Coimbatore: Microsoft Research Labs today announced the Whodunit? Challenge - a unique nationwide social gaming competition. Inspired by DARPA Network Challenge in the United States, the Whodunit? Challenge aims to gain insight into how people can use information and communication technologies to mobilize large groups into solving difficult problems. The contest will run from February 1 to February 15, 2013, with the winner receiving a prize of One Lakh.

The Whodunit? Challenge will require participants to solve a mystery by discovering five clues -Who, What, Where, When and Why- surrounding a mysterious fictional event. Each cell number will be provided one clue, but some clues will be more difficult than others to get, hence necessitating the formation of large teams. The more people in a team, the better are the chances of gathering all five clues. The participant will need to connect to a friend, colleague or a family member who has registered for the challenge – or persuade a stranger to join them – in order to get the next clue. To receive a clue through SMS, one has to simply give a missed call to the contest phone number, 02653090663. 

“This is an interesting social experiment to see how people come together to form teams using mobile phone networks. While similar experiments have been carried out using the Internet as a medium, the fact that mobile phone penetration in India far outstrips Internet penetration could throw up some fascinating insights,” said Bill Thies, researcher, Microsoft Research India.

Read: Microsoft India Launches Hub For Computer Science Research