$50,000 To Solve the Most Complicated Puzzle Ever

An anonymous reader writes "A team from UC San Diego is using crowd-sourcing as a tool to solve the most complicated puzzle ever attempted, which involves piecing together roughly 10,000 pieces of different documents that have been shredded. (The challenge is designed to reveal new techniques for reconstructing destroyed documents, which are often confiscated by troops in war zones). The prize for solving this jigsaw puzzle is $50,000, which the UCSD team has decided to share among the people who participate. If they win, you would also receive cash for every person you recruit to the effort! The professor leading the team, Manuel Cebrian, won the challenge two years ago, so his odds of winning again are great"

Comments

only 50k for a problem that complex?

[Anonymous Coward]

only 50k for a problem that complex? If you could solve this problem, I say copyright and make millions off of the algorithm.

Re:only 50k for a problem that complex?

[Yaur]

It is exactly the same. This is just a team attempting to solve that challenge by crowd sourcing document assembly.

Re:Doesn't scale

[Surt]

Why 10 and not 4?

(I ask, because the contest requires 4 progressively harder documents be solved, with a declaration attached that says this is explicitly to filter out any methods that won't scale).