yea, at the beginning you have to resort a lot on the manual, but hey, that's how you do it in real life, download a bunch of datasheets, read them through, buy parts you need, and find a way to make them work together. Then read them again because you totally missed something important and so on...

As for the top scoring designs, been able to see them, will eventually lead to same scores for everybody. Seeing that the puzzle has been solved with 3-5Yuan less, is meant to give you a direction. Now you know that probably an entire MC is useless, and it's up to you to understand (based on your design) what functions might be handled by the others MC's.

My first Hotel Security Card was an abomination, no space left, weird cabling, high cost, absurd power consumption, and a security bug that would have get me fired on the spot. I knew i was far away from an optimal solution, but seeing the discrepancy between graphs... i still remember the feeling ;P