When Nicholas Halstead over at the The Programming and Management Blog asked if I’d like to be a judge for a PHP programming contest he’s running, I was pretty excited. That is, until I found out that he’s giving away a Zend Studio Professional license! Now, I’m jealous!

Here’s the total prize list:

• 1st Prize - Zend Studio Professional with 1 year of support
• 2nd Prize - Zend T-Shirt
• 3rd Prize - Zend Pen

Rather than simply go for the best mashup or application and have everyone freewheel it, Nicholas has put together a puzzle that asks for a programmatic solution. It’s a really cool idea!

Many years ago there used to be a UK television quiz show (I am sure there has probably been many versions in other countries) that required the contestants to transform one word into another one letter at a time. The only rule was that each letter change must also result in a real word. Here is an example.

1. Hand
2. Band - Changed ‘H’ to ‘B’
3. Bond - Changed ‘A’ to ‘O’
4. Fond - Changed ‘B’ to ‘F’
5. Food - Changed ‘N’ to ‘O’
6. Foot - Changed ‘D’ to ‘T’

The challenge is to create a website that the user may supply an arbitrary list of words which makes up a limited dictionary plus a start and an end word. The website must then attempt to create the shortest path between the two words following the rule that each single letter change results in a word within the dictionary.

I’m in some pretty amazing company and really appreciate this opportunity! Here are the other judges:

• Stuart Dallas - Stuart is an active member of the PHP mailing lists and a very experienced PHP programmer. Stuart will be pulling your code apart and examining it in fine detail to see what makes it tick.
• Cal Evans - Cal is the Editor over at Zend Developer Zone and has been programming PHP for 7 years.

For full details, head over to Nicholas’ site! Good Luck!