Why is nothing ever straight-forward?

The results for the cncnz.com wallpaper competition were published today, I actually managed to bag me some goodies for my efforts! But I can't quite figure out what's going on in the judges' heads. I claimed 5th place beneath the top-3 podium, here's what they had to say:

"Special Mention, must also go to Martin Elliot who came 5th. His wallpaper was in a class of it's own to the rest of the entries, and he wins a Renegade mousemat and Soundtrack."

Is that just "points for effort" or something? Why did 4th place not get anything? He/she must be feeling a bit gutted? I'm thinking my entry just wasn't 'C&C' enough, which is fine as it was a risk i was prepared to take. May also have been some problems with those users who like to hoard their desktop icons (visor presents a big overall contrast/brightness shift) or some other structural/technical fault that I overlooked. Not to mention the fact that almost everything in the 'gas mask' was placeholder until I could whip up something better. Granted, this was quite a rushed job, and I have every intention of going back to this piece at a later date and redoing those 'placeholder' parts of it that woulda been done for the compo had I not run out of time. However, whilst I probably should be pretty pleased with the result, I don't really know what to feel about it except: "I've won a good soundtrack cd and a mousemat that I don't need." It's better than nothing.

Expect an updated version of this wallpaper when I'm done with the project I was working on previously.