I think that if this was a challenge,that they played the "hidden in plain sight gambit". I tend to always go from very simple to the complex. It may be that the complexity was a red herring. Seeing the file one would assume it must be complex,and therefore in need of a complex solution. Reminds me of a "College stupid" example.
When I was working(worked in a production mail facility) The problem was this,we had a mailing that was multiple pages depending on the addressee(this was a billing statement. Problem was determining the postage for each one. Now a manager tried to work the problem using Calculus because he was "collage stupid" and believed that was a valid way to attack the problem. The woman that worked the postage station just started stacking pages on the scale and noting when the postage changed,the simple common sense solution. So here the expectation was a complex solution when in fact it was simple.
If one is interested,the Peek program can be found here.
http://www.loramel.net/blender_minutes/peek/
