While this is entertaining and a great story of reverse engineering, I feel it kind of defeats the purpose to cheat to make this work, and the writeup could have been more forthcoming about that aspect. It's stated in a single sentence like some sort of aside, even though it's half of what makes the hacked solution even work.
It's not only a fix for the year rendering code on the results screen that allows this to work, they also reset the starvation value to zero each day the wagon waits at the river.
Given how many games lately are getting similar stories and headlines using exploits that don't require modification of the game code/mechanics, I found this one just a little disappointing in comparison.