It doesn't seem like my solutions can ever get close to the top times 
For example i've been wracking my head trying to figure out a way to make the very first problem TEST1 Life the universe and everything run faster
my submission:
from sys import stdin
x='\n'+stdin.read()
print x[1:x.find('\n42\n')]
it never ran faster than 0.13s. So i decided to check what the startup time for python was on this machine by simply sending this:
pass
basically a null/do-nothing python script
lo and behold that took 0.12 seconds
Just a word to everyone else who is playing and feeling dejected that your code can never hit the top. Maybe it's the server load, but the rankings right now are a little skewed. So keep it in mind.