peng and Kevin Waugh. IMCFinancial Markets of Chicago is the team's sponsor.