ialottery blog

Another Take On It: Why There Are More Winners In Higher-Population Areas

In a recent blog, we posted a fun, interactive map that shows all the lottery prizes of $600 or more that were claimed in February. The map brought up some good questions from folks, particularly about the patterns it revealed.

One reader wondered how there could be more winning tickets in higher-population areas when the distribution of tickets is random. The man said he thought that if ticket distribution truly was random, there would be no way that population or the sales at a particular store would matter. But simply by the math involved, they do.

Maybe these visual examples can help make things clear:
 
Store A, which sells 70 tickets per week

Let’s say that each day, a particular store has 50 customers, and 20 percent of them buy a lottery scratch ticket. That means the store sells 10 tickets a day, or 70 tickets in a week. And that means there are only 70 possibilities for winning tickets from that store. 

Store B, which sells 350 tickets per week

In this example, the store involved has 250 customers per day, one in five of whom buy a lottery scratch ticket. That means the store sells 50 tickets a day, or 350 tickets in a week.

Because the busier store sells more tickets, there also will naturally be more winners there. That doesn’t mean the store is luckier, it’s just a matter of sales volume.

For a store with less foot traffic, it will take longer to sell more tickets. And fewer tickets being sold overall means that fewer winning tickets will be sold.

Winning tickets are distributed randomly throughout the entire supply in any of our scratch games. And, our tickets are delivered to the 2,400 lottery retailers in Iowa in no particular order. So, there truly is no way to know when and where the next winning ticket will be purchased.

Stores that sell the most lottery tickets generally are in the biggest communities in our state simply because that’s where more people live and do business.

All The Spots With Big Prizes In February

We’ve made it to the other side of a snowy-nasty February, so we’re pausing to look back at the biggest lottery prizes claimed in Iowa during the shortest month of the year (which sometimes felt like the longest this time around).

This map shows all of the lottery prizes of $600 or more that were claimed in February. You’ll find 399 dots on it, as compared to 427 on January’s map. The difference comes down to February’s shorter number of days, because both months averaged about 14 to 15 big winners per day. So even with the wintry weather, people still made it in to see us and claim their prizes!  

I said it when we looked at January’s numbers and I’ll say it again now: The patterns on this map put into perspective something that we’ve often said about prize wins: In bigger cities, more people are buying tickets and winning prizes. That’s not a matter of luck, it’s a matter of population.

Another way of putting it is that if 5 percent of lottery tickets are sold in a particular area, you expect to find about 5 percent of the overall winners there. Everyone has the same chance of winning, but there will be more winners in places where more tickets are being sold. That’s why there are more dots (prizes) on this map in areas where there are bigger populations. But there really is no telling where the next big winner will hit.

Click here for a direct link to this map in an interactive format where you can see the details involved. Each dot shows the retail location where the winning ticket was purchased, the prize won, the game involved, and the date the prize was claimed.

The dots are in different colors for the four types of lottery games here in Iowa: scratch games, lotto games, InstaPlay games and pull-tab games. Scratch tickets have always been the Iowa Lottery’s leading product and they’re represented on the map by red dots, so it makes sense that there are a lot of them!

I’ll note that this map only shows those big prizes that were claimed in January. It doesn’t include prizes that were won but haven’t been claimed yet.

A $50,000 Valentine From Her Husband

An eastern Iowa woman had quite a story to tell as she claimed a $50,000 lottery prize: The lucky ticket was a Valentine’s Day gift from her husband!

Angelena Madsen of Lisbon claimed her prize yesterday at our Cedar Rapids office. She said that her husband, John, gave her a box of chocolates, a card and a “$500 Loaded!” scratch ticket for Valentine’s Day.

She scratched the ticket and uncovered the matching numbers that she thought meant she had won one of the game’s $50,000 top prizes. Then she gave the ticket to her husband to double-check.

Angelena said she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, but her husband just said: “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

$1 Lottery Win Makes International News

A central Iowa man’s $1 lottery prize has now made international news. And yes, you read that right.
 
Tyler Heep of Urbandale decided to have some fun with it when he won $1 on a lottery scratch ticket. He came to lottery headquarters in Clive earlier this month and asked if we’d give him a ceremonial check for his prize just like we do for our very biggest prize winners. We said of course – it’s a winning experience, after all! Tyler then posted the picture of him proudly posing with his oversized check on social media, and the story took off from there.

His story has now been shared across the country. Media outlets also have picked it up and it’s officially gone international: The Daily Mail in London has run an article about Tyler’s “big” win.

Just like our very biggest prize winners, Tyler was asked what he planned to do with his winnings. He said he’s already spent his $1 -- on half a gallon of gas.

Thank you, Tyler, for reminding us all to have fun in life!

Nope, Those Tickets AREN’T Fakes!

Similar reactions from two of our recent winners caught my attention because they both referenced fake lottery tickets.

First up was Don Burd of Hiawatha, who claimed a progressive InstaPlay jackpot of more than $64,000 on Dec. 24. Don said his initial thought when he saw his winning ticket was that someone must have given him a phony one because there’s no way he would be so lucky. But it wasn’t a fake and Don WAS lucky, taking home a prize of $64,494 on Christmas Eve.

Then a couple days later, we met Laci Kane of Prairie City, who claimed a $50,000 scratch-game prize on Dec. 26. Laci said she won her big prize by buying some lottery tickets to help pass the time while she and her husband drove back from a family Christmas gathering in western Iowa. She told us she was looking forward to showing her family her ceremonial check as evidence of her win because none of them believed her news! She said they all thought it was a fake.

So, while fake lottery tickets do exist and people have been known to give them as a joke, Don and Laci’s tickets were real! And they both have something extra to celebrate for the holidays.

The Holiday Prize Rush Is ON Here At The Lottery!

I don’t know if it’s something in the water, or if it’s because people have been saving up their tickets for awhile, but whatever the reason, winners have kept us BUSY at the Iowa Lottery in the past couple days.

On Monday, Iowa Lottery players claimed 19 prizes of $900 or more, including the largest prize claimed that day, a $100,000 top prize in the “Star” scratch game.

Our offices were closed yesterday for the Christmas holiday, but we’ve been off to the races again today! Lottery players in Iowa claimed a total of 28 prizes today of $800 or more. The largest prize claimed today was one of the top prizes of $300,000 in the “Colossal Crossword” scratch game.

And in addition to the prizes that have already been claimed, a “JACKPOT PARTY® Progressive” InstaPlay jackpot also was won this afternoon in Coralville. The winner of that $11,508 prize, won with a ticket purchased at Keystone Liquor & Wine, 517 Second St. in Coralville, has not yet come forward to claim it.

JACKPOT PARTY® and © 2018 Bally Gaming, Inc. All rights reserved.

Hey, Scratch-Game Fans: It’s Crossword Puzzle Day!

In case you hadn’t heard, it’s Crossword Puzzle Day. That’s according to the National Day Calendar™, the website that tracks unusual and unique National Days and has a day for just about everything.

And since Crossword has been one of our most popular scratch games here in Iowa for years and years, it definitely makes sense to us for this day to be highlighted!

We have had at least one Crossword game in our scratch-game selection for nearly 19 years. The Iowa Lottery introduced its first Crossword game clear back in March of 2000. Crossword quickly became one of our top-selling games and we’ve kept different versions of it on the market ever since because people like them so much. We would definitely hear about it if we didn’t have a Crossword game in stores!

We currently have four Crossword games for sale: the $3 “Holiday Bonus Crossword”; the $5 “$50,000 Holiday Super Crossword”; the $10 “$100,000 Holiday Mega Crossword”; and the $30 “Colossal Crossword.” When the season for our holiday-themed games ends in late December/early January, our regular Crossword games will return to store shelves.           

So, happy Crossword Puzzle Day from us here at the lottery. And if you win a prize on a Crossword ticket today, it must have been meant to be. :)

I Don’t Want To Buy Tickets In A Lottery Game If Players In Other States Are Part Of It, Too…

An email from one of our players highlights the balancing act that goes into the design of our lottery games.

 

In her email, the woman said she wants to see a game that’s only offered in Iowa because she doesn’t like playing our multi-state games, knowing that the jackpot could be won by someone in a different state. The woman’s perspective made us smile because on some level, we’d like it if ALL the winners were from Iowa. But that wouldn’t make players in other states very happy, would it?

 

This player’s viewpoint is why we do our best to have a variety of games available in the market. What appeals to one person may not appeal to someone else, so we keep lots of choices out there.

 

Games like Powerball and Mega Millions are sold by lotteries all across the country because that’s how they purposefully were designed. It takes a big population base playing those games to produce the giant jackpots involved, and you can’t have one without the other.

 

But we also have games that are exclusive to Iowa. Our Pick 3 and Pick 4 games are Iowa-only, as are our scratch games, pull-tab games and InstaPlay games.

 

We hope our game selection achieves the goal of different strokes for different folks. So, if you don’t want to play a multi-state game, you do have other choices!

Player Mail: Just How Much Did I Win On My ‘Holiday Cash’ Ticket?

We’ve gotten questions from some players this week who wondered how much they had won on their “Holiday Cash” scratch tickets. In case you've wondered the same thing, I'm sharing the details here on the blog. 

Holiday Cash is a $5 game that just debuted Oct. 1 for the holiday season, and its pink-and-purple tickets have a snowflake theme with holiday symbols on them.

The game offers prizes ranging from $5 up to $50,000, but some players have questioned how much they won on their tickets. The play instructions for the game note that if you find three identical symbols when you scratch off your numbers in the play area on your ticket, you’ll win the prize shown for that symbol. The prize legend on the ticket shows that if you find three snowmen, you’ll win $20. If you find three trees, you’ll win $50, and so forth. (We’ve highlighted those areas on the ticket shown here.) 

Some players have said that because the prize legend has “3X” in it, they thought that meant they would win three times the prize amount shown. But the 3X actually refers to needing to find three of the particular symbol shown to win the prize amount involved. If you followed the 3X line of thinking, the top prize available in the game would be $150,000, and that’s not the case.

This is the first time we’ve offered a game with the exact play style featured in Holiday Cash, and we thought that the 3X explanation in the prize legend would help players understand that they needed to find three of the symbols shown to win a prize as opposed to just one of the symbols. But what may be clear to one person can mean something completely different to someone else, and that seems to be the case with this game. Just know that the game does not have a 3X multiplier feature for its prizes.

And as you’re playing the game, if you want to double-check which symbol is associated with a particular number you scratched off from the YOUR NUMBERS section, it’s in the upper left corner of the box around that symbol in the play area.

Holiday Promo Starts Today! 61 Cash Prizes Totaling $125,000 On The Line

Psssst! This blog entry will get you thinking about winning cash for the holidays. :)

A total of 61 cash prizes, including a grand prize of $20,000, will be up for grabs over the next few months in our “Fa la la Loot” holiday promotion that started at 9 a.m. today.

The promotion will have seven drawings and the value of the prizes involved will increase each time. We’ll kick things off with 10 prizes of $500 on the line in the promotion’s drawing on Oct. 24, and that will ratchet up to 10 prizes of $3,000 in the drawing on Jan. 9. A $20,000 grand prize also will be awarded Jan. 9 from any entries not selected in an earlier drawing.

Our players have always told us that cash is king, so we’re giving you lots of chances to win just that during this holiday season!

You can enter the promotion using nonwinning tickets from the 11 holiday-themed scratch games we’ll have available this year. Nine of the games hit the market today and two more will debut Nov. 5.

To enter the promotion, you’ll need to join or already be a member of our free VIP Club. And remember that you can enter through the VIP Club website or by scanning your tickets on our app! 

Here’s the drawing schedule and the prizes that will be awarded:

Can’t You Go Back And Adjust Where The Winning Tickets Are?

We got an interesting email from a player who wondered about the distribution of tickets in our Instaplay and scratch games – and specifically, whether we could go back and adjust where winning tickets are placed. The man wanted us to do that because he wasn’t happy with the results of the tickets he bought.

The short answer is that we definitely don’t and can’t do that. The random distribution of tickets in our games is a central security feature of the lottery. Not even we know which tickets will win prizes in our games, or where those tickets have been distributed.

There generally are more than a million tickets in one of our InstaPlay or scratch games. Tickets are distributed over time, and winning tickets are randomly distributed throughout the entire supply of tickets in a particular game, so they’re available in retail locations over time as the game is for sale.

As our new games roll out, it takes about a week for scratch tickets to be distributed to all stores across the state. Some stores prefer to sell through existing tickets before they begin selling something new, so sales volume is part of the picture.

In ‘Crossword’ & ‘Lucky Letters,’ Words Within Words Don’t Count

We’ve gotten questions this week from a couple of players who thought they’d won bigger prizes than they actually had, and  wondered what they had missed on their tickets. They were playing a “Crossword” scratch ticket and one of the games in “The Lucky Game Book” scratch ticket.

In both instances, the players mistakenly thought that if they completed just part of a word, they could still claim the prize involved.

The first inquiry came from a central-Iowa woman who had played the $100,000 Mega Crossword game. You can see in the picture of her ticket that she had completed the letters S-T-I-C-K within the word YARDSTICK. Now, “stick” obviously is a word on its own, but it was not the complete word on her ticket, so it didn’t count. We’ve included a picture of the instructions for that game, which note that “words within words are not eligible” to win a prize. The woman thought that with that word added in, she should have won $60, but in the end, she had won a $20 prize.

The other inquiry came from a man in eastern Iowa who wondered if he had won multiple prizes on his Lucky Game Book ticket. If you’ve played a Game Book ticket, you know that it has six pages of games in it, and his questions were about the Lucky Letters game. You can see in the picture of the man’s ticket that he had completed the letters R-O-N within the word IRON; the letters H-A-M within the word HAMSTER; and the letters B-A-C-K within the word BACKYARD; and wondered if he should have won a prize on each of those lines. And again, while each of those are words, but they were not the complete play word on that line. 

And to follow the argument of words within words, there would not have been 14 play words in the play area on the man’s ticket, but 17. In that same vein of thinking, the letter “A” on its own is a word, as in: Here is a soda. “I” also is a word, as in: I am here. Would you argue that you should win a prize every time that “A” or “I” appears in that game? Perhaps someone would try to make that argument, but in that scenario, the number of play words in the play area would increase from 14 to a number far, far larger than that.

That scenario also would give different players a different number of chances to win, simply because of the letters that happened to be printed on their ticket. And that would be unfair.

The man had won a $20 prize on a different page of his Lucky Game Book ticket, so he also got a prize check from us along with a letter explaining that words within words aren’t eligible for a prize.

Lottery Ends Sales In One Of Its Scratch Games After Player Reports

Today, we have ended sales in one of our $5 scratch games after two reports from players that tickets in the game appear to have been misprinted. The players each sent a ticket to the lottery that appear to show a misprint in the play area on the “Cash Wheel” scratch ticket they bought.

We take our responsibility seriously to provide our players with accurate information and quality products. And while we have only received two reports of difficulties after more than 720,000 tickets have already been distributed in the Cash Wheel game, we’re removing it from sale out of caution.

Any players who have questions about a Cash Wheel scratch ticket they bought should contact us at the lottery at 515-725-7900 or wmaster@ialottery.com.

The Cash Wheel game began sales on July 2. It’s a $5 game that features a roulette theme. Players try to match numbers on a prize wheel in the play area on the ticket to win a prize.
 
Within the past week, the lottery received by mail two Cash Wheel tickets from players who had questions about them. The numbers printed in the play area on both tickets appear to have shifted to the side as the tickets were being printed, causing a portion of the numbers to be obscured.

Any of our scratch games involve hundreds of thousands if not millions of tickets, and with any printed product, there can occasionally be a misprint. We have chosen to remove the Cash Wheel game from sale because it does not meet our expectations.

As part of our standard verification procedures before a game begins sales, a sampling of the tickets ordered in the Cash Wheel game were reviewed and tested by lottery staffers before the game’s release.

The lottery will work with the company that printed the Cash Wheel game to address this issue. In addition, lottery security staffers will reach out directly to the two players who mailed in Cash Wheel tickets.
 
(As background, the lottery ordered just more than 1 million Cash Wheel tickets, and nearly 721,000 of those had been distributed by this morning, when we ended sales in the game. We asked our retail locations to immediately remove the Cash Wheel game from sale, and lottery sales representatives will then pick up any tickets in that game from the retailers.)

Player Mail: The Ticket I Got Was For The Wrong Drawing …

A player from northeast Iowa contacted us recently after realizing the lotto ticket he bought was for a different drawing than he had expected. The man said it was a good reminder for him to double-check the details involved when he’s buying lottery tickets. He’s right, and it’s something for all of us to remember.

Think about it this way: When you buy clothes, you check that you’ve got the correct size, right? And when you buy fruit, you make sure it’s bruise-free and looks fresh, right? It’s the same thing when it comes to lottery tickets: Double-check that they’re the ones you want.

In the case of the man who emailed us, he bought a Powerball ticket he thought was for that night’s drawing. But when he got home, he realized the ticket was for a drawing 10 days later. That’s a feature we’ve added to our system that gives players more options: You can buy a ticket for the next drawing, for several drawings in a row, or you can skip a couple dates and buy for a future drawing.

So, the man had received a valid ticket, it was just for a few drawings in advance. As I said, the situation is a good reminder. Here are some other pointers:

• If it’s a lotto ticket in a game like Powerball, be sure it’s for the game you want and that it contains the numbers and plays for the drawings you selected. 

• If it’s a scratch ticket, be sure the latex covering is intact and that it covers the entire play area on the ticket, including the “Scratch 2 Cash” area. If you’re buying your scratch ticket from a vending machine, be sure that you receive one ticket and not parts of two tickets. If you receive parts of two tickets, take them to the retail counter right away to get a replacement ticket of the same price as the one you initially tried to buy.

• If it’s a pull-tab ticket, be sure that the perforations along the paper tabs are unbroken.

• If it’s an InstaPlay ticket, be sure it was printed on the spot when you asked for it. The lottery terminal plays a cash register sound whenever an InstaPlay ticket is printed, so listen for that audio when you make your purchase.

And when it comes to protecting your lottery winnings, you can have the earliest impact by signing your tickets when you buy them. That identifies the tickets – and any prizes you may win – as belonging to you!

If you ever have a concern about Iowa Lottery products, we want to hear from you. Two of the easiest ways to reach us are by calling 515-725-7900 or emailing us at wmaster@ialottery.com.

Longtime Friends Split $250,000 Prize

Here’s a story that just brings a smile to my face.

Two longtime friends from southern Iowa have played the lottery together for years, and now they’ve split a $250,000 prize!

Barbara Edmondson and Shirley Andrews of Allerton claimed the 18th and final top prize in our “$250,000 Riches” scratch game. They bought their winning ticket at Soukup First Stop, 400 N. Central Ave. in Allerton.

Shirley, who is 77, admits she’s been giving static to the lottery that it doesn’t ever have any big winners in Allerton – and she thinks she may have to eat her words now!

The two friends said they redeemed a winning ticket at their local store and decided to use their prize money to buy a ticket in $250,000 Riches. They said they were just stunned when they scratched the ticket uncovered the game’s stop prize.

Barbara, who is 82, said her mind went “completely blank” in disbelief. She said she even had trouble dialing her telephone after that!

Shirley says she’s not sure what she’ll do with her share of the winnings, but Barbara has plans for a new set of wheels. She says her current car has 230,000 miles on it, and she deserves a new one.

I love their story, I love their moxie, and I love their friendship. What a heartwarming moment.

Two Big Winners This Week At Same Eastern Iowa Store

 Friday (Aug. 17) Update: The $50,000 prize now also has been claimed! Details below.  

The eastern Iowa community of DeWitt, population 5,322, is seeing a lottery winning streak this week! More specifically, it’s all happening at one store there.

On Tuesday, a Clinton County woman claimed a $30,000 prize she won on a scratch ticket she bought at the Kwik Star convenience store, 1420 11th St. in DeWitt. Sandra Sparlin of Wheatland won one of the top prizes in the “Bonus Crossword” scratch game.

Then Wednesday night, someone who bought a Powerball ticket at that same Kwik Star store won a $50,000 prize! The ticket matched four of the first five numbers and the Powerball.

On Friday, Heather Sloan of Maquoketa claimed that $50,000 prize. She works in DeWitt and said that after she bought a Powerball ticket on Tuesday, she forgot about it for a couple days until she noticed it in her wallet again Thursday night. Heather said that when she got online to check the numbers, she realized she’d won $50,000 and admits she started freaking out – in a good way.

Heather said that she and her husband have both had some car trouble recently, so they’re planning to use the winnings to buy newer vehicles, then tuck the rest away into savings.    

Heather said she’s a huge HGTV fan and likes to watch a show on that network called “My Lottery Dream Home” where lottery winners use their prize money to buy their dream home. She said that her prize may not get her on that show, but her lottery win is still amazing and kind of unreal.   

The winning numbers in Wednesday’s Powerball drawing were: 12-15-28-47-48 and Powerball 16. The Power Play number was 2. Heather’s winning ticket was an easy-pick.

 

 

Happy Surprise: My Ticket Won A Prize When I Didn’t Think It Had ...

Here’s something that could happen to anyone, so we’re sharing the details to do our best to help.

A Davenport player reached out to us after claiming a prize from a scratch ticket she didn’t think had won anything. She wanted to know how she could have won when she hadn’t uncovered enough words on her ticket to qualify for a prize.

The woman was playing one of our most popular products: a “Crossword” scratch ticket. The Iowa Lottery introduced its first Crossword game clear back in March of 2000 and we’ve kept at least one Crossword game on the market in all the years since because people like them so much. We would definitely hear about it if we didn’t have a Crossword game in stores! 

In this player's case, she was playing the “$50,000 Super Crossword” game. She sent us a photo of the winning ticket she’d played, and that image allowed us to pinpoint what had happened. She hadn’t scratched off the entire area on the ticket that contains “YOUR LETTERS.” Those are the letters that you as a player uncover in the word puzzles to try to win a prize.

In the image at right, we’ve circled the area on the ticket where the woman had missed some of the letters she had to play. The “YOUR LETTERS” area is inside a box that is printed on the ticket, and she hadn’t uncovered the entire box, so there were four more letters for her to play. In this player's case, the story ended with a happy surprise!

But as you’re playing our scratch games, be sure that you uncover everything there is to play on a ticket and that you follow the full instructions about how to play.

Help! My Ticket Got Ruined! Can It Still Be Cashed?

An email just came our way from a lottery player whose ticket had somehow gotten damaged, and the person wanted to know if we could still check it to see if it was a winner.  We asked the player to send the ticket to us here at lottery headquarters so we can see if it can still be scanned.

I emphasize the “IF” part of that statement, because in some cases, it may not be possible for us to determine the outcome of a ticket. If it’s ruined/damaged to the point that key information on the ticket is no longer clear, we won’t be able to check the ticket to determine its status.

Here are a couple examples we’ve seen through the years. In one instance, we were able to validate the ticket involved, but in the other, there wasn’t enough information left to go on.

Back in 2015, we got a very funny inquiry from a Waterloo woman who sent us an adorable picture of her dog along with the remains of a scratch ticket that the dog had chewed up. The woman was able to find most of the mangled pieces of the ticket and taped them back together before sending it to us. (That’s the picture you see here.) In that instance, our security team was able to find enough information on the ticket to determine that she had indeed won a $5 prize.

And then in 2016, a player emailed us to say that in the process of trying to steam open a greeting card, she put the card and the lotto tickets it contained in the microwave. When she took the card out, the lottery tickets inside had turned completely black.

That’s because tickets in our lotto games are printed on thermal paper. Heat is used to print the numbers and logos on the front of the ticket. And if you apply heat to an entire ticket, the whole surface will turn black.

In that instance, we unfortunately weren’t able to read anything on the tickets involved to determine if any of them had won a prize.

So, if your lottery ticket ends up getting damaged and you have questions about the prize it may have won, we’ll do our best to help figure that out. Just know that in some instances, that may not be possible.

Iowa Man Wins $300,000 Prize With 4th Ticket He Bought In Game

He won some small prizes on the first three tickets he bought in the game, but it was the fourth one that was a doozy! It brought Cody Heaberlin of Cedar Rapids one of the $300,000 top prizes in the “Colossal Crossword” scratch game.

Heaberlin said he at first thought he’d won a $10,000 prize, but when he had his ticket checked at a local gas station, the clerk told him that he’d won a lot more than that. He said he thought she was messing with him at first! Heaberlin claimed the second of eight top prizes available in the game.

He said that he and his wife just recently bought a home, so a big chunk of the winnings will go toward paying the house off right away.

New Shoes and A Purse In This Lottery Winner’s Future

I think a lot of us can relate to the purchases that this winner has in mind! A northern Iowa woman won a $50,000 prize in one of our scratch games and while she and her husband plan to spend some of the money to pay off their vehicles, she said she has two other purchases in mind for the near future: new shoes and a purse!

Mary Miller of Hampton claimed one of the top prizes in the “Power 5s” scratch game. She bought her winning ticket at Kwik Star in Hampton and claimed her prize at the lottery’s Mason City office.

Mary said that in addition to some fun plans, her win gives her bragging rights at her office. She and her co-workers sometimes buy scratch tickets and see who wins the biggest prize. She’s definitely got that title for now!

New Record Set For IA Scratch-Ticket Sales

We’ve just gotten our sales figures for March, and, holy buckets! We were officially BUSY last month!

Sales of lottery instant-scratch tickets in Iowa set an all-time monthly record in March, helped by the release of “Colossol Crossword,” the game with oversized, double-sided tickets that debuted March 5. 

Scratch-game sales totaled nearly $24 million in March, an increase of more than $900,000 from our previous monthly sales record for those games that had been set a year earlier.

So what’s behind the numbers? We always concentrate on the mix of games that we have in the field, doing our best to keep different colors, ticket designs and price points out there so you’ll have choices. And we like to try new innovations, like double-sided tickets. A scratch game was the first product that the Iowa Lottery sold back when it started in 1985, and scratch tickets have traditionally been our leading sales category. 

Part of the fun for us is investigating new ideas that we think will appeal to players, and then releasing the product to see if our predictions hold true.

The lottery’s top three months for scratch-ticket sales have all been in March, from 2016 to 2018:
        March 2018: $23.96 million
        March 2017: $23.04 million
        March 2016: $22.75 million

We’ve theorized that maybe there’s a spring-fever phenomenon in there, too, that gets us all out and about more in March after a long winter. That could be reflected in our numbers!

Yes! 'Colossal Crossword' Is Now Available Statewide

A new game that is seeing a huge response is now available at lottery retail locations statewide. "Colossal Crossword" is the first double-sided ticket we've released in nearly five years. And it's Iowa's first 8-inch Crossword game, so we're doing our best to deliver the extended playing time you've told us you like!

Colossal Crossword was delivered to retail locations across Iowa last week, so it is now available statewide. Tickets in the game have been selling quickly, and we're doing our best with re-orders to keep it in stores everywhere.

Thank you for checking out the new game!

A Month After His Bday, 21-Year-Old Claims $50K Lottery Prize

An eastern Iowa man is celebrating being 21 – and a lottery winner!

Billie Griffin of Fairfield turned 21 earlier this year. And yesterday, he claimed one of the $50,000 top prizes in the “Super Crossword” scratch game. Billie bought his winning ticket at the Circle B, 111 Main St. in Keosauqua.

Not a bad way to celebrate, that’s for sure! (And on a side note, Billie is an example of why I’m a terrible judge of a person's age.)

:)

Congrats, Billie! Enjoy your lottery win.

Winning Streak Going In Council Bluffs!

We were reviewing prize-claim reports for the month so far and noticed that there’s a winning streak going in Council Bluffs. Four lottery players from that city have won prizes ranging from $20,000 up to $100,000 since Feb. 1 – and two of them bought their winning tickets at the same store!

Amy Church of Council Bluffs got things started on Feb. 5 when she claimed a $30,000 prize on a “Bonus Crossword” scratch ticket she bought at Eddy’s Fas Mart at 611 E. Broadway Ave. in Council Bluffs. Next up was David Kokenge of Council Bluffs, who claimed a $20,000 prize Tuesday in the Lotto America game with a ticket he bought at the Lakeside Ampride, 4040 S. Expressway St. in Council Bluffs.

And then today, two Council Bluffs residents both claimed big prizes, including a woman who bought her ticket at the same store as Amy Church.

Rachelle Hunt claimed a $30,000 prize in the “Bonus Crossword” scratch game with a ticket she bought at Hy-Vee, 2323 W. Broadway Ave. in Council Bluffs. And Makayla Garrison of Council Bluffs topped things off by claiming a $100,000 prize in the “$100,000 Mega XWord” scratch game with a ticket she bought at Eddy’s Fas Mart, 611 E. Broadway Ave.

With five more days to go in February, the city’s winning streak for the month may not be over yet. Only time will tell!

The ‘Lucky Game Book’ Is Now Hitting Stores

Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten questions from players wondering when a new game book would hit the market, and the answer is: Right now!

Ever since that game book product containing multiple pages of playing space debuted in Iowa back in 2013, it’s been extremely popular with players. We’ve kept a version of it in the marketplace ever since.

“The Lucky Game Book” is the newest one, and it began sales on Oct. 31. Some locations may still have an existing supply of “The Little Black Game Book” in stock, and as those tickets sell through, they’ll be replaced by the new game. The Little Black Game Book hit the market back in February 2016, so we’re nearing the end of that supply of tickets.

 

Player Mail: Can I Still Claim A Prize From This Old Ticket?

A couple players have come to lottery headquarters here in Clive this month with tickets that were expired – meaning the date had passed by which prizes could be claimed in those games. The players wanted to know if we could still cash the tickets anyway. The quick answer is no, and here are the details why.

One of the players had a ticket from a couple years ago and the other had a ticket older than that. In another instance earlier this year, someone sent us a ticket from one of the Iowa Lottery’s first scratch games from the 1980s and wondered if the prize from it could still be claimed.

From a record-keeping perspective, the lottery establishes end dates for its scratch and pull-tab games and the corresponding expiration dates for prizes in them. There also are deadlines for claiming prizes in our lotto games (365 days from the date of the drawing in Powerball®, Mega Millions®, Hot Lotto®, and Lucky for Life®; and 90 days from the date of the drawing in Iowa’s Pick 3 and Pick 4 games).

Technology has changed so much that our equipment today can’t check tickets from years ago. We have to keep on hand a tremendous amount of electronic data so that lottery tickets can be checked and cashed statewide. And simply from a space perspective – physical or electronic – it’s not possible to maintain decades’ worth of the detailed records necessary for a lottery prize to be claimed. Those realities dictate that there are deadlines by which lottery prizes must be claimed.

Money from unclaimed prizes here in Iowa goes into the lottery’s prize pools for future games and promotions, so it will be used to pay prizes, just not those prizes that have expired.

We keep a lot of information on our website to help you track our games and the prizes in them. For our pull-tab and scratch games, we provide: 1.) details about the games currently for sale statewide; 2.) a listing of those games where ticket distribution has recently ended; 3.) the deadlines by which prizes must be claimed in games that have official end dates; 4.) and lists of those games that have ended and in which prizes can no longer be claimed.

For our lotto games, we provide details about our current games available statewide and a list of prizes of $600 or more that are still unclaimed.

Bottom line, if you have won a lottery prize, please claim it quickly so you don’t have to worry about things like games that have ended and prizes that have expired. And keep your winning ticket in a safe place, because you’ll need to present it to us to claim the prize involved!

Where Did My Favorite Scratch Game Go?

We’ve heard from some players recently asking where they can find their favorite scratch game.

You may have noticed that nine new holiday scratch games went on sale Oct. 2 and two more will go on sale Nov. 6. Nonwinning tickets in all 11 holiday scratch games are eligible to win cash prizes in our Secret Santa Play It Again^® promotion.

Because of this, we ask that all of our retailers across the state sell at least some of our holiday scratch games. And since many retailers have limited space to display lottery games, some scratch games must be removed to make room for the new ones. Therefore, we’ve pulled some of our other games for the time being.

Don’t worry, though, we haven’t gotten rid of those other games for good. As you can imagine, the holiday games only run for a short time, so our other games, and their remaining prizes, will be coming back in early January!

Player Mail: What’s That Number Mean After The Name Of The Game?

It’s funny how things can sometimes come in waves, like the questions we’ve gotten this week about a certain set of numbers on our website. The numbers have been on the site for years and we haven’t changed their format, but for some reason, people noticed them this week and wondered what they mean.

I’m referring to the Remaining Prizes page on our website where we list prizes of $100 or more that are still up for grabs in our scratch, pull-tab and InstaPlay games. On that page, you can see the number of larger prizes that have been won and those that remain unclaimed. (The list is updated once daily, Monday through Friday.)

We list games alphabetically on that page but also include other details, such as the price per ticket and the game number. And it’s that number that apparently has people talking.

Our games have names like “$250,000 Riches” or “Black Ice,” but to keep track of them in our databases, each game also is assigned a number. So, $250,000 Riches is game No. 925 and Black Ice is game No. 302. It’s simply an identifying number for that particular game. It doesn’t signify anything else.

We list the game numbers on that page because we often have games with similar names, like these currently on the market: Cash In, Cash Lift and Cash Line. The game numbers help differentiate the details involved and help players easily find the information they’re seeking.

I’ve asked our Web Team to add an additional header on the page so it will be clear that they’re simply identifying game numbers, but in the meantime, this blog entry can answer the question!

Check It Out: Touch-Screen Kiosks Sell Lotto, Scratch & InstaPlay Tickets

 

We did a Facebook Live demo for a sneak peek of them on Monday, and now here’s a video with a more detailed look at the lottery’s new touch-screen kiosks that are being installed in Iowa right now. For the first time, you as the customer can use the self-service kiosks to buy lotto, scratch and InstaPlay tickets on your own. You also can check your tickets at the kiosks, just like you can by using the self-checkers we’ve installed in nearly all of our retail locations. 

Our very first touch-screen kiosk was installed yesterday at Hy-Vee, 1700 Valley West Drive in West Des Moines. You’ll see more of them in the field as they continue to be installed statewide over the next couple months. The kiosks will be in our very biggest, busiest locations to give players there an additional way to buy tickets.

Check out the video above for a quick overview. Here are a few other details about the kiosks, in case you’re wondering: You can use a playslip at the kiosk. The playslip reader is just below the bill acceptor where you put money into the machine (you can see it in some of the video shots). You can redeem lottery coupons at the kiosk and the machine also can read the barcode on any ePlayslips you’ve created using the Iowa Lottery’s app available for both Android and Apple.      
 
We hope you like the new look and features of the kiosks!

Fort Dodge Man Charged In Theft Of Lottery Tickets

 

A Fort Dodge man faces three felony charges following an investigation by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the Iowa Lottery into scratch tickets that were missing from a Fort Dodge convenience store. Click here to see the full details today from the DCI.