How long does it take to solve a nationwide scavenger hunt? If you're a bunch of MIT whiz kids, just less than nine hours. As DISCOVER covered last week, DARPA, the Defense Department's mad scientists, devised a contest to study the spread of information with $40,000 of prize money for the winning team. The task was to be the first to find all 10 red balloons scattered at secret locations around the country and report them to the DARPA Web site.
More than 4,000 groups eventually registered to take part, but although the organisers had given players up to nine days to track the balloons down, the team from MIT scooped victory within nine hours of the launch [The Guardian]
. MIT's team members set up an elaborate web of incentives and information networks to solve the puzzle so quickly. $4,000 in prize money was assigned to each of the ...
