Picking of winners

[janbrix]

Does anyone know how winners of crosswords etc are picked, especially if it's possible to enter in various ways (I.e by post, email, and phone)? Does how one enters make any difference to one's chances of winning?

[Quizmonkey]

There should be no advantage or disdvantage in the merhod of entry. Promotional agencies I have worked with use a random selector of entry method first - which will tell them whether to pick an envelope or an email. They can run this randomiser as many times as they like, depending on how many prizes are needed.

But I can't guarantee that all organisations work like this!

[janbrix]

Thanks Quizmonkey, what a pity I obviously can't increase my chances of winning by entering in a particular way! I've won the Daily Mail's daily cryptic crossword several times over the years but never anything else like the Sunday Express �1000 crossword or the DT GK and Herculis crosswords. I wonder how many people go in for these? With my luck, I probably wouldn't win even if there were only 2 entrants, so I suppose it's irrelevant anyway!

[dzug]

Many years ago the Guardian used to publish how many entries (total, not correct) it had received for the prize crossword. ISTR it was usually several thousand.

Given that the papers that you mention have larger circulations and easier crosswords it's going to be a lot more entries than that.

[galltin]

I remember reading that the S magazine one in the sunday express gets 20,000 entrants.