But as far as the TA goes, most people who have an interest in C and programming will look at the source and say to themselves "Oh, byte values of machine code being executed, yes very clever but do the assignment again properly."
That being said, I wouldn't rule out a bored TA opening the file not seeing a printf and assigning a grade based on submitting something.
But perhaps the less radical approach would be to pay them enough such that they can take the time to judge the work on it's merit.
I assume you have not TAed: I'd like to agree with you, but the realities are it is poor pay for crappy work. Most students don't care about their work. Most students seem to be unable to follow basic instructions. I go out of my way to help students if they care and stay late at labs for these students, but I have no patience for wasting my time because someone wants to show off and deliberately make my life harder. As is, when I'm being paid for 6hrs of lab + marking/week, and I am already spending 8+hrs a week because students can't format their assignments properly, don't write in complete sentences, etc, I have zero interest in patting this guy on the back. Instead, I have to do more work for no pay so he can feel clever.