I took an exam which presented a drawing of a logic chip and a description of its pins and asked us to implement some functionality using this chip plus the min

I took an exam which presented a drawing of a logic chip and a description of its pins and asked us to implement some functionality using this chip plus the minimum number of external gates. I managed to implement it using only wires, with no extra gates at all. Apparently this surprised the instructors; the best known solution used two extra gates. They gave full marks to me, but also to the many students who used two gates. Given that the exam was designed to not have anyone answer everything correctly in the time allotted and was graded on a curve, I found this distasteful: I had devoted extra time to finding the optimal solution, at the expense of spending more time on other parts of the exam. The instructors were not sympathetic, and I got a B on the exam despite teaching them something new.