Wonderful bit of synchronicity- seeing this on the front page of HN right after I got back from being (deliberately) lost in the Fells reservation north of Cambridge. (In this case, of course, my algorithm was made simpler via access to a GPS oracle, when it started to get dark. :) )

> It was included in a list of 12 problems described by the mathematician Scott W. Williams as "million buck problems" because he believed that the techniques involved in their resolution will be worth at least a million dollars to mathematics.

Does that mean it would be worth that much via (perhaps indirect?) applications, or worth that much to mathematicians? What does it even mean to say that a non-applied mathematical theorem is “worth” some sum of money? (Absent a rich mathematician willing to pay a bounty, at least.)