This entry gets a result of 352286405134 on the test suite (233188391877 more than the contest suite). It has a ranking of 4216 compared to all other entries run against the test suite according to the data set provided by Jan Keller.
function Aest = solver(imageSize, queryLimit)
Aest = ones(imageSize)*127;
stepsize = round(imageSize*imageSize/queryLimit);
for row = 1:stepsize:imageSize
for col = 1:stepsize:imageSize
mask = false(imageSize);
mask(row:row+stepsize,col:col+stepsize) = true;
Aest(row:row+stepsize,col:col+stepsize) = queryImage(mask);
end
end
Aest = Aest(1:imageSize,1:imageSize);
end