What are the odds against winning a crossword prize?

[Sandy-Wroe]

I've won two prizes. The first was a guinea, £1.05, in the dim and distant past. The second was shopping vouchers.
I now do the Everyman in the Observer, Radio Times, and two in the Sunday Telegraph. All usually finished with the help of ABers. When a winner is picked at random how many others are in that lucky dip?

[zita-green]

I don't know but I've got 3 copies of the Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus from the Independent in as many weeks yet nothing from the Grauniad, Observer and RT which I've been doing for years. I think it's pot luck.

[kayakamina]

We had a winner with a first time entry for the Spectator crossword.

As it is considered to be an advanced puzzle I suppose it follows that there are
fewer entries than for the mainstream crosswords. I do wonder however if the
postmark of Canada had anything to do with Ont-Ice being selected, as magazines
do like to have overseas winners to demonstate the reach of their readership.

On a personal note I have won Azed, Mephisto, EV, Inquisitor and some others in
over 60 years of crosswording.

[Mysterons]

The Saturday Times has an entry of about 3000 per week - with 5 prizes this gives the chance of winning once in 11 or 12 years if you enter every week (I stopped entering after my first win !) I would expect a comparable level of entry for the 4 puzzles you mentioned Sandy-Wroe. The chances of winning the Spectator/Inquisitor/Listener/EV/Azed are better, though they are all popular puzzles. I would imagine a puzzle like The Generalist has a much smaller entry, with better odds of success.

The Spectator certainly seems to favour foreign entries, so my advice is:

Submit on a regular basis
Use a large envelope
Use the overseas address of a friend or relative and add the appropriate stamp to the envelope - this will cost more and you won't receive your prize quite as quickly !

[Lopakhin]

I scored the Observer yonks ago, after many years of trying, and then the Sindy on first bash. It's a relief now to do them and not feel the need to send them off! Radio Times remains (Tuesday lunchtimes...) and then I'll give the postman a rest. I suspect that RT will have more entries than the 3,000 quoted for the Sat Times, so one's chances of winning that DVD player are about zilch. Interesting, though, to see others' strategies; I've always wondered whether it makes a difference early/late posting...

[scotman]

I don't think you can get a sensible answer across all competitions. It depends on magazine circulation, degree of difficulty and random effects. I have won 'The Generalist' several times but not recently, also several wins from both of Saturday's puzzles in 'The Scotsman' and some 'Radio Times' wins over MANY years.
I think of it like the lottery. It is nice to win but I never expect to win.

[Tallulah!]

I do know that Colossus entries are checked on arrival and the all correct go into the draw but I don't know how many entries they receive. This is the Collossus way because the grids are large and print small.
I do win fairly regularly and love searching out those elusive answers which is why I find it annoying that some ABers ask for whole lists of answers on the day the mags are sent to subscribers which is at least a week before they appear in the shops.
I won £25 from You magazine about 15 years ago and still hoping for Sunday Express and MOS.

[Quizmonster]

I'm not sure where the idea of using foreign addresses and large envelopes comes from. With the Spectator, for example, I trim the page down the line to the left of the across clues, along the bottom where it just edges the end of my address and up the right-hand edge of the grid. This produces a piece of paper that fits nicely into a 7"x 5" envelope, which is the sort I always use for crosswords. I've won the Speccie or got a runner-up prize four times in the past couple of years with just such an entry.
I use exactly the same approach for all and have had multiple wins on the Mephisto, the Azed, the Guardian Prize and so on. At one point, I had so many dictionaries incoming that I nearly ran out of good homes for them!

It appears to make no difference whether one submits early or late. I cannot estimate the odds, but - whatever they are - they don't seem to have been working against ME. My advice, therefore, is...Keep sendin' 'em in!!

[crucifernz]

Hi
I'm in NZ and have been a Speccie runner-up once in the last year - about 12 mths since I started posting every week. I won fairly early, so perhaps you're right about overseas addresses! I was very fortunate to win the GBP100 in the Times Monthly on my first online submission. I've been doing Times online since April, including TLS, and haven't won a sou! Nothing at all since that big win...

[bathtub]

I think if you submit regular entries to a number of puzzles, the odds are pretty good. I've been solving on and off for 40 years, and regularly (some might say obsessionally) since 2004. In the last, five years, I've had a number of Azed wins, a win and a runner-up in the Speccie (in consecutive weeks), and one win each in the Grauniad and the Generalist. I don't submit entries in any special way - just clip them out of the paper or print them out and stick them in a DL envelope. With the exception of puzzles where something other than filling in the grid is required (eg Azed cluewriting competitions) I'm quite sure it's the luck of the draw and that draws, on the whole, are quite fair.

[mrcroft]

I tend to agree with QUIZMONSTER it is just luck. Better even than winning was having a letter printed in the FT on said same subject, huge kudos factor!
I did the Speccie for years without winning. When Charlie Moore wrote a particularly distasteful leader on the Israeli atrocities in the Gaza Strip I wrote in saying I was so appalled that I would never buy another Spectatator. I won first prize with that, my last entry. Coincidence - who knows?

[mccfluff]

i can't comment on any other publications but i've wandered past the competitation desk a few times and been asked to stick my hand in a bucket and pick a winner - purely random