My favorite entry:<p>A Dishonorable Mention went to Yves Papegay, who submitted this 80-character expression with the comment, “If only I had a better machine.”<p><pre><code> Select[Flatten@Map[FromCharacterCode@Tuples[Range[32, 129],#] &, Range@80], SyntaxQ]
</code></pre>
This input selects from all 200696776371546515671027031705365217492618488
1582832600210755762096900905036350233077746752088222272458708782885
444148423180502637853488332240652972952399993950 possible expressions of 80 characters or less those that are syntactically valid Mathematica inputs. That number is so unimaginably large that descriptions in terms of the number of particles in the universe, or nanoseconds since the dawn of time, are woefully inadequate to describe it.<p>While this expression is a disaster practically, it has a certain conceptual appeal that made up for it hanging the judges’ machines. It expresses all one-liners of 80 or fewer characters. The expression itself is a member of the set that it describes.
So, somebody at a startup a few years ago went "hmmm... I wonder how many characters should we allow in each message... aw, what the heck, let's just pull a number out of thin air, like 140 for instance."<p>Fast forward to present day and the 140 character limit becomes a worldwide cultural stereotype.