ialottery blog

If You Had To Say What The Iowa Lottery’s Most Popular Game Is …

I can answer that in one word: Crossword.

I’m not ignoring any of our other games or the giant jackpots in Powerball® and Mega Millions®. And those DO grab a ton of attention when they climb into the stratosphere. But from a day-to-day sales perspective, it’s Crossword scratch tickets here in Iowa. And it has been for nearly 25 years!

The Iowa Lottery introduced its first Crossword scratch game on March 13, 2000. It immediately leapt to the top of the list among our scratch tickets. We’ve had at least one Crossword game on the market ever since, and Crossword is always among our top games.

Scratch games are the Iowa Lottery’s biggest product category, so that’s really saying something.

DEFINITELY Not Just One Crossword Game Today

The first Crossword game here in Iowa was a $3 ticket, and for years, we stuck with that price point. But over time we branched out, and right now, we've got five Crossword games available:

• 20,000 Crossword, a $2 game
• $30,000 Crossword, a $3 game
• $50,000 Super Crossword, a $5 game
• $100,000 Mega Crossword, a $10 game
• Ruby Red Crossword, a $30 game

And if those aren't enough, we've even varied the theme a bit with the Scrabble™ Crossword Game, a $10 ticket that hit the market in February.   

Players say they like Crossword because it takes time to play. They like uncovering the words on their tickets, even if they don’t win. Not that anyone is turning down the chance to win, but they appreciate the process along the way with Crossword!

We hear you: You can definitely expect that we’ll keep Crossword among our scratch games here in Iowa!

First She Won Big On The Lottery. Now She’s Buying A Motorcycle

Here’s a lottery winner with VERY clear plans for the future! 

She's from southern Iowa and she has no hesitation describing what she's going to get now that she’s won $50,000 playing the lottery. Lisa Johns of Creston is buying a Harley Trike.

Lisa says it will help her remember her late husband, Sterling, and their favorite pastime. She says they were avid motorcycle riders, and when Sterling passed away, she gave his motorcycle to her son as Sterling had wanted.

It’s now been two years, and Lisa says she’s ready to get on the road again! She and Sterling were part of a big group that rode motorcycles, and she says she can’t wait to ride with them again.

Lisa, a retired postmaster, won the first of eight top prizes in the “In The Money” scratch game that just hit store shelves earlier this month. She bought her winning ticket at Casey’s, 403 E. Townline Road in Creston and claimed her prize yesterday at lottery headquarters in Clive.

Congratulations, Lisa! We wish you many happy miles out on the road! 

A Lottery Sign, A Facebook Post, And A Very Happy Last-Minute Prize Winner

It started with a lottery sign in a store. Which led to a Facebook post about the sign. Which led to a central Iowa woman seeing the post. Which led to her finding a Mega Millions® ticket she’d bought months ago. Which led to her claiming a $20,000 prize this week with just days to go before it would have expired!

Mary Blumer of Ankeny was still a bit in disbelief about it all as she claimed her prize Wednesday at lottery headquarters in Clive. She says she saw a Facebook post the night before about an unclaimed prize won at an Ankeny convenience store.

The post showed a picture of a lottery sign in the Kum & Go with a circle around the $20,000 Mega Millions prize won there in March that still hadn’t been claimed. The sign showed that the prize was going to expire this coming Monday, Sept. 23.

Mary looked in her purse, and sure enough, she had that winning ticket!

She says she has a habit of putting her lottery tickets in her purse and forgetting about them. She remembers that she meant to check the ticket months ago the next time she stopped for gas, but time got away from her.

THE ONE WHO STARTED IT

Enter Anne Rodriguez, who also lives in Ankeny.

Anne says she saw the lottery sign in the Kum & Go at 165 SW Magazine Rd. in Ankeny, and it bugged her that someone was about to lose out on that prize. So she took a picture of the sign and posted it in the “People of Ankeny” group on Facebook. She says she just hoped something would come from it.

And something did!

Anne says she’s shocked that her post worked.

She says she could almost cry, knowing that Mary claimed the prize in time!

Mary says she owes Anne at least a tank of gas or something because without her, she never would have gotten her winnings!

Mary works at a local credit union and says she plans to retire soon. She’s going to use some of her prize money to start savings accounts for her grandchildren.

THAT’S a story with a great ending!

Her Bestie Was Right! Webster City Woman Wins $1 Million Powerball Prize

It was a normal day at work for a Webster City woman until she saw a message from her best friend, saying that someone in her community had just won $1 million in Powerball®.

Lynne Kannuan admits she usually waits for weeks before she checks the results of her lottery tickets. But after hearing from her friend, she got out her ticket, logged onto the Iowa Lottery website, and checked the winning numbers. She says she had to check the results twice before she started to believe she’d won big.

Then she went straight to her boss’s office. But when she got there, all she could say was, “Um …”

She finally got the words out that she may have won $1 million. Her boss also went to the lottery website to check the winning numbers, and she agreed!

Pausing To Make A Plan

Lynne says she immediately told her husband, Pat, and their adult sons, but then the couple stayed quiet for about six weeks while they consulted a financial planner and lawyer. Lynne claimed her prize today at Iowa Lottery headquarters in Clive through the Lynne Kannuan Living Trust.

She says she and her husband plan to pay bills, invest, and share some of the winnings with family. And Lynne says she’ll get a newer car.

The couple, who both immigrated as children to the United States from Laos, talked about how far they’ve come, literally and figuratively. But they plan to just go about their normal days. Lynne describes her winnings as the perfect amount: “Not too much, not too little, just right.”

A Small Prize Led To Something BIGGER

Lynne bought her winning ticket at Fareway, 942 Second St. in Webster City, while stopping for groceries on her way home from work. She says she had a $5-winning scratch ticket in her purse, so she used a portion of that prize to buy a Powerball ticket. And her next win was MUCH bigger!

The winning numbers in the Aug. 5 Powerball drawing were: 29-42-44-51-54 and Powerball 12. The Power Play® number was 2. Lynne’s ticket was the only one in the country to win a $1 million prize that night.

Fareway received a $1,000 bonus from the Iowa Lottery for selling the $1 million-winning ticket.

Truth or Myth: I Think The New Games Are Luckier!

Here’s another truth vs. myth question to test your lottery know-how: Are the new games luckier when they hit store shelves?

Some people tell us they think so, but in fact, it’s a myth.  

The odds of winning in our games are established before sales start in them, and they apply to the game the entire time that its tickets are on the market. Luck does not change or run out in a game over time, and the odds are the same for every ticket in it.

Maybe some folks look at the number of prizes available in a new game and think it’s luckier based on volume. But the odds stay the same for all prize levels in a game from start to finish. So even if a game has been for sale for a while and some of the prizes in it have already been won, the odds haven’t changed.

The way you can compare different games is to look at the prize levels in them and the overall odds of winning. We keep those details available on our website and mobile app 24/7 so you can access the info at any time.

A game with overall odds of winning of about 1 in 3.82 is slightly luckier than a game with overall odds of 1 in 4.87. The two games may be at different price points and have different play styles or themes, so it’s your choice which you prefer!

Whether you play the lottery or not, we want everyone to have an accurate understanding of how the lottery works. This Truth or Myth series is part of that effort.   

Thought Starter: Can My Charity Accept A Winning Lottery Ticket As A Donation?

Here’s a question we received that had a really nice outcome for the nonprofit involved: Can a charitable organization accept a winning lottery ticket as a donation?

The short answer is yes. The amount of the prize involved would ultimately be considered a cash donation to the group. And a lottery prize can be claimed by an organization as opposed to a person.

Here is the background about the particular inquiry we received.

The philanthropy director from a shelter in western Iowa said that a woman came to their location and handed an employee a winning lottery ticket as a donation to the organization. The woman didn’t give her name and said she wanted it to just be a gift.

We congratulated the group on receiving a very fun and creative anonymous donation! We also let them know that businesses and other organizations can and do claim prizes from the Iowa Lottery.

In those cases, the name and tax ID number provided on the prize claim form are those of the organization involved. We do request the ID of the person presenting the winning ticket, but they sign the claim form on behalf of the organization.

About a week after our email exchange, the shelter claimed a $2,000 prize. That’s a great ending, and a really generous gesture by the anonymous donor who started it all!

Player question: Do you have a game just for Halloween? This time, we DO!

It seems like every year as fall gets closer, we’re asked if we’ll have a game just for Halloween. And this year, we do!

Hey, we’re fans, too. And while it doesn’t work out in our game schedule every time, we show Halloween some love whenever we can.

If you haven’t seen it yet, our “Boo Yah Bucks” scratch game is just CUTE. Tickets in it have four smiling monster faces on them. Well, maybe just three, because we’re not sure Frankenstein can actually smile. You decide. :)

Boo Yah Bucks is a $1 ticket and you can win up to $3,000.

And for your calendars: Fall 2024 officially starts on Sunday, Sept. 22, the day of the autumn equinox.

We’re declaring Halloween season open!

Will We Celebrate A $5 Win? You KNOW It!

Today, we celebrated with a guy who is NOT a big prize winner. And it was all his idea!

Justin Palmieri visited our Cedar Rapids regional office this afternoon to claim a $5 prize. Yep, you read it right: He won $5.

Justin, who operates a local food truck in Cedar Rapids, says he always sees pictures of lottery winners getting oversized checks when they claim huge prizes. And he wondered if we’d give him a check for the $5 he won in the Loose Change Progressive InstaPlay game.

When he reached out to us on Facebook, we told him to come on in today when our offices would be open after the long holiday weekend! Justin’s initial reaction: “When you guys said yes, I was like, ‘Wait, no way! Somebody’s just pulling my chain!’”

But we weren’t kidding. And we gave him the red-carpet treatment, complete with a ceremonial check with lots of exclamation points on it, if not lots of zeroes. And yes, Justin put on his winner T-shirt from the lottery before we took his photo!

Through the years, we’ve had a couple other winners of small prizes ask if they could have an oversized check, and we’ve always said yes if we could. Meeting our winners is one of the best parts of working at the Iowa Lottery and we’ll celebrate wins of all sizes!

Justin says his sister asked him what he planned to do with “all that money.” He has some $5 ideas: maybe buy more lottery tickets, a cup of coffee (decaf, because that’s what he drinks), or a new fishing lure.

Justin considers today's prize-claim experience just a warm-up for much larger winnings to come. He says somebody’s going to win big, and it might as well be him!