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Alternate idea: create a bot to open new twitter accounts and tweet ever increasing numbers until you win.

EDIT: Bonus points if you use another bot to exclude all guesses that have already been submitted by others.



This was my first thought.

Also, I didn't read the fine print but do you even need to create a new Twitter account? Do the rules say one guess per customer? All I see is "Tweet us the correct number."


Since this doesn't seem to have posted yet:

"Fans will have three attempts to give counting Major Melon bottles their best shot." [0]

The official rules confirm this:

"Limit one (1) number guess per Entry. Limit three (3) Entries (via Twitter)/per Twitter account during the Promotion Period. Limit one (1) Twitter account allowed per participant." [1]

[0] https://www.mountaindew.com/world/be-ready-to-count-this-sup...

[1] https://www.lifechangingdew.com/rules


Here's the fine print. One account per participant.

> NO PURCH. NEC. Begins when Sponsor Tweets this commercial on Sponsor’s timeline at https://Twitter.com/MountainDew (no earlier than 2/7/21) and ends when a verifiable entrant Tweets the correct number of Mtn Dew Major Melon bottles, regular or Zero Sugar, (including 3D, drawn, neon, metallic & any color) that appear in this commercial or 3/31/21, whichever comes first. Limit one Twitter account allowed per participant. Winner must be verified. Subject to complete Official Rules, at lifechangingDEW.com. Open to legal res of 50 US/DC, 18+ (19+ in NE&AL). Potential winner subject to background check per Official Rules. Void where prohibited. To Enter, visit Twitter.com/MountainDew. Sponsor: Pepsi-Cola Company, 1111 Westchester Avenue, White Plains, New York, NY 10604. The NFL Entities have not offered or sponsored this promotion in any way.


Maybe you could put together a syndicate of 1,000 people who coordinate to tweet increasing numbers over a short timeframe based on a rough estimate, and then split the prize? (Of course, that would be pretty logistically complicated, including the timing and getting all the people to trust each other.)


Known in game theory circles as Cena Equilibrium.


Hi, I just googled Cena Equilibrium to learn more and the result was this thread. Do you have the name right?


You can't see it


>"Winner must be verified."

Is that Twitter blue check verified, or some other form I wonder.


I assume it means they need to verify your ID and have you sign some legalese. They arent just going to mail a check to whatever address the winner DM's them.


I'm 99% sure there will be some human input on the final selection. Probably will be biased towards an account that's active and a little popular.


Absolutely not. Could you imagine the backlash if it's found the first person who tweeted the correct number was passed over for an influencer, or a more popular account?


Most contests do this.


In most contests, the public can't independently verify the winner


No such thing as bad publicity


Yeah I was imagining some kind of Pepsi Point Harrier Jet loophole.


> Also, I didn't read the fine print but...

It's disqualified in the fine print.



This incident, as well as the earlier Frito Lay sweepstakes that was also hacked by Caltech students, was famously referenced in the movie Real Genius: https://filmschoolrejects.com/5-brilliant-things-you-should-...


RG has more than that. The one where they made an ice rink in the dorms actually happened. The water slide one was also done in Page House when I was there.

Caltech refused to allow them to film on campus, fearing it might put the university in a bad light. So the film makers found some other buildings with the same architecture as used at Caltech, and they hired techers as extras to wander around in the background (saying they were unable to duplicate the look of a techer, so the easy solution was just hire them).


"Always read the fine print, but don't bother with the EULA" - Rudy Giuliani


“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”


You would be disqualified for using more than one account.


Only if you get caught.


Says they’ll do a background check. For a million bucks you bet they’ll figure it out.


I wrote the software for a competition 10 years ago. The first prize was about $5000. All the top ten entries were cheaters who spent hours clicking on Like links on social networks. The behavior was very apparent from the logs. Disqualified. Next top ten, cheaters again. One of them at least used curl :-) Disqualified.

Imagine if the prize was one million.


how far down the list did you have to go to find the first legit winner?


They started to show in the third iteration. People with a number of likes as if they had real friends, not bots or a carpal tunnel.

Each iteration took a few days because cheating manually takes some times to get into the high thousands of likes.

The lesson was that in this kind of competitions you don't test everybody for cheating. Only the winners. If the last one in the rankings cheats, who cares


It wouldn’t take much investigation to prove you broke the rules, and for a million dollars I bet you they will do the investigation.




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