Enough of the Traveller tournament story is dodgy and inconsistent enough that it's very hard to say what actually happened beyond Lenat winning the tournament twice in a row with some kind of computer assistance,
Basically, with the Traveller tournament Lenat appears to have stumbled onto a story that caught the public's imagination, and then through the milked it for all he could to give his project publicity and to make it appear more
successful than it actually was. And if that required embellishing the story or just making shit up, well, no harm no foul.
Even when something is technically true, it often turns out that it's being told in a misleading way. For example, you say that "the publisher changed the ruleset". That was the entire gimmick of the Traveller TCS tournament rules! The printed rulebook had a preset progression of tournament rules for each year.
Basically, with the Traveller tournament Lenat appears to have stumbled onto a story that caught the public's imagination, and then through the milked it for all he could to give his project publicity and to make it appear more successful than it actually was. And if that required embellishing the story or just making shit up, well, no harm no foul.
Even when something is technically true, it often turns out that it's being told in a misleading way. For example, you say that "the publisher changed the ruleset". That was the entire gimmick of the Traveller TCS tournament rules! The printed rulebook had a preset progression of tournament rules for each year.
I wrote a bit more about this a few years ago with some of the other details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28344379