1987 marked the "The Fourth International Obfuscated C Code Contest"

The rules for 1987 suggested even more categories than in 1986.  Hints
for what to do and not to do were also given in the rules.  For
example, a simple excessive abuse of /lib/cpp was discouraged unless
the abuse was unusual.  The mailboxes for the contest were moved from
nsc to amdahl.  The practice of posting a preliminary set of rules for
the next year was started this year.

Rules and results were posted to comp.lang.c, comp.unix.wizards with
an announcement in news.announce.important.  Micro/Systems Journal
published the 1987 winners.  Mark Horton included a version of the 1987
winners in an appendix of his C book.  The first announcement of
winners at the Summer 87 Usenix was helped by a small fly that
danced all over the foils.