I wonder if you might have misinterpreted it. It could have been that the grad student's team was also there for fun, but the game they were playing was "can we

I wonder if you might have misinterpreted it. It could have been that the grad student's team was also there for fun, but the game they were playing was "can we sell the judges on complete nonsense." Honestly, that'd be a fun hackathon in of itself. You'd declare this the stated goal, and at the end of the hackathon there'd be big, dramatic presentations. You'd bring in a half dozen judges who would not be informed of the hackathon's purpose who would judge the projects in earnest, and you could have a couple more judges who'd be judging primarily on the audacity of the fiction.