From fah@potm.ffast.att.com Mon Mar 2 17:33:17 1998 Received: from outbound.Princeton.EDU (outbound.Princeton.EDU [128.112.128.88]) by dagda.ili.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA06877 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:33:16 -0500 (EST) Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@alumni.Princeton.EDU (port 58681 [204.153.50.12]) by outbound.Princeton.EDU with SMTP id <541224-16219>; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:21:48 -0500 Received: from att.com (kcgw1.att.com [192.128.133.151]) by alumni.Princeton.EDU (8.6.9/8.6.12) with SMTP id RAA04369 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:21:42 -0500 Received: by kcgw1.att.com; Mon Mar 2 16:22 CST 1998 Received: from ffast.ffast.att.com (ffast.ffast.att.com [135.16.253.215]) by kcig1.att.att.com (AT&T/GW-1.0) with SMTP id QAA09898 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 16:21:33 -0600 (CST) Received: from potm.ffast.att.com by ffast.ffast.att.com (5.0/SMI-SVR4) id AA19821; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:22:24 -0500 Received: by potm.ffast.att.com (5.0/SMI-SVR4) id AA11076; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:11:05 +0500 Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:11:05 +0500 From: fah@potm.ffast.att.com (Fred Hicinbothem - POTM Master) Message-Id: <9803022211.AA11076@potm.ffast.att.com> To: mdmullin@alumni.Princeton.EDU Subject: POTM WINNER: Doug Jones for mudpack Status: R Mon Mar 2 14:47:33 EST 1998 FINAL RESULTS! 84 have entered 443 have asked for details. 1711 are on the mailing list! ========================================================== CONGRATULATIONS TO D O U G J O N E S for m u d p a c k AS THE WINNER OF THE February, 1998 King's Lottery POTM!!! ========================================================== WOW ... TOUGH CONTEST ... only FOUR entries progressed past the N=37 round one of the finals ... congratulations to Hal Burch and Danny Sleator, to Doug Jones, to Ted Alper and to the "Happy Hacker" for making it to ROUND 2 .... N=98!!! The results of the first round are shown below ... and each participant will receive the results of their program. THE SECOND ROUND ... N=98 ... only four participants made it into the second round, Doug Jones' "mudpack" found a 741 ticket solution while "ShowMeTheMoney" from Hal Burch and Danny Sleator found a 750 ticket solution. Ted Alper's "shroud_of_Turan" found a 762 ticket solution. "DuckAndCover", from The Happy Hacker apparently only found valid solutions (albeit the BEST ones) for values of N less than or equal to 96. (Side note ... some of the other entries actually found better N=98 solutions, but they had not progressed to the second round by finding the best solution in the first round ... go figure!) Lots more mail will be coming to those who submitted programs, and the website will be updated soon ... stay tuned ... and thanks for participating in the POTM! (and I'm sorry it took so long getting these results out. A system problem coupled with the difficulty of checking the results forced me to delay this mail an extra day.) =Fred ENTRY TICKETS SUM TIME LANG Programmer ---------------- ------- ----- ------ ---- ------------------- ShowMeTheMoney 31 3493 .38 gc H.Burch D.Sleator shroud_of_Turan 31 3493 503.68 JAVA Ted Alper mudpack 31 3704 .93 c Doug Jones DuckAndCover 31 4753 .10 c Happy Hacker Prairie_Dog_Weiner 32 3794 580.39 c Thad Smith El_Konyo 34 3945 471.89 gc Yoichi Kono ticketysplit 35 4617 3.56 c Vincent Goffin tax_minimizer 35 4617 590.30 gc George Papoutsis only_for_the_rich 36 3936 449.99 c Franz Mauch Russian_Roulette 37 4117 4.04 C Dmitry Potapov Renegade 38 4599 4.48 c John Engels PackUpYourTriples 39 4547 .29 c John Linderman autolotto 40 4546 .11 gc David Van_Brackle elboe 40 4627 .16 c Andrew Gauld Lott-Er-Luck 40 4693 .09 c Paul Bunting Hole_Lotto_Love 40 5017 9.13 PERL John Williams RockNRodl 41 4775 2.43 PERL Matthew Mullin who_needs_luck 43 5151 .13 gC Shawn Fox LOTO_NHV 43 5395 .12 C Nguyen Viet LuckOut 44 5171 .13 c Davor Slamnig SWAG 45 5280 .06 c Paul Banta Bozo4_TM_So_Close 45 5445 1.98 CSH Susan Adams HatTrick 50 5760 1.65 PERL D.Ross M.Hiller luckyluke 58 7689 20.15 gC Michael Strauch Slaughter-E 60 7972 10.57 c Brace Stout tripleg 70 9390 120.13 c Ivan Velev EasyMoney 77 9355 6.65 c Joe Vollbrecht cclljj 77 9355 999.27 c Chen Ling-Jyh simple 80 9779 1.09 c Alexey Zhelvis kentemp 80 9779 1.29 gc Ken Bateman zakharov 80 9779 1.56 c Alexei Zakharov loops 80 9779 1.68 gc Bernard Hatt in2win 80 9779 67.87 gC Joseph Eccles DumbAndSlow 80 9779 117.83 C Colin Rafferty CouldaBeen 80 10636 5314.66 gC Keith Jones Lotta_rye 82 10084 497.80 C A.S.Kiran Koushik pzsoltLottery 87 10631 6.18 gc Peter Zsolt Karin-T-L 89 7734 2.24 gC Peter Conrad sevens 145 13686 10.63 c Aivars Zogla tix 383 49765 10.96 c Eric Weeks lottoluck 383 50166 2.57 c Edwin Berlin TicketToElbonia 512 69033 .35 c Sam Wilson triceratops 632 83495 .66 c Earl Chew Olimpas 809 95189 .25 c Mantas Puida Bingo 1302 123396 .19 c Rags Viswanathan Brute_Remorse 1302 222936 2.44 gC Chad Hurwitz frisbee 1302 222936 3.29 PERL Andrew Schexnaydre Ticketmaster 1302 222936 35.14 c Guy Oliver NiceTry 1302 222936 80.44 gc Seth Rothenberg something_clever 5456 398288 .37 gc Don Dykes J3lottery 5456 398288 1.54 PERL Jason Nichols POTM_Emporer 999999 0 gc John Guo LottoMan 999999 0 .08 PAS Darren Davis LuckAssure 999999 0 .08 c Vikram Sreeram MERLOT 999999 0 .09 c Elizabeth Ross LOTO-OPTIMIST 999999 0 .09 c Le_Kim Quoc_Phong noentry 999999 0 .10 N Luc Kumps The_Lucky_Draw 999999 0 .11 gc S. Arun TroubleWithTriples 999999 0 .11 C R.Saint S.Weldon Prince 999999 0 .12 c Brandon Crosby LuckyDip 999999 0 .12 c Roy Lett IMayAlreadyBeAWinner 999999 0 .13 c Phil Gregory Two_Adder 999999 0 .23 PERL Nick Hildenbrandt LOTO_WINNER 999999 0 .45 c Tong Nghia lotto 999999 0 .48 c Jimmy Hu LGVNWINH 999999 0 .66 PAS Tran Hoang Lot_O_Tickets 999999 0 1.95 c Beth Wilson Indian_lottery 999999 0 1.96 JAVA Raja Kannan Rabbits 999999 0 5.83 c Victor Udovenko copycat 999999 0 5.92 C Neal Palmer shoe_in 999999 0 8.14 gC Andy Olsen hatchance 999999 0 30.22 JAVA George Adams blotto 999999 0 99.99 c Warren Montgomery straightforward_average 999999 0 425.59 gc Curtis Larsen lottoloser 999999 0 570.25 c Nguyen Trieu king 999999 0 834.46 gC Brenda Holloway lot-shot 999999 0 924.31 c George Menhorn Jester 999999 0 killed C Phillip Staite good2bdking 999999 0 1210.29 c Shawn Wischoeffer Samanyolu 999999 0 1334.03 c Ertugrul Tabak WhatASweat 999999 0 1351.74 c Giorgio DiFalco Lotorenzo 999999 0 1389.76 c Lourenco Arnasalon Elbo_Mac 999999 0 25375.89 gC Andrew Royappa jabri_mamu 999999 0 5332.02 gC Neelkanth Natu (999999 means that the result did not cover all possible draws, or that some other error caused the output to be incorrect.) Our POTM mirror sites: *** http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/corin/POTM.PAGES/ for the USofA *** http://www.lbi.ro/potm/ in Europe *** http://potm.ffast.att.com/ INSIDE AT&T only *** http://icds.micro.lucent.com/POTM INSIDE Lucent only =========================================================================== The FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ) list follows ..... From fah@potm.ffast.att.com Mon Mar 2 17:53:43 1998 Received: from outbound.Princeton.EDU (outbound.Princeton.EDU [128.112.128.88]) by dagda.ili.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA08536 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:53:42 -0500 (EST) Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@alumni.Princeton.EDU (port 59014 [204.153.50.12]) by outbound.Princeton.EDU with SMTP id <542341-16216>; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:42:27 -0500 Received: from att.com (kcgw1.att.com [192.128.133.151]) by alumni.Princeton.EDU (8.6.9/8.6.12) with SMTP id RAA04946 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:42:15 -0500 Received: by kcgw1.att.com; Mon Mar 2 16:42 CST 1998 Received: from ffast.ffast.att.com (ffast.ffast.att.com [135.16.253.215]) by kcig1.att.att.com (AT&T/GW-1.0) with SMTP id QAA17767 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 16:42:08 -0600 (CST) Received: from potm.ffast.att.com by ffast.ffast.att.com (5.0/SMI-SVR4) id AA24825; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:42:59 -0500 Received: by potm.ffast.att.com (5.0/SMI-SVR4) id AA13175; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:31:40 +0500 Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:31:40 +0500 From: fah@potm.ffast.att.com (Fred Hicinbothem - POTM Master) Message-Id: <9803022231.AA13175@potm.ffast.att.com> To: mdmullin@alumni.Princeton.EDU Subject: POTM: The BEST Solutions? Status: R A short essay on what the BEST solutions for various N were. ============================================================ The contest winner is the contest winner ... my intent is to honor those runner-ups especially worthy of mention. 1. The choice of N=37, N=98, and N=153 were arbitrary - designed only to provide three different modulos base three since I was aware of the pigeonhole theory. The "qualifying" rounds were necessitated by the difficulty of checking "coverage" of the solution sets (which took much more time than actually computing the solutions!). I did NOT anticipate that so few entries would progress to the second round!!! RECOGNITION AWARD 1: To "The Happy Hacker" for DuckAndCover It is hard to dispute the efficacy of this entry. DuckAndCover found the SMALLEST number of tickets of all entries for all but four values up to N=96. Unfortunately, DuckAndCover does not work for N>96! Like several entries, DuckAndCover tries to find the "best" division of the N tickets into three subsets, and then finds a complete covering for each subset. DuckAndCover used published coverings at the La Jolla repository http://sdcc12.ucsd.edu/~xm3dg/cover.html to accomplish this feat - unfortunately these only cover up to M=32 and hence DuckAndCover only works up to N=96. While this stretches the definition of "precomputed solution" to its limits, I had previously ruled that the program was legal since the data it used did NOT solve the problem that was presented (even though it was EXTREMELY useful when N less than 97!). RECOGNITION AWARD 2: To Vincent Goffin for "ticketysplit" ticketysplit did not make use of the LaJolla tables in the program ... yet it managed to find about half of the DuckAndCover solutions for N less than 96 and even managed to find BETTER ones in four cases! Beyond N=96, nobody came close to ticketysplit's solutions (of those I looked at). Unfortunately, ticketysplit only found a 35 ticket solution for the N=37 case and did not advance to the second round. The following table has the best solutions that I found by running some of the programs. NOTE - the "coverage" for these cases was never checked for any of these runs although the approaches seemed to consistently cover at lower values of N. These are (I think) the best solutions available from the entries I looked at ... the starred solutions are from Vincent Goffin's "ticketysplit" and the others (most N<96) are from DuckAndCover from The Happy Hacker. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 9 11 12 14 16 30 18 20 22 23 25 27 29 31 34 34 40 36 38 41 43 45 45 55 58 63 65 50 75 78 83 85 95 98 103 105 115 120 60 130 135 145 150 162 171 182 188 200 209 70 220 226 238 247 253* 258* 275* 292* 305 314 80 325 331 352 360 372 381 392 398 419 428 90 448 458 465 465 496 527 558 586* 614* 642* 100 669* 696* 723* 744* 765* 786* 821* 856* 891* 928* 110 965* 1002* 1039* 1076* 1113* 1150* 1187* 1224* 1261* 1298* 120 1335* 1375* 1415* 1455* 1495* 1535* 1575* 1577* 1579* 1581* 130 1599* 1617* 1635* 1647* 1659* 1671* 1696* 1721* 1746* 1761* 140 1776* 1791* 1813* 1835* 1857* 1865* 1873* 1881* 1892* 1903* 150 1914* The table stopped at 150 only because I got tired of it all! If you want more, the code for ticketysplit will be on the website. =Fred From fah@potm.ffast.att.com Mon Mar 2 17:57:31 1998 Received: from outbound.Princeton.EDU (outbound.Princeton.EDU [128.112.128.88]) by dagda.ili.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA08866 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:57:31 -0500 (EST) Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@alumni.Princeton.EDU (port 59041 [204.153.50.12]) by outbound.Princeton.EDU with SMTP id <542117-16219>; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:45:54 -0500 Received: from att.com (kcgw1.att.com [192.128.133.151]) by alumni.Princeton.EDU (8.6.9/8.6.12) with SMTP id RAA05020 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:45:40 -0500 Received: by kcgw1.att.com; Mon Mar 2 16:42 CST 1998 Received: from ffast.ffast.att.com (ffast.ffast.att.com [135.16.253.215]) by kcig1.att.att.com (AT&T/GW-1.0) with SMTP id QAA17773 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 16:42:08 -0600 (CST) Received: from potm.ffast.att.com by ffast.ffast.att.com (5.0/SMI-SVR4) id AA24823; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:42:58 -0500 Received: by potm.ffast.att.com (5.0/SMI-SVR4) id AA13173; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:31:38 +0500 Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:31:38 +0500 From: fah@potm.ffast.att.com (Fred Hicinbothem - POTM Master) Message-Id: <9803022231.AA13173@potm.ffast.att.com> To: mdmullin@alumni.Princeton.EDU Subject: POTM: Consolation Awards Status: R As always ... there are consolation awards. Some folks actually try and win these things - perhaps YOU will find your entry wins one of these in the next POTM! There are also References below as well as excerpts from the battle for the Belgian Chocolates! 

** The most coveted BEST NAME award to Neelkanth Natu for jabri_mamu
        > Neelkanth explains:  In my native language 
        > jabri = Fantastic and mamu is a short form for 
        > a very beautiful lady by the name of MAMTA KULKARNI.
        (This contest was so long that I hope they're still talking!)

** The runner-up almost best name to TroubleWithTriples from Randy Saint
        While I'm not sure if Randy or Marianne Saint came up with
        the name, I'm partial to arcane Star Trek references ... surely
        all you youngsters remember the "tribble" episode ... 

** The "somebody always tries it" award for program name goes to
        something_clever - this time from Don Dykes ... do not
        be discouraged ... but better luck next time!

** The "Maybe Next Time" award to Phillip Straite for Jester
        who managed to find a 341,701 ticket solution to the
        N=25 system test problem.  Jester filled up my file
        system on the first run of the finals ... oh well ...

** The best compilation instructions for Blotto from Ken Bateman
        /* Instructions: make it, then retreat to a safe distance. */

** The NEWBIE award goes to Beth Wilson for Lot_O_Tickets
     /*  Note from Sam Wilson: I submitted a previous entry called */
     /*  TicketToElbonia. This entry is from my 14 year old, 9th   */
     /*  grade daughter, Beth. The only thing I've done to her     */
     /*  code is to make it compile on a Unix machine. She wrote   */
     /*  it using Turbo C++ on our home PC.                        */

** BEST CLAIM OF BEING AN EX-NEWBIE award to Peter Zsolt who wrote:
        I'm a student at Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, and 
        am a programmer for 10 years know, which is half of my 
        current life-time.

** BEST "Reason To Enter The POTM" from Susan Adams
        Susan wrote " I really just entered this contest because 
        a friend of mine said it was a good place to meet decent men."
        Susan (who can be reached at ButtGirl_69@yahoo.com) provided
        some of the more interesting POTM email I received (next
        to the SPAM).  I'm trying to hook Susan up with Paul Banta
        (SWAG) to see what happens!  Ain't free email grand???

** BEST PASCAL ENTRY LGVNWINH from Tran Huu Hoang (I use a Pascal
        to C translator and this was the first "real" entry to try
        it out ... it worked pretty well!!)

** BEST PERL ENTRY:    Hole_Lotto_Love from John Williams

** BEST JAVA ENTRY:    shroud_of_Turan from Ted Alper

** BEST SHELL ENTRY:   Bozo4_TM_So_Close from Susan Adams
        		   (ummm ... the ONLY shell entry!)

** BEST .edu ENTRIES:  CMU and Stanford share the honrs ... Ted
        	       Alper for "shroud_of_Turan" and the team
        	       of Hal Burch and Danny Sleator from CMU
        	       for "ShowMeTheMoney".

** BEST .org ENTRY:    Prairie_Dog_Weiner from Thad Smith

** BEST REFERENCE to John Linerman (PackUpYourTriples) who suggests:
        "The Joy of Cooking has some great recipes."

** The REAL BEST REFERENCES from various folks and my explorations:

        This one from the Happy Hacker - author of DuckAndCover:
        (also recommended by Vincent Goffin and Ted Alper)
        http://sdcc12.ucsd.edu/~xm3dg/cover.html
        the La Jolla covering repository - deals with "complete"
        coverings of sets rather than this specific problem, but
        it's as close as anyone found out on the web!
        ================================
        Vince Goffin adds:
          I used ideas from the article "New Constructions for 
        Covering Designs" by D. M. Gordon, G. Kuperberg and O. Patashnik.
          at http://sdcc12.ucsd.edu/~xm3dg/cover.html
          I used some code from Art Owen's netlib "oa" package for 
        finite fields and orthogonal latin squares.
        ================================
Matthew Mullin (RockNRodl) helped us out with the following:

   These are all references that I made some use of, either giving some
   method that I used, or letting me know I was on the right track.
   
   [CRC]  CRC Handbook of Combinatorial Design.
   [SCH]  J. Schonheim, "On Coverings", Pacific Journal of Mathematics,
          14, 1964, pp 1405-1411.
   [ROD]  V. Rodl, "On a Packing and Covering Problem", European Journal
          of Combinatorics, 5 (1) 1985, pp 69-78.
   [GKPS] D. Gordon, G. Kuperberg, O. Patashnik, J. Spencer, 
          "Asymptotically Optimal Covering Designs", Journal of 
          Combinatorial Theory, series A, 75 (2) 1996, pp 270-280
   [GKP]  D. Gordon, G. Kuperberg, O. Patashnik, "New Constructions for
          Covering Designs", http://sdcc12.ucsd.edu/~xm3dg/cover.ps
          also Journal of Combinatorial Design, vol. 3, pp 269-281.
   
   Plus many resources on combinatorics in general:
     The Handbook of Combinatorics, R. Graham, M Grotschel, L. Lovasz, ed.
     Introduction to Combinatorial Theory, R.C. Bose, B. Manvel
     A Course in Combinatorics, R.M. Wilson, J.H. Van Lint.
     The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, http://www.combinatorics.org
   
   And in general, any books or articles dealing with combinatorics, 
   graph and hypergraph theory, Turan numbers, design theory or 
   finite geometry
        ================================
        http://www.math.sfu.ca/mast/people/grads/ibluskov/ibluskov.html
        homepage of Iliya Bluskov
        ================================
        http://lottery.merseyworld.com/Wheel/
        a lottery oriented page that tracks coverings
        ================================
        http://saturn.hut.fi/pub/reports/B10abstract.html
        looks like an interesting paper ...
        ================================

** Best suggestion for torture from Vincent Goffin:
        ... I'd like to see Luc and Alfons be forced to eat 
        their large box of chocolates in one afternoon session 
        for suggesting there may be an exact formula!

** SOME ANONYMOUS EXCERPTS FROM THE BELGIAN CHOCOLATE CONTEST ..
     which nobody even came close to winning!!!
   =================================================================
 In the interest in staking my claim on that box of chocolates,
 it seems to me that minimum number of tickets to beat this 
 lottery is in general always one more than the number of 
 losing tickets, and that no clever strategy can improve upon that.
 
 ======> equation inserted here
 
 No proof available yet.  My justifications of this intuition
 are only the vaguest kind of handwaving. I will work on a 
 proof this coming weekend.
 =================================================================
 Greetings.  My friend and I are working on the current POTM
 contest.  We think we have developed a formula to compute 
 the minimum number of tickets given N, M, and K.  No proof yet,
 but here it is:
 
 ======> equation inserted here
 
 I can send you our derivation of this if you like.  
 =================================================================
 I was surprised to see that no one had solved this yet.
 I thought this was a rather elementary statistics problem ...
 it is a basic result in statistics that the number of 
 combinations of N distinct objects taken R at a time is ...
 
 ======> lotsa stuff inserted here
 
 Do I get my choclates now?
 =================================================================
 I have found an equation which I believe, I havn't finished 
 any proof yet, is correct. I hope its readable. 
 
 ======> equations inserted here 
 
 If you draw it on paper with the sigma symbol it should be 
 readable.  I scratched down the equation last night, so it 
 may be possible to clean it up a bit. I haven't had the 
 time to look into it.  I will send You the proof as soon 
 as I have made one.
 =================================================================


From fah@potm.ffast.att.com Mon Mar  2 17:57:32 1998
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From: fah@potm.ffast.att.com (Fred Hicinbothem - POTM Master)
Message-Id: <9803022231.AA13179@potm.ffast.att.com>
To: mdmullin@alumni.Princeton.EDU
Subject: POTM: On the system test problem
Status: R

======================================================
THE SYSTEM TEST PROBLEM ... N=25 ... A SURPRISE 
======================================================
Finishing well in the system test problem didn't mean
a thing ... but it DID prove to have an interesting finish!

During the last few days of the POTM, I was surprised by an
entry which is worthy of special mention.  Tong Nghia sent
a nine ticket solution to the system test problem that did
NOT have the most common sum of 669 ... Tong's sum was 642.
Unlike the other 9 ticket solutions ... the ticket containing
numbers 1-7 was notably absent!!!  I have no idea what this
means other than there is certainly more than one approach
to this complex problem ... and that Tong Nghia is one of
the contest's most "out-of-the-box" thinkers!!!

Here's Tong Nghia's LOTO_WINNER solution to the N=25 problem:

   1   2   3   4  15  16  17
   1   2   3   4  15  16  18  
   1   2   5  11  12  13  14
   1   2   6   7   8   9  10
   3   4   5  11  12  13  14
   3   4   6   7   8   9  10
   5  11  12  13  14  15  16  
   6   7   8   9  10  17  18  
  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  

4 each of 1-4    16 numbers total  40
3 each of 5-16   36 numbers total 378
2 each of 17-18   4 numbers total  70
1 each og 19-25   7 numbers total 154

		Grand total ... 642

So what happened to this entry when I ran it with N=37???
Ironically, the solution did NOT cover the king's draw
of "1 2 3 4 5 6 7" ... ouch!!!

================================

Here is a sample output from one of the
24 programs that found what once appeared to be 
the optimal solution:  9 tickets with sum of 669.

  1   2   3   4   5   6   7
  1   2   3   4   5   8   9
  1   2   3   6   7   8   9
  1   4   5   6   7   8   9
 10  11  12  13  14  15  16
 10  11  12  13  14  17  18
 10  11  12  15  16  17  18
  1  14  15  16  17  18  13
 19  20  21  22  23  24  25

All (I'm pretty sure) shared the characteristics 
of having  the same number distribution to achieve
the identical sum:

FIVE 1's ;			  (5)
THREE EACH of 2-18		(510)
ONE EACH of 19-25		(154)

======================================================
				Mon Mar  2 14:47:29 EST 1998
WEEK 17				84 have entered
				443 have asked for details.
				1711 are on the mailing list!

=========>>>       THE FINAL SYSTEM TESTS         <<<=============


              ENTRY    TICKETS   SUM    TIME   LANG  Programmer
      ---------------- -------  -----  ------  ----  -------------------
           LOTO_WINNER      9     642     .10    c   Tong Nghia
                  SWAG      9     669     .07    c   Paul Banta
                 lotto      9     669     .09    c   Jimmy Hu
              LOTO_NHV      9     669     .09    C   Nguyen Viet
             autolotto      9     669     .09   gc   David Van_Brackle
          Lott-Er-Luck      9     669     .09    c   Paul Bunting
        who_needs_luck      9     669     .09   gC   Shawn Fox
    TroubleWithTriples      9     669     .09    C   R.Saint S.Weldon
                 elboe      9     669     .10    c   Andrew Gauld
        The_Lucky_Draw      9     669     .11   gc   S. Arun
               LuckOut      9     669     .12    c   Davor Slamnig
               tripleg      9     669     .12    c   Ivan Velev
              LGVNWINH      9     669     .18  PAS   Tran Hoang
     PackUpYourTriples      9     669     .21    c   John Linderman
              Renegade      9     669     .23    c   John Engels
      Russian_Roulette      9     669     .27    C   Dmitry Potapov
        ShowMeTheMoney      9     669     .28   gc   H.Burch D.Sleator
     Bozo4_TM_So_Close      9     669     .70  CSH   Susan Adams
             RockNRodl      9     669    2.14 PERL   Matthew Mullin
               Rabbits      9     669    5.83    c   Victor Udovenko
    Prairie_Dog_Weiner      9     669    8.34    c   Thad Smith
       Hole_Lotto_Love      9     669    9.02 PERL   John Williams
     only_for_the_rich      9     669  201.99    c   Franz Mauch
       shroud_of_Turan      9     669  548.12 JAVA   Ted Alper
         tax_minimizer      9     669  590.15   gc   George Papoutsis
               mudpack      9     670     .29    c   Doug Jones
              HatTrick      9     670     .61 PERL   D.Ross M.Hiller
            WhatASweat      9     670     .94    c   Giorgio DiFalco
          ticketysplit      9     671     .19    c   Vincent Goffin
              El_Konyo      9     673  320.26   gc   Yoichi Kono
         Lot_O_Tickets      9     795     .23    c   Beth Wilson
          DuckAndCover      9     944     .07    c   Happy Hacker
                blotto     10     569     .11    c   Warren Montgomery
             Karin-T-L     11     641     .20   gC   Peter Conrad
                sevens     11     671     .46    c   Aivars Zogla
              Elbo_Mac     12     975  409.59   gC   Andrew Royappa
            CouldaBeen     13    1143  109.68   gC   Keith Jones
             EasyMoney     17    1458    1.27    c   Joe Vollbrecht
                cclljj     17    1458   23.47    c   Chen Ling-Jyh
               shoe_in     17    1509   25.42   gC   Andy Olsen
             Lotorenzo     17    1527   36.84    c   Lourenco Arnasalon
            lottoloser     18    1619  568.08    c   Nguyen Trieu
             luckyluke     18    1627    1.83   gC   Michael Strauch
           Slaughter-E     18    1643    1.28    c   Brace Stout
                simple     21    1825     .25    c   Alexey Zhelvis
               kentemp     21    1825     .32   gc   Ken Bateman
              zakharov     21    1825     .33    c   Alexei Zakharov
                 loops     21    1825     .40   gc   Bernard Hatt
                in2win     21    1825    2.99   gC   Joseph Eccles
           DumbAndSlow     21    1825    3.92    C   Colin Rafferty
straightforward_average    21    1825   17.66   gc   Curtis Larsen
             Lotta_rye     21    1825   22.38    C   A.S.Kiran Koushik
                  king     21    1825   42.20   gC   Brenda Holloway
              lot-shot     21    1825   73.06    c   George Menhorn
           good2bdking     21    1825   90.47    c   Shawn Wischoeffer
            jabri_mamu     21    1825  238.64   gC   Neelkanth Natu
         pzsoltLottery     22    1935    1.32   gc   Peter Zsolt
              LuckyDip     50    4776     .10    c   Roy Lett
                   tix    119   10514    2.21    c   Eric Weeks
             lottoluck    119   10684     .57    c   Edwin Berlin
       TicketToElbonia    152   13970     .16    c   Sam Wilson
           triceratops    182   16581     .31    c   Earl Chew
          Ticketmaster    194   19436    1.30    c   Guy Oliver
               NiceTry    194   19436    4.03   gc   Seth Rothenberg
         Brute_Remorse    202   20691    1.79   gC   Chad Hurwitz
               Olimpas    213   17319     .12    c   Mantas Puida
                 Bingo    224   17666     .08    c   Rags Viswanathan
               frisbee    439   47203    2.07 PERL   Andrew Schexnaydre
      something_clever   1330   73150     .16   gc   Don Dykes
             J3lottery   1330   73150     .54 PERL   Jason Nichols

(these guys ought to get some kind of special award too ...)

          POTM_Emporer 116280  8953560    8.31   gc   John Guo
                Jester 341701 29209806   35.30    C   Phillip Staite

             Samanyolu 999999       0       c Ertugrul   Tabak 
                MERLOT 999999       0     .08    c   Elizabeth Ross
              LottoMan 999999       0     .09  PAS   Darren Davis
            LuckAssure 999999       0     .09    c   Vikram Sreeram
         LOTO-OPTIMIST 999999       0     .09    c   Le_Kim Quoc_Phong
                Prince 999999       0     .10    c   Brandon Crosby
               noentry 999999       0     .10    N   Luc Kumps
  IMayAlreadyBeAWinner 999999       0     .12    c   Phil Gregory
             Two_Adder 999999       0     .21 PERL   Nick Hildenbrandt
        Indian_lottery 999999       0    1.94 JAVA   Raja Kannan
               copycat 999999       0    2.15    C   Neal Palmer
             hatchance 999999       0   10.31 JAVA   George Adams

  >> values of 999999 indicate incomplete or illegal output <<

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