Arguing that the winning students have "broken the rules" assumes the rules dictated they had to spend all of the money; I didn't see or hear mention a requirement that they spend any or all of it anywhere. It seems to me a set of rules along one dimension of a subject in no way implies corollary sets of rules along any others. For example, if someone told you that you could create any password, but that you could only use three letters of the alphabet (e.g. A, B, and/or C), they haven't said you could not use each one once or more, or not use numbers, or characters, symbols, etc., and they certainly haven't said how long or short the password needs to be, or if you even need to use letters at all, or for that matter that you even needed to create a password; maybe you'd rather spend your time gardening!

To me the three examples (even though they were kind of hokey) didn't so much turn the constraints on their heads as they did make them totally irrelevant... They made it less an issue of the constraints of certain explicit rules, and more about the implicit absence of others.