ialottery blog

A Milk Run With More: Errand Ends With $10,000 Lottery Prize

There’s something about the every-day aspect of this story, especially during these unusual times, that brings a smile. A southeast Iowa couple has taken home a $10,000 prize from a lottery scratch ticket purchased during a milk run.

Heather Love of Morning Sun claimed the prize earlier this week. She said that her husband, Nick, bought the ticket when he stopped at a local convenience store for milk on the way home from work. She said that Nick rarely buys scratch tickets but decided to get one that day in the “$100,000 Mega Crossword” game.

Heather said she was the one who scratched the ticket later that night after dinner. She thought they’d won big, but said it didn’t really start to sink in until she scanned the ticket on the lottery’s mobile app and it displayed the message: "Congratulations, you won $10,000!"

She said that she and Nick argued good-naturedly over which one of them would actually claim the prize, but agreed that they would use the winnings to buy new carpet and flooring for their home.

Heather said that winning a big prize “kind of makes your heart flutter.” She said she has often heard about people winning the lottery, but now it’s real to her.

Congratulations, Heather and Nick! Thank you for giving us a smile with your story!

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.

Player Comment: I Should Be Able To Win With A Different Symbol

One of our newest scratch games has prompted comments from some players who thought they should be able to win with a different symbol on their tickets than the actual winning symbols.

The bottom-line answer is that only the winning symbols will bring you a prize in the game. But here’s the full background involved:

The players’ comments have been about the “Joker’s Wild” scratch game that just hit the market this month. There are 15 prize spots in the play area on each Joker’s Wild ticket, and you scratch them off to see if you’ve won.

As its name indicates, Joker’s Wild has a card-game theme. If you uncover the joker card in one of the prize spots on your ticket, you’ll win the prize shown for that spot.

If you uncover the cherry card, you’ll win 10X the prize shown. And if you uncover the money bag card, you’ll win all 15 prizes on your ticket.

The amount you can win on a ticket ranges from $5 up to $50,000.

What Some Players Are Saying

Each of the symbols in the play area on a Joker’s Wild ticket is identified with both an image and letters underneath it. For example, the queen card shows both the Q symbol and the identifying letters of QUN. The three card has the numeral 3 with the letters THR, and so on.

The players’ questions have been about the seven card (7-SVN) and the cherry card (cherry symbol + 10X). Those are highlighted in the image of a Joker’s Wild ticket you can see here.

The players have said they think the cherry symbol looks a bit like a numeral 7 and therefore, they should be able to win a prize with the 7 card their ticket.

But even if you think that the cherry symbol looks like the number 7, the cherry card also has the 10X identifier on it. The 7-SVN card does not.

The 7-SVN card is not a winning symbol in the game. So no, you won’t win a prize with that card on your ticket.

Truth or Myth: Does The Lottery Control Where Winning Scratch Tickets Are Sold?

It’s time for another entry in our Truth vs. Myth series to test your lottery know-how! Here goes: Does the lottery control where winning scratch tickets are sold?

The answer to that is a big ol’ NOPE. That particular belief is definitely a myth. And the mistaken idea unfortunately extends out into other myth-based thoughts like: All the winners are from big cities/small towns/other states/no one from my area ever wins, etc.

The fact is that the odds of winning in lottery games are based solely on random chance.

The outcome of one particular ticket has no impact at all on the outcome of an upcoming ticket. And no one -- not even those of us who work at the lottery or the retailers that sell our tickets -- can predict when or where the next big winner will hit. That’s an important part of our security procedures.

Winning tickets are distributed randomly in our scratch games. Maybe a quick way to visualize that is to think about a deck of shuffled cards. Once the deck has been shuffled, there could be three hearts or clubs in a row and then several cards after that in the other two suits. The order becomes random once the cards are shuffled.

It’s the same thing in our games. There could be three winning tickets in a row, and then several nonwinning tickets in a row after that. Now, the size of a scratch game is much, much bigger than a deck of cards, but the same concept applies. (There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of tickets in a scratch game.)

The bottom line is: People all across Iowa – and all across the country – can and do win lottery prizes every day.

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.

What Do YOU Call These Tickets?

We asked this question in the lottery's social media contest this month, and the split in the answers tells us to keep asking.

So, we want to know: What do you call the lottery tickets where you scratch off the security coating to see if you’ve won a prize?

Nearly 2,700 people shared their answers during our social media contest Jan. 13-15. Here’s the split:

• Scratch tickets:     50 percent (1,336 answers)
• Scratch-offs:         33 percent (885 answers)
• Scratchers:           17 percent (450 answers)
• Scratch cards:      0.8 percent (21 answers)

A few other people posted comments with even more responses, including: scratchies!

There are 48 U.S. lotteries, and there appear to be nearly that many names for this product, depending on where you live.

We asked the question because we’re curious about what Iowa players say. We don’t want to call our games something that causes confusion or doesn’t mean anything to you.

Under state law, the technical name for the product is “instant ticket” because you can find out instantly if you’ve won a prize. But through the years, that name has fallen by the wayside for more every-day references.

I don’t think we’re wrong to call them scratch tickets, but we may work in the other names from time to time!

Do YOU call those tickets something else?

A Coin Flip, Rolling The Dice, Shuffling The Cards: A Look At What The Odds Mean

Maybe the best way to explain the odds of winning in a lottery game is to compare them to something else entirely. So we made some new videos to do just that.

Let’s start with scratch games. The odds of winning on a scratch ticket are a lot like the outcome of shuffling a deck of cards. There are 4 suits in the deck, but after the cards are shuffled into random order, you can go a lot more than 4 cards in a row without finding a particular suit.

For InstaPlay games, think of the odds like flipping a coin. You’ve got a 50/50 chance that the outcome will be heads or tails, but we all know you can flip a coin several times in a row with only one outcome.

For pull-tab games, the odds can be compared to rolling a dice. You’ve got a 1 in 6 chance of rolling one of the numbers on the dice, but you can roll it time after time without landing on the number you want!

For lotto games – including Powerball® and Mega Millions® – the odds of winning come from the numbers available to play, and all the different ways you can combine them.

We used each of those concepts for the new videos that went live today to explain the odds of winning in our games. Each video is only about a minute long to quickly provide the details involved.

You can find the videos through the links in this blog entry, and we'll also post them on our website.  

Whether you play the lottery or not, we want everyone to have an accurate understanding of how our games work. These new videos are part of that effort.

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!

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!

Iowa Lottery, Iowa State Fair Celebrate Years Of Partnership With Scratch Game, Promotion & Live Game Show

An internationally acclaimed Iowa event is being celebrated with a new lottery scratch game and promotion offering prizes of up to $5 million and ticket packages to some of the most sought-after performances in the state.

Iowa Lottery CEO Matt Strawn (on the left), Iowa State Fair CEO Jeremy Parsons were joined by Iowa State Fair mascots Fairfield (the blue ribbon) and Rosetta as they made the announcement this afternoon: Tickets in the “Iowa State Fair” scratch game have begun arriving in stores today and will be available statewide by Friday! The $5 tickets feature iconic Iowa State Fair images, including a Ferris wheel, food on a stick, and livestock, all celebrating the Fair’s 2024 theme, Fair Fever.

Players who buy tickets in the Iowa State Fair scratch game have a chance to win instant prizes from $5 up to $50,000. But that’s just the start!

Nonwinning tickets in the game can be entered into the Iowa Lottery’s Fair Fever promotion that began this afternoon and will offer prizes of up to $5 million along with dozens of concert prize packages for performances at the 2024 Iowa State Fair, where the Iowa Lottery is the Grandstand sponsor.

The promotion will conclude with a live lottery game show on opening day of this year’s Iowa State Fair, where 20 contestants will compete for a total of $1 million in guaranteed prizes. The final contestant on the game show will win at least $500,000 and have a chance at a prize of up to $5 million!

The game show will be held Aug. 8 on the Fairgrounds Grand Concourse. Contestants that day will gradually be eliminated through a series of contests, with each competitor winning at least $10,000.

Going All The Way Back to 1985 …

The decades-long relationship between the Iowa State Fair and the Iowa Lottery began 39 years ago on the very first day of lottery ticket sales in Iowa. There was a kick-off celebration on Aug. 22, 1985, at the Iowa State Fair to mark the Iowa Lottery’s inaugural day.

In the mid-1990s, Iowa Lottery proceeds were dedicated for four years to funding capital improvements on the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Among the projects that received lottery funding was the extensive 1997 renovation of the Iowa State Fair Grandstand.

The Iowa Lottery has held many events at the Iowa State Fair through the years, including hosting a Powerball® drawing on the Grand Concourse in 2006. And in recent years, the Iowa Lottery has been the Day of Fair sponsor on the annual Veterans Day at the Iowa State Fair.

How To Enter The Promotion

To enter the Fair Fever promotion, Iowa Lottery players need to join or already be members of the lottery’s free VIP Club. The promotion’s entry period opens this afternoon and runs through 9:59 a.m. on July 16.

There will be two drawing dates in the promotion to select the contestants for the live game show at the Iowa State Fair along with the winners of concert-ticket prize packages for performances at the Iowa State Fair Grandstand.

The Prizes To Win

Up for grabs on the promotion’s first drawing date on June 6 are 27 ticket prize packages for each of these four Grandstand concerts:

• Thursday, Aug. 8: Lauren Daigle with special guest Blessing Offor.
• Friday, Aug. 9: Foreigner Historic Farewell Tour with special guest Melissa Etheridge.
• Saturday, Aug. 10: Jelly Roll with special guest DAX.
• Sunday, Aug. 11: Greta Van Fleet Starcatcher World Tour with special guest The Beaches.

In the promotion’s second drawing date on July 18, the game-show contestants will be selected along with the winners of 27 ticket prize packages for each these five Grandstand concerts:

• Monday, Aug. 12: Brett Young with special guest NEEDTOBREATHE.
• Tuesday, Aug. 13: Thomas Rhett.
• Wednesday, Aug. 14: Mötley Crüe with special guest Pop Evil.
• Friday, Aug. 16: The Avett Brothers with G. Love & Special Sauce.
• Saturday, Aug. 17: Ne-Yo with special guest Eric Bellinger.

There will be 4 ticket-level options available: pit standing area, club seats, Grandstand seats, and VIP spectator deck. Players will select the concert they want to attend and the level of tickets they want to win at the time they enter the promotion.

All concert prize packages will include 2 tickets to the show involved, admission tickets to the Iowa State Fair, parking and $100 spending money from the Iowa Lottery.

Truth or Myth: With overall odds of 1 in 3.67, if I buy 4 tickets I'm guaranteed to win.

Last month, we asked our first Truth or Myth question to have everyone put their thinking caps on. Now we’re back for another round. This is a good one, and we hear it a lot.

Truth or Myth: If the overall odds of winning in a game are 1 in 3.67, if you buy 4 tickets in a row, 1 of them is guaranteed to win a prize.

That’s a myth.

The overall odds of winning a prize in a scratch, InstaPlay or pull-tab game apply to each ticket purchased in that game, not a series of tickets. So, if a game has overall odds of winning of about 1:4, that doesn't mean that if you buy 4 tickets, 1 of them is guaranteed to win. It means that if you were to buy all of the tickets available in that game, approximately 1 in 4 of them would win a prize.

Winning tickets are distributed randomly in our games, so no one, not even those of us at the lottery or the retailers who sell our tickets, know when or where the next win will hit. That’s an important part of our lottery security procedures.

Think of the random distribution of winning tickets like a deck of cards that’s been shuffled. Within the shuffled deck, there could be three hearts or clubs in a
row and then several cards in a row after that in other suits. It’s the same thing in our games. There could be three winning tickets in a row, and then several nonwinning tickets in a row after that.

It’s our job to ensure that everyone has the same fair shot at winning. The bottom line is, big winners happen all over the state. And, higher ticket sales in a particular area will mean more winners there. It doesn’t mean those tickets are luckier. It just means there were more tickets sold in that area, so there will be more winners there as well, simply based on volume.

We keep a list of all winners of $600 or more in the past year on our website along with the remaining prizes of $50 or more in our scratch and InstaPlay games. We also have a list of unclaimed prizes of $600 or more in our lotto games.

Those lists are part of our efforts to be as transparent as we can about the details in our games. So is this Truth or Myth series.

Whether you play the lottery or not, we want everyone to have an accurate understanding of how the lottery works.

In His Excitement, This $500,000 Winner Initially Left His Ticket In The Store!

A New Hampton man says he was calm today as he claimed a $500,000 lottery prize. But he admits that was definitely not the case when he first realized he’d won big!

Kevin Frey says he was so thrown off by his win that he left his winning ticket behind in the store. He was out in his car, calling and texting his family with the news, when one of his adult children asked him to send a photo of the winning ticket. That’s when he realized he didn’t have it.

Frey says he ran back into the store and asked the clerk for the ticket. She also had been so flustered, she just put it down beside the lottery terminal. Frey says they finally got on the right page!

Frey is 64 and a long-time New Hampton pastor. He bought his winning ticket at Casey’s, 615 N. Linn Ave. in New Hampton and claimed the 8th of 14 top prizes in the "$500,000 Ca$h" scratch game. 

So why did his son want to see a picture of the winning ticket? Frey admits that his children know he can tell a pretty good tale. But in this case, the tall tale was true!

Frey says that he and his wife, Marian, have talked about moving to the Des Moines area when they retire to be closer to family, and his lottery win will help with that along with other long-term plans and investments. He says it will be fun to share some of their winnings with family and to support the charities to which they’ve made donations for years.

Frey says he was able to lead church services on Sunday as if nothing was out of the ordinary – and those in the congregation said he did a nice job on the sermon!

Player Comment: I’m Mad You Pulled Your Holiday-Themed Games

Here’s a player comment we received that in some ways we understand and in other ways, we totally don’t. At all.

The man was mad that we’ve removed our holiday-themed games from store shelves for the year. He said he thought we were being unfair by pulling them.

On one hand, we understand that some people may really like a particular game and want the chance to keep playing it. On the other hand, it wouldn’t make sense for us to have a holiday-themed game still on sale in July. Nothing says summer in Iowa like a … ticket with snowmen and holly on it!

We remove our holiday-themed games from sale each year shortly after the holiday season ends. Once the holidays are over, people are ready to move on!

But we also design our holiday games for the relatively short period of time that they will be on sale. They generally begin sales in early October and then end in early to mid-January after the holidays. By comparison, some of our non-holiday scratch games can be for sale for years at a time.

We order smaller quantities of tickets in our holiday games, designed to best fit their shelf life. And we’ll sometimes bring back a holiday game the following year if it was particularly popular the year before.

So while that particular player wasn’t happy with us, others say they look forward to the switch-over of our games. There probably are as many opinions on the matter as there are people who play.

Just know that we’ll keep doing our best to come up with fun and new game ideas! And before you know it, the NEXT holiday season will be on the way and we’ll have holiday-themed games out once again!

That Lucky Feeling: A New ‘Family of Games’ is Hitting Stores This Week

The new scratch games hitting stores this week here in Iowa include a special series of tickets that may catch your eye for how much they look alike. And we meant to do that.

Through the years, we’ve occasionally released what we call a “Family of Games.” The latest are the “Luck” games beginning distribution today. Maybe think of them as S-M-L-XL!

The $1 Luck game is red, the $2 Luck game has green tickets, the $5 Luck game is blue, and the $10 Luck game has purple tickets.

Players have told us that they like the fun of a set of games, and we have fun coming up with ideas to try.

The top prize available gets larger as you follow the Luck series up. So does the playing time on the ticket. For example, the $1 Luck game has five prize spots to scratch off and offers a top prize of $1,000, while the $10 Luck game has 25 prize spots to play and offers a top prize of $100,000.

So, choose the version of Luck you like or play them all! And you KNOW I’m going to ask this: Do you feel lucky?

Player Question: How Long Will Your Holiday-Themed Games Be Available?

With the long holiday weekend behind us, our holiday-themed scratch games are on the clock, as the saying goes.

A player reached out to us today to ask how long our holiday games will be available. The short answer is that we’ve got a new round of games scheduled to hit the market on Jan. 3. It may take a few days after that for all the holiday tickets to be replaced in stores by the new games, but just know that the change-out is coming!

So if you want a ticket in one of our holiday-themed games, buy it in the next few days!

You have a little more time than that to enter any nonwinning tickets in the games into our Million Dollar Holiday promotion for a chance to win prizes there. We purposefully time the ending of our holiday promotion to be a few days after the end date for our holiday games. We know that folks may want to enter tickets they just received as a gift or bought as a treat for themselves.

The deadline to enter tickets in the Million Dollar Holiday promotion is before 10 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 8!

Why Do We Blur/Crop Out The Ticket Codes In Images?

Here’s an interesting question that came our way about the images we post of players’ winning tickets in our games. We know that you’re always curious about winning tickets and what numbers and symbols are on them, so we often post images to give you a closer look.

In the process, however, we always blur or crop out the security codes on the tickets as you can see in the image shown here. Some folks have asked why.

From a purely technical perspective, the security codes aren’t part of the play area on a ticket, so they aren’t necessary to show the winning numbers or symbols involved. However, the codes are what identify each individual lottery ticket and they’re used in the prize-claim process.

We blur the codes out so we don’t inadvertently cause a complication in the lottery prize-claim process. So, while we know you’re curious about them, there is a reason that those codes are blurred out.

We show as much of the ticket as possible, but the codes will continue to be left out of the images for security purposes.

How You Play Your Ticket Is Up to YOU!

A photo of a recent winner’s ticket really got people talking, and it made us wonder: How do YOU play?

The player involved won a top prize earlier this month in the “$30,000 Crossword” scratch game. In the image of his ticket, you can see that he scratched off only the letters in the winning words on his ticket. He went word by word to see if he had all the letters involved.

Some people commented that they don’t play Crossword tickets that way – they scratch off the individual letters one at a time that they find in the “Your Letters” area and then look to see how many words they’ve completed in the Crossword puzzle. Others said they have their own unique systems: One woman said she scratches off three letters at a time.

Some players wondered if the way the man played the ticket meant that he was more likely to win. The answer to that question is no: The odds of winning are the same for every ticket in our games, and winning tickets are randomly distributed throughout our scratch games.

It’s fun to see the different ways that people play their tickets. It really brings home the concept of you do you! From our perspective, there are no wrong answers.

He ALMOST Let His Wife's Car Roll Away After Winning A $100,000 Prize

A northern Iowa man came THIS CLOSE to having to explain to his wife why he let her vehicle roll away!

The story started with Travis Hovey of Riceville doing something to help: He went to a local convenience store to fuel up his wife’s car. While he was inside the store paying for the gas, he decided to buy a lottery scratch ticket.

Travis said he scratched the ticket when he got back out to the car and saw what he thought was a $100,000 prize in the play area.

Travis says he almost forgot to put the vehicle in park before he ran back into the store to have the clerks there double-check his ticket! It turns out he was right: He won one of the top prizes of $100,000 in the “Cash Blast” scratch game.

After confirming his win, Travis said he went right home to share the news with his wife, Tammy. And he got her car there safely!

Travis bought his winning ticket at Casey’s 208 W. Main St. in Riceville. He said that he and Tammy plan to use the lottery winnings to pay bills and retire debt.

Such A Relatable Story: He Had To Check His Winning Ticket A BUNCH Of Times

This player’s story made me smile because it’s just so relatable. I think we can all imagine ourselves in his situation – and the disbelief we might have!

An eastern Iowa man who claimed a $10,000 prize at our Cedar Rapids office said that after he played his scratch ticket, he checked it and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. So, he scanned it three more times on the lottery’s mobile app and then went back into the gas station where he bought it to have them check it, too.

Louis Janecek II of Shellsburg said he just wanted to be sure! In the end, he realized he was the winner of a $10,000 prize. He claimed the eighth prize of $10,000 available in “The Perfect Gift” holiday scratch game.

Louis bought his winning ticket at Palo Mini Mart, 1204 First St. in Palo.

He said he plans to use his winnings to pay bills and buy Christmas gifts for his four children. Louis said his lottery win will just make everything that much nicer for the holidays.

Congratulations, Louis! I’m thinking that your big win may finally seem real by now!

Player Questions: What About The Odds In Your Holiday Games?

Now that our holiday-themed scratch games are in stores for the season, we’ve gotten player questions about the number of prizes available in them and their odds of winning.

Our holiday-themed games by design are only on the market for a short period of time – about four months. Many of our other scratch games are sold for a year or two or even longer.

We order smaller quantities of tickets in our holiday games, which means there will be a smaller number of prizes involved. But the key detail to note is that the odds of winning in our holiday games are very similar to those in our other games, so your playing experience won’t change.

“Crossword” games are always a favorite for players, so here is a list of this year’s four holiday-themed versions with their non-holiday counterparts. You’ll see how similar the odds are in them.

    • $2 games: $20,000 Holiday Crossword and Four Corners Crossword.
    • $3 games: Candy Cane Crossword and Bonus Crossword.
    • $5 games: Peng-win Crossword and $50,000 Super Crossword.
    • $10 games: Very Merry Crossword and $100,000 Mega Crossword.

In the $2 games, the $20,000 holiday game has overall odds of winning of 1 in 3.42 while its non-holiday counterpart has overall odds of 1 in 3.33.

Both of the $3 Crossword games have the exact same overall odds of winning: 1 in 3.52.

At the $5 price point, the Peng-win Crossword game has overall odds of winning of 1 in 3.34 while its non-holiday counterpart has overall odds of 1 in 3.53.

And for the $10 games, Very Merry Crossword has overall odds of winning of 1 in 3.29 compared to overall odds of 1 in 3.30 for the non-holiday version.

We do our best to keep the game designs in line with each other because we want you to have the same “feel” as you play them. We know that’s part of the fun.

Then there are the folks who say they like our non-holiday games and want to see them come back. And they will!

Our holiday-themed games will only be on the market until early January, and then our other games will cycle back onto store shelves when the holidays are over.

Player Question: When New Games Come Out, Do Your Dispensers Just Expand?

Here’s an interesting question that came our way on social media this week: When new scratch games are released like the five games that hit store shelves this week, do the lottery’s ticket dispensers expand to allow more room? The quick answer is no, but here is the backstory.

New scratch games and pull-tab games are introduced throughout the year to give players new chances to win prizes and keep the mix of games fun and entertaining. Variety is the spice of life for today’s consumers, and people vote with their pocketbooks when it comes to the items they choose to buy. Games that have been on the market for awhile generally have lower sales than our newest games because people like to try new things.

The Iowa Lottery certainly does its best to keep a game on the market if it still has top prizes available, but older games are generally removed from sale as newer games are introduced. There’s only so much room in the lottery’s ticket dispensers and self-service kiosks, so the replacement of older games happens as a standard part of our procedures throughout the year.

So the answer to the player’s question is that the lottery’s dispensers and self-service kiosks don’t expand when new games come out.

The five new scratch games that debuted on Wednesday are shown in the image above. They range from a $1 game up to a $10 game, so there are several new play styles and prize levels available for you to play. We hope you have fun with them!

Already Sold Out? That Store Didn’t Have The Tickets I Wanted To Buy

A lottery player who wanted to buy tickets in a new scratch game said that when she couldn’t find tickets at her local store, she thought the game had been removed from sale because all the top prizes in it had already been claimed.

In reality, the store was just temporarily out of tickets in that particular game. It was popular and the location’s initial supply had sold out. The store was able to order more tickets and the game was available there again within a few days.

When a new scratch game is released, businesses that sell lottery tickets place orders for a supply of tickets to have available in the first days that the game is for sale. Stores do their best to estimate the number of tickets they’ll need, but sometimes a particular game may sell faster than expected.

Stores can and do place additional orders for more tickets, but it can take a few days for the next batch to arrive. When that happens, there can be temporary outages.

The customer was correct that when all of the top prizes in a particular scratch game have been claimed, the game is removed from sale here in Iowa.

In this particular instance, that wasn’t what had happened, and we hope that the next time she visits her local store, she’ll find the game available!

Russell Smith Wins Again … Or Did He?

It’s apparently a really good time to be Russell Smith in Iowa!

Not one but TWO Iowa men named Russell Smith have claimed big lottery prizes this month.

First up was Russell Smith of DeWitt, who claimed a $10,000 prize in the Extreme Green Progressive InstaPlay game on Aug. 1. He got his real check and an oversized, ceremonial one for fun at the Iowa Lottery’s regional office in Cedar Rapids.

Then yesterday, Russell Smith of Des Moines claimed a $25,000 top prize in the “Wild Bingo” scratch game. He visited lottery headquarters in Clive to get his real check and an oversized, ceremonial one.

Not the same guy, just a happy coincidence. And hey, there’s still a lot of time to go in August! Maybe even MORE Russell Smiths will win big prizes by the end of the month!

Congratulations to both Russell Smiths!

Player Question: Is A Ticket The Same As A Play? Hmmm … Maybe.

Here’s an inside-baseball question we got from a player this week that’s really interesting: Is a ticket the same thing as a play? The answer varies: Yes. No. Maybe. Sometimes? Here’s why.

In a lotto game, a play is the line of numbers on a ticket that you as the player have purchased for an upcoming drawing. Let’s take Mega Millions® as an example.

In the image shown here, you see a Mega Millions ticket that has one play on it. In this instance, the ticket is technically the document (the piece of paper) on which the play is printed. But sometimes, more than one play is printed on a ticket if you buy multiple plays at a time.

For our other products – InstaPlay, scratch, and pull-tab games – each ticket is a play in the game.

I think that’s why the two terms are used interchangeably. I don’t think you’re wrong if you use one reference or the other. It’s just interesting to see the details involved for the different games!

Where Are We Going Next? The List Is On Our Events Page

As the summer goes on and we’re making more stops around the state on our Explore Iowa tour, we’ve gotten questions from some folks asking if we’ll make it to their area.

The short answer is that we’re continuing to add new stops over time and we’re doing our best to hit all areas of Iowa. Our campaign is called Explore Iowa, after all!

To see the list of our upcoming events, please visit the Special Events page on our website here.

Some of the events are at retail locations while others are at football games, baseball games, local festivals and auto races.

We’ve already been to Waverly, Fort Dodge, Des Moines, Mason City, Council Bluffs and Davenport, to name a few. This week we’ll be in Cedar Rapids, Waukee and Cedar Falls.

We’ll keep updating the list of events as summer goes on. At some of the stops, we’re doing special presentations to highlight the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund, one of the most important beneficiaries of lottery proceeds to state causes.

We sell tickets in our Explore Iowa scratch game at each stop, and all lottery products are available at the events at retail locations. And yes, our prize wheel is there! With a qualifying purchase, you can spin the wheel to win lottery merchandise.

2 Big Wins On Scratch Tickets They Initially Didn’t Plan To Buy

Two big winners this month both have an unusual twist to their story: At first, neither of them planned to buy the ticket that delivered their moment of luck!

First up was Curt Smith of Des Moines, who claimed a $300,000 top prize in the “Win Big” scratch game. Curt said that after a long day of work, he went to a local store to buy a ticket in a scratch game he usually plays, but it was sold out. So, he said he decided to try Win Big.

Curt said he scratched the ticket in his car and couldn’t believe what he saw. He said he was a little shaky, so he ended up fumbling around with his phone before he finally was able to use the Iowa Lottery’s mobile app to scan the ticket and confirm that his eyes weren’t deceiving him.

After that, he said he just sat in the parking lot for about 10 minutes, in a bit of shock!

Curt, who’s 51 and works at a Des Moines tire plant, claimed his prize June 10 at lottery headquarters in Clive. He said that he and his wife, Anna, plan to use the winnings to buy a new home, pay off debt, and purchase a headstone for his mother’s gravesite.

The next business day after Curt got his prize, we met Michele Bautista of Waterloo, who claimed a $30,000 top prize in the “Bonus Crossword” scratch game. Michele said that when she asked for two tickets in the game at a local convenience store, the clerk accidentally grabbed three instead. She decided to buy them all.

She played the tickets when she got home and won her $30,000 prize on the third ticket. Michele, who’s 50 and manages a restaurant, said she was out of breath and called her son to come double-check the results. He confirmed that she really had won big!

Michele said she plans to save most of her winnings, but will use some of the money to fly her mom from California to Iowa for a visit.

Congratulations to these two unintentional winners!

2 Big Prizes In 2 Years For This Iowan!

For the second time in two years, a southwest Iowa man has won a big lottery prize.

This afternoon, Delbert Littleton of Atlantic claimed the first of eight top prizes of $100,000 available in the Power 10X scratch game. That follows his big win from June 2020, when he won a prize of $25,000 a year for life in the Lucky for Life lotto game. He chose to take the lump-sum option of $390,000 for that prize.

Delbert said that both times, he was in his kitchen when he realized he’d hit big. And both times, he had a little trouble breathing and his heart started racing.

After his 2020 win, he said that he and his wife, Jodi, danced for joy in the kitchen. This time around, he called Jodi to share the news and then had to quickly pull the phone away from his ear when she started yelling in excitement.

Delbert said he bought tickets in the Power 10X game because it was new. He ended up with three winning tickets in a row. The first was a $20 winner that he redeemed for two more tickets in the game. One of those was a $10 winner and the other won the $100,000 prize.

Power 10X is a $10 scratch game that just began sales on April 5. Its tickets feature green-and-yellow graphics of arcing electricity. Prizes in the game range from $10 up to $100,000. Delbert bought his $100,000-winning ticket at Murphy USA, 1903 E. Seventh St. in Atlantic.

Delbert said that he and Jodi followed through on their plans after his 2020 win to buy a new house and get new vehicles. With this win, he has concrete plans again: He’s tired of using a push mower on their corner lot, so he says he’ll get a riding lawnmower. The couple also plans to take a nice vacation this year, and then they’ll invest the rest of the winnings.

Delbert said that this win makes the thought of retirement a little more relaxing.

Hey, He’s Wearing THAT T-shirt!

This photo of a northwest Iowa man who claimed a prize this week made me smile when I saw the shirt he was wearing!

To commemorate the moment, we’ve had T-shirts with the message “You’re lookin’ at a WINNER!” made for those who claim larger lottery prizes in Iowa!

As you can see, John Friedrichsen of Cherokee put his T-shirt on for his photo with a ceremonial check as he claimed the $50,000 prize he won in the “X The Money” scratch game.

That $5 game just debuted on April 5 here in Iowa, and John won its first top prize! There currently are six more prizes of $50,000 that remain unclaimed in the game.   

Thank you for embracing the moment, John! We hope your shirt helps spark conversations as you remember the moment that you took home a big lottery win.

Two $100,000 Winners At The Same Store Within About A Week

Every once in a while, a run of luck happens. And this time, it hit in southwest Iowa.

Two Glenwood men who bought scratch tickets at the same local convenience store have each won a $100,000 prize.

First up was Jacob Harper of Glenwood, who claimed one of the top prizes in the “$100,000 Mega Crossword” game on March 28. And then this week, Joshua Kisler of Glenwood claimed a $100,000 prize in the “Super 20s” scratch game. They both bought their winning tickets at Casey’s, 601 S. Locust St. in Glenwood.

So for now, the Mills County community of about 5,000 gets to claim the lucky title.

Where will luck strike next? In reality, we never know. Winning tickets are randomly distributed throughout our games so that no one – not even those of us who work at the lottery – knows when or where the next big winner will hit.

But it IS fun to see the stories of our winners as they claim their prizes!

The Message: Call Me. It’s Nothing Bad!

It’s a slice-of-life moment about how a southwest Iowan told his parents he’d won a big lottery prize.

The late-night message he said he left for them went something like this: “Call me when you wake up. I’ve got some major news. It’s nothing bad.”

(Good son points for including that last part!)

Jacob Harper of Glenwood won one of the top prizes this week in the “$100,000 Mega Crossword” scratch game. He laughed as he remembered leaving the message for his parents, saying his mom is a worrier, so he wanted to use the right tone!

When his parents called him back the next morning, he told them the news about his $100,000 prize. He said his mom started screaming and his dad was laughing in the background, and there may have been some jumping around on all their parts.

Jacob said he bought his ticket at a local Casey’s store but didn’t play it until later that night after a get-together with some friends. He said that when he realized he’d completed six words on his ticket to win one of the game’s top prizes, he counted again and again in case his eyes were playing tricks on him.

Jacob says his win comes at a great time – he plans to begin work full time at a computer business that he and his friends have started.

What The Odds Mean – And What They DON’T

A question that just came our way is a reminder that sometimes, you can’t touch on a topic enough. I’m talking about the odds of winning in our games – what they mean and what they don’t.

A player reached out to us after buying two tickets in the Lucky Numbers Game Book and not winning a prize. The player noticed that the game’s overall odds of winning are 1 in 2.51 and apparently thought that meant one of their tickets was guaranteed to win. But that’s not correct.

Think of it like a deck of cards: With four suits in a deck (spades, clubs, diamonds, hearts), there’s about a 1 in 4 chance that the next card up will be in a specific suit. But once you shuffle the deck, you can go through a lot of cards in a row before you find a card in a specific suit.

It’s the same thing in our scratch games: Winning tickets are randomly distributed throughout the game so no one – not even those of us who work at the lottery – knows when or where the next big winner will hit.

We’re not joking, we’re not lying, and our odds aren’t wrong.

We made the video below to explain the odds. I hope its visuals help tell the story.

After Series Of Health Setbacks, Iowa Couple Celebrates THIS Unexpected News

After several health complications, a Des Moines couple is celebrating another kind of unexpected news: The husband won a $300,000 lottery prize!

David Martelli said that you never expect it, but yesterday it happened for them. Martelli claimed his prize at Iowa Lottery headquarters along with his wife, Amy.

David Martelli, 56, who is retired, said that the story started when he asked Amy to cash in a few tickets that had won small prizes and buy a couple more tickets. He said he specifically wanted a ticket in the “Win Big” scratch game.

David scratched off the ticket later that night. He said he noticed all the zeros in the prize amount, so he decided to surprise Amy with the news: He put his thumb over the prize amount and asked her if the numbers on the ticket matched. She said they did, and when he moved his thumb to reveal the prize amount, they both started to cry.

David and Amy are each in recovery from recent bouts with cancer and David said the situation makes them even more appreciative of this good luck.

Amy Martelli, 53, who works in health care, said the news is sinking in and becoming reality. She calls it a huge relief. 

The couple plans to use the winnings to help their immediate family and invest for their retirement.

David claimed the seventh of 11 top prizes of $300,000 in the Win Big game.