I Think I Won That Game’s Top Prize, But The Ticket Results Say I'm Wrong

I blogged last week about player questions for one of our new scratch games, and now we’re hearing from players about another one.

This time, the questions are about the “Lucky Stars” scratch game that hit the market this month. Multiple players have contacted us who all thought they won the game’s top prize of $30,000. But as it turns out, they hadn’t uncovered all of the stars required to win that amount.

Here’s the background:

As its name implies, the $3 Lucky Stars game has a solar-system theme, with artwork on the tickets showing planets and constellations in outer space. There are star symbols in the play area on each ticket, and if you match the number shown in a particular star, you can scratch it off. If you scratch off all of the star numbers in the same path, you win the prize shown for that path.

Lucky Stars is designed so the star paths on the ticket follow bending lines, like the constellations in the night sky. And, the number of stars you need to match increases with the prize amount involved.

For example, to win the game’s $5 prize, you only have to match two stars. But to win $200, you have to match six stars. And to win the game’s top prize of $30,000, you have to match seven stars.

And remember, the star paths are not straight lines! The paths are highlighted on the ticket with double purple lines that you can follow from star to star.

The players who contacted us all thought they won $30,000. But they’d only matched the first five numbers in that path. They didn’t match the final two stars in the line.

So if you play Lucky Stars, remember to look for ALL the stars in the path to win a particular prize.

Comments

[Hannah Rose]

The lottery ticket is extremely misleading and should be pulled immediately. If you have several people thinking they won 30K and they did not then it’s an issue on the ticket end wouldn’t you agree ?

[Mary Neubauer]

Hi, Hannah. Quick clarification: The play instructions are printed in bold on the back of every ticket in the "Lucky Stars" game. And to try to help, please remember that there are multiple ways you can check the results of your lottery ticket, either on your mobile device, or at a local lottery retail location. In the retail locations in Iowa where lottery tickets are sold, you can use a self-checker to check the results of your ticket on your own, or you can have the clerk at a lottery terminal check the ticket for you. And with the Iowa Lottery's mobile app, you can the results of your ticket anywhere that your mobile device has an internet connection. Here are details about how you can add our mobile app to your device: https://ialottery.com/Pages/Games/MobileApp.aspx

[Hannah Rose]

Such a misleading game. Does not show anywhere on the ticket the instructions /rules. Very disappointing. Took a day off of work to drive 2 hours for nothing.

[Mary Neubauer]

Hello, DSR. You've raised a few different points here, and I'll address them one at a time. You are correct that the Prizes & Odds of Winning chart on the Mega Millions page of the lottery's website shows the prizes you can win with the built-in multiplier now that it is automatically included in each play in the Mega Millions game. On the Winning Numbers page for Mega Millions, you can see that the lottery provides the winning numbers in the game's last eight drawings. For the drawings shown that occurred on April 4 or earlier, there WAS still a universal Megaplier number selected as part of the game's drawings. That changed on April 8, when the first drawing occurred in the new version of the Mega Millions game. Because the Winning Numbers page currently shows drawing results for both time periods, the Megaplier reference remains on that page for now. We'll remove it once more drawings have occurred, and we are showing only results on the page for drawings in the new version of the Mega Millions game. Likewise, on the Drawing Results page for Mega Millions, we continue to show the prize charts for both the new version of the game and the old version of Mega Millions that ended on April 4. That's because players still have winning tickets and can claim prizes from drawings before AND after the redesign took effect in the game. We need to provide accurate details for all those players!

[DSR]

The MegaMillions "Prizes & Odds of Winning" area still shows prizes for 2x to 10x, but on pages that show winning numbers there is no longer a megaplier number. If there is no longer a megaplier number you should change the "Prizes & Odds of Winning" area to reflect this.