{"your_number":"-1E+131","show_your_work":"negative numbers are allowed?"} {"your_number":"-1E+37","show_your_work":"lowest minimum integer"} {"your_number":"-999,999,999,999,999,000,000,000,000","show_your_work":"No idea"} {"your_number":"-1E+21","show_your_work":"is this even allowed???"} {"your_number":"-9999999999","show_your_work":"whole positive numbers and their opposites"} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"0 is the lowest possible integer that is not negative."} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"It is not negative."} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"Its the first one that isn't negative"} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"I simply want to watch the world burn as math geeks fight over whether zero is a positive integer or not. We can all agree it is a non-negative integer, but these pesky directions opted for \"positive integer\". Perhaps this will settle the debate and cement my place in math history."} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"0 is the lowest positive integer number. People will probably try to avoid numbers they think everyone will pick, might as well pick the lowest."} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"Positive zero is the smallest positive integer, but just tricky enough that no one else will guess it."} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"Low interger"} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"I figured everyone would assume be the most common choice and decide to choose something in the 20s. I also remember from math class that 0 is a positive number."} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"A whole number that does not have a decimal or fractional part"} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"Zero is the lowest positive integer, but many people don't think of it."} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"figure my best chance is that moderator treats 0 as acceptable, but most submitters do not."} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"People may not think it's positive"} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"I hope no one else thinks about that one ^^"} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"Lowest possible integer?"} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"Cuz copy and paste is a thing :)"} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"Smallest positive integer"} {"your_number":"0","show_your_work":"Fuck it."} {"your_number":"0.001","show_your_work":"Low number to the right of zero"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Someone (probably lots of someones) had to pick it"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"d"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Lowest positive integer. Fingers crossed everybody else thinks it's too obvious and doesn't meet second criteria"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Crossing my fingers that everyone else will think 1 is a bad idea. But given the sheer number of entries you'll probably get, it's more likely that a few of them have the same rationale."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Maybe no one else will be this clever...."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"go big or go home babyyyyyy"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"It's a risk but one I'm willing to take"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"somebody's got to do it...."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Eh, maybe enough people will think its too obvious and not pick it. Or I run into others picking it and I should do 2. Probably 9."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Someone's gotta try it."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Because it makes no difference which number I choose. I'm at the mercy of chance that someone else chooses the same number, so why not go for the lowest possible integer which most people will ignore because it's too obvious an answer as they assume everyone else will choose it as well?"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Mostly a spoiler. I assume I wont be the only one to choose 1, but if everyone has that mindset maybe I will!"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Just in case everyone else assumes no one would be dumb enough to put in 1--here I am, just dumb enough."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Hey, it was the lowest number available, I'll take my chances everyone else overthinks it"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I figured everyone else thought lots of people would select one, so I did, hoping that I would be the only one to do so. I doubt it, but we will see."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Because I'm betting on the long shot that noone else is dumb enough to choose 1"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I don't think anyone else has the balls to go this low"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"What if no one else picks it?"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Because if the person who wins wins by choosing the number 1, we are all going to hate the person. This ensures that this will be prevented or that I will be the person who is hated.\n\nAlso, this is not a new idea. The puzzle website Nikoli has been doing this for over a decade, it's called the Nikoli Derby."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"This is a high-risk, high-reward choice. It's possible that everybody will assume that somebody will enter 1, and therefore it can't win, and try something higher. It's unlikely that nobody else will try this, but if nobody does, I win."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I'm a high-school math teacher and have played this game with students. It's surprising how many times 1 wins."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"because someone has to"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Trying the obvious"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Maybe I'm the only one stupid enough to pick this number."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I am taking the reverse psychology scattergories approach. In the board game scattergories there are multiple categories that require a unique answer In order to earn a point. In this game, you obviously want to come up with an answer that no one else came up with, so everyone avoids the obvious answer. More often than not, the most obvious answer is never given. So, if you had used the easy answer, then you would still be earning a point. That's why I'm going with the most obvious, easy answer, in hopes that everyone else is \"too smart\" to submit it too."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Someone has to."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"if no one else picks it, its the winner."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I am assuming every one else will think that if they choose 1, then it won't be unique, so they will choose a number greater than 1. That leaves 1 for me!!!!"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Just in case someone else doesn't guess 1"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"An integer is a \"counting number\" i.e. No fractions or decimals are in integers, zero is neither positive nor negative which leaves 1 as the next lowest integer"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"No one else would be so stupid to pick the lowest number, that everyone else will pick."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Guessed no one else would be bold enough to choose the lowest number"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Just doing my part making sure #1 is accounted for!"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I've done with this classes of 30, generally the 1 gambit seems to be the best choice."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"It's the lowest"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Worth a shot. Maybe nobody else goes that low."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"gotta go low"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Everyone may assume that this is taken."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Can anybody be dumb enough to pick 1?"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I thought it would be really funny if every single person overthought it, and no one chose 1."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Because wouldn't it be funny if it ends up being 1?"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Just in case everyone else outthinks themselves and no one else takes the lowest possible positive integer!"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Just in case"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Worth a try, right?"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Maybe I'll get lucky and everyone else will overthink it"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Maybe everyone else will overthink this and I'll get really lucky."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"It's the most optimal choice from a game theory perspective. It is the only possible number that wins assuming it is unique. If I had a second guess (I assume most of your readers know game theory and some will implement it as rigidly as I have) I'd say 6"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I want to make sure no one else can win with this number"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Maybe everyone will decide it's too obvious? Also zero isn't positive."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Somebody has to"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"No one is actually going to pick 1, right?"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I think there's a high enough chance that no one else picks 1."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I'm hoping no one else was foolhardy enough to go for the easy win."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"This is simply an investment in the glory of being the only person to guess \"1\"."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"It is the lowest possible positive integer, however as such, one could assume then that it would be chosen frequently and thus not unique. However, also assuming that people have this realization, would mean they would not pick 1 in which case the odds it is unique is much higher. This is why I have chosen 1."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Triple reverse psychology. Everyone will want to submit it, so everyone will think they cannot. Knowing this, a few will think others won't submit it, and will again be tempted. But they will think a few will submit it, so they will back off a second time. So I am submitting it, hoping everyone else thinks it will be picked by someone else, and avoid it."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Most people are going to assume low integers will get chosen and choose a higher number."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"1 is an integer"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"because wouldn't it be awesome"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I'm hopeful everyone will think no one will pick one."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Here's hoping literally everyone else is a hipster and assumes they need to go for a higher number!"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"It's unlikely this will be unique, but if everyone else thinks that way, then this will win"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I'm counting on everyone else being too clever to pick 1 --- \"go small or go home\""} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"There is a good chance that no one dares to pick 1."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Let's see if anyone else has the guts to do it... :)"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Who would choose the obvious answer?"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I'm not going to win, but I'm making sure somebody else who thinks they're clever doesn't."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Eh, might as well try."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"It is the lowest positive integer, and maybe no one else will pick it."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Just in case"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Lowest positive integer"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Just a test to see if I can spam with a separate email."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"1 is the lowest positive integer. Since it needs to be the lowest unique integer, I'm assuming that everyone will consider 1 to be too obvious a choice and hence unlikely to be unique. Much like my strategy would be on The Price Is Right, I'll bet $1, Bob."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"May be overlooked"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"It's a super long shot but I'm hoping everyone just over thinks this and assumes that the lowest positive integer will be picked many times."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Well, it's definitely the lowest. My hope is that everyone else is convinced that someone will pick 1 so they all move on to other numbers."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"risk vs reward"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"On the off chance..."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Moxie"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"a"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"It's a lowest positive integer there is. I hope no one else realises this."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Who would choose 1?"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Hoping others overthink it and I get lucky."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Get em all"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"just in case no one else picks it"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"worth a try ;)"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I'm guessing that no one else is going to pick the smallest positive integer because it's too obvious."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"An integer can only be a whole number, and since it has to be positive, the smallest number is one."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I am kind of just hoping everyone who responds overthinks this. Seems unlikely, and I probably should have gone with 31."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I am going on the basis that nobody will pick 1, assuming everyone will pick one and it won't be unique. So I am hoping I am the only person picking 1."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I would feel really stupid if somebody else won with one."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Want to make sure that someone provides the lowest possible response."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"i looked it up."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"1 is a terrible pick, but everyone knows that and might avoid it."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Clearly 1 is the lowest positive integer. Thus no other number can beat it and 1 should be the most popular submission. Because the goal is to submit a unique integer, only a fool would submit 1. There are no fools in Riddler Nation, so no one will submit 1. Therefore, I will submit 1."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"The extremely small chance no one else choose it."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Because if I can't have it, nobody can. :)"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Just in case nobody else bothered to try it."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"most people would assume that low numbers would be taken and therefor pick higher numbers to try to avoid competition."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"1 is the smallest positive integer"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"23-22=1 (joke)"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"One. Just in case."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Someone has to."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"1, 2, 3, 4..."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"On the off chance that everyone else in the world will decide that 1 can't possibly win."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"My thinking is that the readers will overthink this one big time."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I mean it's not gonna win but it should help round out the dataset"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"An integer is a positive or negative whole number. The lowest positive integer is 1 (0 is neither positive or negative)."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I'd hate to lose to somebody who picked 1."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Why not"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"To be contrarian, I wouldn't normally pick the lowest option but who would really, so maybe my crazy idea will work."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"assumes everybody else wants to be clever"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Theres a chance this could work. If everyone else assumes that no one would be silly enough to choose 1, and instead go with slightly higher numbers, its possible that 1 could be unique."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"1 is a unique number -- there is no other number like it!"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Just to make sure nobody else wins with 1. If I win, great!"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"N"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Figured everyone else might not choose one and try and overthink it"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I figured people were more likely to chose a number greater than 1 as they would believe someone else would be stupid enough to pick it. I am that person."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I read \"The Emperor Has No Clothes\" to my nephew the other day so it seems like this is worth a shot."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Because no one will pick 1"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I figure why not go with the lowest integer in the hopes that everyone else will assume someone will submit it."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"The positive integer numbers are all the integer numbers to the right of zero in a number line. The lowest of them is 1."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"1 is really low"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"lowest possible positive integer - taking my chances that no one else is submitting this lmao"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"NO reason."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Everybody thinks someone else will submit this number. I am someone else."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Just in case no one picks it"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"It's the lowest positive integer. I hope nobody else picks it."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"There are two possibilities here:\n\nA: Everyone else is too afraid to pick the number 1 because they believe someone else will. In that case, I win.\n\nB: Someone else has the same idea, but I ruin their day. In that case, I win... in a different way."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Somebody had to."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"The unparalleled sense of smugness I will feel if I'm the only one."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Seems that most people may overthink this one and perhaps I’ll squeeze in as the lone number one. Unlikely, but I’ll try it!"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Would feel silly if 1 was the winner and we did not select it"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"It's unique because it's neither prime nor composite. There are no lower positive integers at all, so this is the smallest possible positive integer that is in some way unique."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"It is the lowest positive integer."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Someone's got to pick one!"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Felt like maybe no one else would be this brazen."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I have no expectation of \"1\" being unique. I'm simply ensuring that nobody manages to win with it by the \"too obvious\" argument. It's unclear what the sample size is here, but if it's small enough, that terrible strategy could succeed."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"People may not choose 1, as it would be too obvious. I'm basically betting that everyone else will try to get too \"clever\" with their choices."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"No one will choose it because they think everyone will choose it"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"i"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Just on the outside chance that everyone else will stay away from this \"obvious\" choice. Any other number will also have a low probability of success."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I think everyone else will try to be fancy and pick slightly higher numbers thinking everyone will be picking really low numbers."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Who else would pick 1? That's a ridiculous number to pick!"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"To stop anyone else submitting the lowest integer and winning"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"My answer has to satisfy two criteria, lowest number and unique number. While the chance of it satisfying the unique number is low, it does not seem substantially lower than any other number, and has the advantage of being assured of being the lower possible possible integer, meaning that I start with a baseline of satisfying 50% of the criteria."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Because I'll feel stupid of no one else enters it. 2 will probably win, though."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Hoping for luck"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Prisoner's dilemma sort of problem. By going for the lowest positive integer I'm gambling that all other players will bet that at least two players will pick it, making it non unique. If all players make this calculation then no-one will chose 1 and I'll win."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"Honestly trying to decide between 1, 4, and 8. Most people will try to outsmart, so maybe no one picks 1. Otherwise, 4 and 8 are the least common low integers."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I chose 1 because I think others will not choose it thinking everyone else might choose it."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"This type of challenge seems extremely vulnerable to answer spamming. I don't know if there is a good approach for honest submissions."} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"What if no one else does?"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I'm calling everyone's bluff"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"No one will think of this"} {"your_number":"1","show_your_work":"I assume this will fail, but i wanted to see if people would overthink it and go for something higher."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"because everyone else will enter '1'"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I was tempted to go big and enter '1', just in case everyone else psyched themselves out. But if that was tempting to me, it'll be tempting for some other players. How many? I guess at least two ..."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"2 is too low, there's no way it could end up being unique, therefore no one will bother guessing it, so maybe it actually will end up being unique."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"It's small"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Just in case"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Can't let anyone win with 2 because no one thinks to pick it."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Most people would not think to choose the number 1. This would create an opening for few to choose that number, with the possibility of it being the lowest unique number. Someone may anticipate that logic by choosing the number 2. I am going to be that person."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"sportz"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"So most folks will avoid super low numbers and aim for numbers with at least double digits. The next group of people will realize that people will avoid super low integers and go with 1. They think they're clever. Unfortunately, there are probably multiple people thinking this way, so they just played themselves. I fall into the final group who chose the smallest integer that isn't 1. Hopefully it's not a group though. It's just me (again, hopefully)."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Well I know that somebody else is inevitably going to pick 1, don't I?"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I think they would be only two types of people: 1) One who would over think it and give bigger number and 2) One who goes \"Screw it. Go for number 1!\"\n\nI'm confident there is at least 2 people who are type-2"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"It should be obvious based on the number that it is."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"It's not 1"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Most people will use their submission to try to guess about when their answer will be unique (somewhere from 10-1000+). Some others will submit 1 as the default lowest positive integer. By choosing 2, I'm trying to sneak in between these two groups."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"It seems likely that a very small number won't win because multiple people will guess it, but that means other users will avoid the small numbers and one of them might actually win. But I won't guess 1 because at least a few smartasses are likely to guess that anyway."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"my son picked it. And based on the way people approach these problems it probably isn't a bad choice v"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Can't have someone winning this competition with just a 2."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"2"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Let's choose a number that no one else would submit because everyone else is looking for a totally oddball number."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I assume that someone is submitting 1."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I chose Two, \"2\" because it is the lowest positive integer which is not 1. My first instinct was to pick a number in the 1000s range at random because I surmised that all the low numbers would be taken. However the other players in the \"game\" would likely make the same decision so I decided to choose a low number and hope that it would be unique and lower than the \"instinct\" population. Then I guessed that there would also be a \"clever\" population of people that would take the same route I had chosen and pick number one - 1. Therefore to avoid the \"instinct\" and \"clever\" populations I have chosen the number two - 2."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Several people will try to sneak the quick 1 in there - but after that who'd pick 2? Seems like the number I would least want to select. Ergo: my pick."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I'm assuming some people will choose one, but of the people who don't choose one, they will all pick something significantly more than one."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Someone will put 1, others will try to think of a number people won't think of, and my thought is it will be higher than 2"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"People will assume that low numbers won't work so they will pick higher numbers. People that pick low because of this thinking will pick 1."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"2 is an integer"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Randomly drawn from an exponential distribution"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Second test to see if its possible to spam guesses."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Everyone else who chooses a low number will choose 1."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Taking the route of hoping that other choose to go for larger numbers in belief that all the smaller numbers are all chosen. Stayed away from 1 as ut probably will be spammed."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"a"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Lots of people not paying attention to the instructions could choose 1"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Likely that someone will pick the number 1 and instinct for unique number is high so going against the odds"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Hopefully everyone assumes the lowest numbers will be taken, and choose higher numbers. Somebody else may think like I do and pick 1. Terrible logic probably but cheers!"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"It's the smallest number larger than 1."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Guessing"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I assumed that everyone else playing would themselves assume that a lot of the low numbers would be taken. I then thought I could be a lone person to actually put \"1,\" which others might avoid for being too obvious. However between the possibility that other people followed my exact logic, and the possibility that some would submit while misunderstanding the question, I chose the next lowest positive integer: 2."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I just thought that no one else would pick it since they would assume it was already chosen."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I wanted to choose 1 and hope no one else would be that bad at this game. Then I got worried that other people would be that bad at this game so I chose 2. Watch, now it will turn out that no one chose 1 and several chose 2."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"My logic is that if there are 81 registered riddlers who all have experience on this site and trying to \"out-predict\" other people there is likely someone who thinks that one won't be put because it's too predictable but I would like to predict that multiple people think one will go unused so here I am using two in hopes that no other soul out there out-predicts my out-predictions."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"figured everybody would say 1 so i took the next lowest. price is right style"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Most people will think 1 is clever or pick a random larger number hoping no one else picks it"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"It's too much of an obvious number that maybe no one else will pick it!"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"A lot of people will choose 1 to mess with it, but will forsake 2 for the same reason."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Somebody had to submit it"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I figured no one would pick a really low number. I didn't pick 1 because others would probably use the same logic and therefore pick the lowest number possible."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I figure most people will choose higher numbers, and a few clever fellows will choose 1 and hope for the best, so I guess I'm choosing 2 and hoping no one thinks of that?"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I remember seeing this question in Uni once, 25 years ago. A bunch of people submitted 1, 3 was popular as well, but no-one submitted 2. So I'm picking 2."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"I didn't think this through too hard. I figure people will put 1 expecting no one else to, so I'll choose 2 hoping no one else picked it. Otherwise it's just a guessing game, and I'm afraid of guessing too high."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Using findings from World Scientific Article: http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/publications/FNL_zeng2007.pdf"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Seems like there will be at least one person who will just throw out 1 hoping no one else does. I'll try a little higher (but I fear recursive reasoning will rule me out too)."} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"Funsies"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"no one will guess it - expecting others to have done so"} {"your_number":"2","show_your_work":"im guessing most people wont choose a small number at the risk of it being non-unique. those who do will hopefully hedge all their bets and pick extremely low, (1), and im hoping no one will pick 2."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Premonition"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"I figure a lot of people will go with 1 hoping that no one else does, a bunch will go with 2 thinking they might be the only one, and then everyone else will pick arbitrarily higher numbers (as I'm about to do with a 2nd submission)."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"3"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"The higher you go the better chance of being unique, but the worse chance of winning. 3 is probably too low."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"It's lower than 4."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"It's lower than 4."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Well you said UNIQUE and I figured 1 would be taken, therefore, 3."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"It seemed that 1 and 2 would be popular choices"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"A bunch of people will choose 1 assuming that everyone else will overthink it (they wont)\nA bunch of people will choose 2 trying to outsmart the 1s (They Won'T)\n3 will take it (actually it won't...but oh well)"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"some will submit 1, thinking that no one else will bother; some will submit 2, having realized that some will submit 1. I'm betting on the slim chance that no one besides me will think to submit 3. Or that those who think it through that far will skip 3 and go to 4 or higher."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Most people thinking rationally will probably choose a number that's moderately high, to decrease the chances of another person picking it. If we assume that most people reason as such, then a lower number will actually have a higher chance of being the winner. 1 will probably not be unique, since a number of people could reason this far. 2 might not be unique, since a number of people could reason this far. This logic could continue indefinitely, the stopping point is based loosely on how many people are likely to see and respond to the riddle and go through the aforementioned reasoning, a number whose magnitude I estimated from the amount of people commenting on the Healthcare debate liveblog (thus an estimate of the amount of people who frequent FiveThirtyEight). I'd be very interested to see this experiment conducted many times over differing crowd sizes and see if, as I suspect, the winning number is positively correlated to amount of participants."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"I assume most people will assume that low numbers are too obvious. I spent a lot of time thinking about bigger numbers and then second guessed myself and here I am."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Because 3...is a magic number"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Seems reasonable"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Some may go for the win with 1, others may assume them with 2, 3 is still high risk high reward but less risk than the other 2"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"3 is an integer"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Lots of people will pick one. Some people will try to pick 2 just to outsmart those people. I am going to outsmart the smarts. A lot of people will try to pick very high numbers, assuming that low numbers will be duplicated."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Why not? Go big, but not really..."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Someone will pick 1 and 2 hoping all other pick random higher number. Probably 3 as well but who knows."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"No real reason"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"a"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"-"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"There are two people that will try to solve this problem. Those that choose very low numbers gambling that no one else will, and those that try to choose the lowest high number that others would not have taken. As 2nd place has no value in a competition like this, I feel the correct way to maximize your results is to choose the first method. However, I slightly hedge because someone had to choose 1 and 2... right? Maybe, or something?"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"1 is the obvious answer if there were only one submission... but I assume the website has more readers than just myself. Again, assuming most people will realize similarly and pick >30 again assuming the lower numbers have already been chosen by others... But what happens when everyone thinks the same thing and skips the numbers under 10. Okay, it's not 3 but I'm not a game theory expert."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Guessing"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"it would have been nice to know the approximate number of people likely to participate. I first thought of choosing 1 thinking that nobody would be so bold as to try it. But since it was my first thought I scrapped the idea. Next I thought someone thinking along those lines might inch up to 2 to avoid the 1's. Then I decided that people not trying super low answers might just skip over 3 and go higher."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Because why not?"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"I figured most people would pick double digit numbers, but someone would pick one. Then someone else would think that and pick 2. I hope nobody thinks two steps ahead and pick 3."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"Figured many people would have picked 1 thinking that most others would go high. So I went just above 1"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"I'm just doing my part to make sure people who submit really small numbers don't win."} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"My wife said 2, I said 4; I averaged them. Guaranteed to work"} {"your_number":"3","show_your_work":"It's low, but not too low"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I expect a number of people to say 1-3, but 4 is viewed as more obscure"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Everyone picks one, everyone who thinks that picks two. Three has got to be someone's favorite number, but no one likes 4"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Because its a low number that doesn't seem to publicized. I think there will a couple of 1's \"just in case\" and then some two's and three's for about the same reason and because their low primes people will think of. 5 and 7 are also numbers that pop into mind quickly. I rarely think of the number 4 so I assume other people also rarely think of it."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Many people, thinking the number must be unique, would probably choose a smallish number, probably two digits. Others, thinking further, might decide to pick the number 1 in the hope that nobody else would think of doing so. In the end, I decided on 4 as I thought it sounded not random enough to be picked by others."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Trolls will select 1, reasonable people might pick 2 or 3. 4 is a number that maybe a lot of people will forget about? (Poor 4)"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"who knows"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"The winning integer will be lower than most expect."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Seems more psychological than anything else."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I figure people are going to overall avoid low numbers, since they will guess that it won't be unique in a competition to pick a low number. This will create an opportunity for a low number to win. On the flip side, I think some people are going to try to pick a low number hoping that others will have been avoiding it for the reason above. 4 seemed like a good compromise."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I've won this game in the past with 4"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Data scientist"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Many people will try to submit relatively high numbers. Some people will realize this and submit numbers closer to 1 as a result, trying to win. I guess that most people will not think to submit 4 and will rather go for the low-hanging fruit of 1, 2, or 3."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I am guessing that folks will avoid picking a very low number, so I am trying to exploit that by picking a low number. Except that at least one person will try this same strategy for 1-3, so I am picking 4 (I don't expect it to work)."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"1 or 2 is too low. When picking a random number, I suspect most people lean towards odd numbers, so, 4 it is. Probably way too low; this one seems ripe for collusion and automated entries..."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"4 is a good number."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Some one will inevitably pick 1 or 2, but maybe skip the next few for higher ones"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I suspect most people who think on this are going to try for prime numbers. One is altogether too cute and someone will try it. Four is the first non-one prime number.\n\nCourse, anything you can count on your fingers is a likely target, so but I can't think of a better criteria off hand."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"It's one of the smallest positive integers."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Because it's gonna win!"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Last week there were 3 comments on the Riddler page. I assume more people participate than comment, but there can't be thousands of participants so why not try for a non-round, non-prime number near the bottom of the pile?"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I picked 4."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"it's the lowest number that no one else will pick."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I was taking too long trying to think about Nash equilibrium and estimating the number of people that will be playing this game, so I decided to ignore all of that and guess a small number that might be overlooked. Also I like the number 4."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I'm betting most people will be assuming that the lowest numbers (1-10) are already taken and won't choose those. Of course, there are others like me thinking the same thing and would then choose them, so while I'd *like* to choose \"1,\" I'm not, because I figure there's at least one other person out there who did so based on that same thought process. So, I decided to stick with a low number, but choosing four, as I just feel like it's gonna be skipped over."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I reviewed studies showing that, when selecting a number at random, people are more likely to pick odd numbers and prime numbers than computers are. So I picked the lowest even, non-prime integer that was available."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"4 is an integer"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"4 is a pretty unassuming number. I figure 1 to 3 will get a fair number of picks, and beyond that random selections of larger numbers."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"People will overlook low numbers because they are too obvious. I think 4 as an even number might get jumped by many people."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Trusting my gut"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"The first three numbers have already been selected ;) and no one will think of submitting 4."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"It's my favorite"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"The lowest number is 1, but probably a few people picked that assuming that no one else would risk picking the lowest number. A few people realizing that 1 is a bad number probably picked 2. Some other people picked 3 because of the first two assumptions and because 3 is lucky for some people. If you didn't pick 1, 2, or 3 then it's probably just up in the air and you pick a lucky or favorite number. I picked 4 because its low enough to have a good shot and because its a stupid enough number that maybe no one else picked it."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I feel like there are 2 groups of people in this world: bold and timid. There will be some bold guesses of 1, 2, and 3, and some high number guesses. I'm hoping no one thinks about the number 4!"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"cause no one else would?"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"My girlfriend liked it"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Hmmm - wild guess"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Chosen on the off chance that people avoid the single digits. 4 seems slightly more plausibly not chosen than 1, 2, or 3."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Just a random guess"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Going for the gold."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I don't think anyone will pick 4."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Didn't feel right, a little too low and a little too high"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Maybe people will skip it!"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"It is an unlucky number in China."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/02/05/is-17-the-most-random-number/ in between where other people highly likely put there money (1,2,3) and where more sophisticated estimations would land."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"This is the lowest number I could convince myself to try. I figure quick responders that would answer 1 just for kicks may go through a logical iteration or two, but not three. I expect to lose this game and am curious to see by how much."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"hope this number had been forgotten to try as a forgotten one as it is highly unattractive number. The One could be tanken by notunderstanding the question, Two for \"nobody would go so low reasonably, Three not for the reason as Two so next one is Four. Four is a little further from One and an unattractive number, makes it more likely to be forgotten in the game. Everything else comes to luck in gambling."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"The lowest integers will likely have multiple submissions, but who picks 4? Me."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"A lot of people would choose the lowest positive integer i.e 1 without reading that you need a unique number. The next number is 2. The smarter ones will go for that."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I believe 4 will go unnoticed."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Seems solid to me."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I'm hoping a large majority of people assume that they must pick a large number to have a chance, leaving a small number open. Though it seems unlikely, picking between 1 and 10 under the 10% likelihood that one of them is open leaves a much better chance than picking between 100 and 500 with a 75% likelihood one of them is open."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"No reason."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Cause it's even"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I sacrificed a virgin to a volcano, and my god instructed me to submit the number 4. My magic 8-ball concurred."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"I didn't do much work. Not even sure how many people are likely to reply to this. But I am being a bit of a contraction in choosing this, thinking no one will choose such low a number for fear of a collision."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Some will choose very low numbers in the hopes that they were skipped by all others. I'm hoping four is the first one that is truly skipped by everybody!"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Trying to get lucky"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Psychologically, people will tend to go for numbers that are odd and seem unique, such as primes. I also think many people will attempt to go for 1 and 2. So I went for the first compound number above 1."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Honestly not really sure, figured that most people would go something higher as to be unique but first the numbers would still be taken."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Low :)"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"Rule of three. I thought people would be more likely to pick 1, 2, or 3, but perhaps not 4."} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"4 is the magic number"} {"your_number":"4","show_your_work":"everyone's gonna overthink it"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"oh come on"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"N/A"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"Theoretically speaking, the likelihood of a lower number being chosen is very likely, therefore making it not unique and not a winner. People who know this will then think about choosing a higher number. It just comes down to luck of who will pick what number, depending on their rationale and why they pick a particular number. I am willing to bet that 1-4 will be taken, but someone will think it is ridiculous to still pick a single digit number since others will have the opportunity to do so. So I am choosing a single digit number that isn't small, isn't a lucky number ( 7 13 etc) and one that is still risky enough to be close. \n"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"Most people choose 6 or 7 but nobody ever thinks of 5"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"You have to go for a low number and just hope no one else picks it."} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"No work. Just intuition."} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"My kids picked it."} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"Thinking nobody (else) in their right mind would pick such a low number. Plus I like 5."} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"I used a random number generator"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"I'm greedy"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"um...it's my lucky number"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"."} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"Guess!"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"They'll never see it coming"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"Hoping that the majority of people pick a high number, overlooking that people may leave some pretty low integers unpicked."} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"I went with the most bland and common number I could think of since everyone will be going for the most unique. People will think single digit integers are too small to pick and be unique."} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"No reason."} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"People don't really like to choose multiples of 5 because they're too \"predictable\". 10 would have been my second choice but I wanted to go as low as possible in case people were guessing mostly in the teens or twenties."} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"Lowest possible number nobody will put here"} {"your_number":"5","show_your_work":"It's a fairly common winner of the Nikoli Derby (http://www.nikoli.com/en/event/derby.html)"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"meh"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"It is the only number (except 1) that the sum of all the primes up to 6 equal the sum of all the composite number up to 6, it is the smallest perfect number, it is the only perfect factorial, it is the largest integer to be both a factorial and a primorial, it is the only mean between a pair of twin primes which is triangular, and it is the only even evil perfect number."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"We'll see!"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"lucky guess"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Guessing that most people are picking 10+ thinking that someone already went for obvious. Ignored 1-5 because the people who are thinking like me will go 1-5. plus 6 is a great a number."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Most people will avoid low single digit numbers and try to probably guess some two or three digit numbers, which may actually make single digit numbers a good bet. Inevitably, other people will think of this, so the lowest single digit numbers are not a good option. I suspect the 1-5 will get multiple submissions, as will 7 (people seem to like the number 7), so I went with 6."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Hoping that other's overthink this and go too high"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Someone has to ruin the low numbers for other people."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"I hoped to get lucky"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Who thinks of 6?"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"If figure people will avoid single-digit numbers on the assumption that they will all be taken."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"yeah, it's a guess"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"some people will go much higher thinking all the lower numbers are picked, its a gamble."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"It's low, but not too low, and people tend not to pick even numbers as much because they feel less random."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 seem like obvious choices based on familiarity and common usage (1 is the lowest positive integer, a couple/duo/etc. for 2, lists of 3, table for 4, 5 fingers). After that, I would think most people would skip to the \"lucky\" number 7, leaving 6 as a, perhaps, lonely exclusion. Beyond that, I would think 8 or 9 might be reasonable choices, with response rates spiking again at 10 (our base numbering system), 13 (for being \"unlucky), and then slowly declining as one moves away from the lowest number with small spikes at \"round\" numbers (15, 20, 25, etc.)."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"because somebody had to do it"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"lowballin"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Philosophy. Humans are 5-fingered, and when given the option to pick a number without constraints, 1-5 are normally chosen. 6 is the lowest number not likely to be picked thus."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"A bunch of people will choose 1 because they don't understand the question. Some will choose 2 because they realize my first point. A few will choose 3 because they understand the first two points. So that leaves those who will select high enough to be unique among 1000-2000 guesses. I'm guessing the number will be even because odd and prime numbers \"feel\" more unique, therefore more people will choose them. My gut tells me 4 is just too low. I suspect that most people who understand the question will pick much too high, like 117 or 89. 6 seems high enough to be the number yet low enough to seem too low to pick."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"I think that people will pick more prime numbers because of the word \"unique\" in the question. Six isn't one, and is also fairly low."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"I thought all the other numbers were taken. I could be wrong."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Most boring number between 1-10."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"It sounded like the smallest \"uninteresting\" number. It's one less than lucky seven."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"random guess"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"My guess is most responses will fall either in the two-digit range, or very low numbers like 1, 2, 3 (hey, someone’s gotta go for it). I figure there’s a slim chance I could slip in between those groups."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Guessing most people guess odd numbers, and choosing so low because hoping no one else will"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"I think most of the numbers will be lowish 2-digits. I think everyone else will miss this one."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"6 it is"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"I figure 7 is going to be popular - so guessed one below that."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"High enough but not to high"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"just a guess - relatively low given how many people will probably submit an answer, but high risk is required to win this game."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Figured I'd take a shot that most people would pick higher numbers assuming the low numbers wouldn't be unique. Chose 6 as it seemed the least interesting of the group between 3 and 12."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"I think the numbers 1-5 might be obvious and other people would choose larger numbers and overlook something like 6"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"6"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Assuming (without much evidence) on the order of 1,000 submissions. Thinking that people will over think and avoid small numbers. 6 seems fairly unloved. And there you have it."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"It seems low enough"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Intuition"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"My first several ideas were all primes, so I'm going for a low but not too-low non-prime."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Guess something low that other people would think is too low"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"6 is an unlucky, oft overlooked number."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"It’s low, but hopefully still a unique submission"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Dan Wilson... People like odd numbers. Figure many people will go higher."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"2nd composite number"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"NO reason"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"It's my lucky number"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"I'm a genius"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"I assumed 1-5 would be covered"} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Counting on others to cover 1-5 multiple times."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"Assuming most people will be afraid to use small numbers, but others will try to outsmart the rest by using the lowest few."} {"your_number":"6","show_your_work":"I like 6"} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"*shrugs*"} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"George Costanza"} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"I think it might be a low number, but not too low to be unique"} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"I feel like everyone will go for 1-5 or higher random numbers."} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"Low enough to reasonably win; high enough to hopefully avoid spoilers"} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"Just a fun number. What the hell."} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"seems lucky"} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"not to high, not too low, not too obvious"} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"I believe that all smaller numbers were chosen by at least one person by now."} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"My guess is most people will go much higher and a couple of people may try and poach the lower numbers. Hopefully only 1-6"} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"Obviously 1-5 is gone. 6 is questionable but 7 is perfect."} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"High enough to be unique, low enough to be low enough."} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"I am going for broke and guessing that few people will choose really low numbers & I like the number seven."} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"It's so obvious, no one else will think of it"} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"Chose 7 because I think people will go very low hoping nobody else will go low."} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"Prime number that people will overlook because they think the picked number will be higher, but its not too gimmicky because some people will try to cheat the system and use even lower numbers."} {"your_number":"7","show_your_work":"Cause nobody will ever pick 7."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Just 'cause..."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Riddler responders are the kind of people who will pick a nice, round number, just because they think everybody else is going to be too scared to pick one. Maybe I can get lucky by picking close to one such number?"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Have you ever heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons!"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"It's pretty low. I originally thought to do 133, but let's live a little, ya know."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"The low numbers will be taken, they just have to be. 7 will be taken, because it is a \"lucky\" number. So I went with the next lowest number."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"intuition?"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"My original instinct was to put a - then hold down the '9' as long as I could, then copy and paste the numbers a few times. Then I saw that it was a positive integer. I then realized that integers include 0 and 1,2,3... etc . but was wondering if anyone would consider 0 to be positive. So then I decided to go for one, and talk about how it was the lowest positive integer. I then realized that it had to be unique! As in nobody else could pick your number! I then decided to go for my favorite number, 8, and hope for the best. I love the number 8 because I am a fan of Alexander Ovechkin, and am from the DMV area. I also thought that somebody is going to pick the so-called \"lucky\" number 7, and that the oft forgotten 8 would be the next lowest pick. *Dab*"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Gotta makes sure no one wins with a single digit number. But hey if I win I win."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"..."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Because it's luckier than 7."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"My professor for game theory was Mark David Ward, who literally wrote the pa[er on inverse auction theory."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Because 8."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"1-5 will get selected and the likely hood of someone selecting 6,7,8 is probably close to the same"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"There are two large unknowns:\n1) How many people are going to participate in this challenge. Clearly the smaller the number of participants, the more likely a small number will win.\n2) How other people will answer.\n\nI'm going to assume that the distribution is bi-modal:\n- Greedy participants that'll choose some distribution near 1\n- Conservative participants that'll choose a number avoiding the greedy participants clustered at 1\n\nWith these assumptions I'm imagining the distribution exponentially falling, but with a very high tail (e.g. 50*exp(-0.5*x) + 2). Given this I'm hoping that there will be a Poisson fluctuation down to zero in the 5-15 range.\n\nWe'll see how unique my thinking is. (Can't wait to see the distribution peak between 5-15, lol)"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"High single to low double digit may slip through."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"It's less than 9."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Random!"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Someone has to pick the low numbers :-)"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"it's gonna be low"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Seems like a good spot"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Seems pretty obvious that at least someone would pick 7."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"I almost submitted '1', on the theory that someone had to, but then thought that since that was my first inclination, someone else would. I thought about '0', on the theory that the populace at large might not think it was 'positive', but that the judges at 538 might think it was. I rejected that because 0 really isn't positive, and I didn't want to win with something I thought was wrong. If 0 wins, I'd rather be righteously indignant ;-) I ended up going with 8 because with all its factors, it seems like a very 'common' number, while other people might try to come up with a 'unique' number like 7 or 13. We'll see! Without knowing how many people will participate, it's hard to make a decision."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"0 - 7 might be non-unique.."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"So I dont feel foolish if someone else wins with 8."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"This number just doesn't seem like many people would pick it."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"My wife says 8. Gotta pick your battles. ;-)"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Common number but not the most common."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"why not?"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Crazy Eights"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Balance"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"It's impossible to give a good defense of any given number if you don't know how many people are playing. Seven (along with three) is famously the numeral people are most likely to choose at random; eight is the next-lowest number. It's an unassuming number. If 8 isn't the lowest number, well, there must be *somebody* submitting these small numbers. Why not me? I dunno."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"It felt right"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"dunno, I like 8"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"I feel like no one will choose low numbers because it would be obvious. I think majority of numbers chosen will be between 15-30, but no one will go for a low number like 8. Taking a risk"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"idk man, 8's too predictable i guess"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Low, even."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"It felt right"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Favorite number"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"8"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Snowman for good luck."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"Eight is a popular satisfying number. I think people will tend to pick numbers that feel obscure and that tend to be too high."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"i have no idea"} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"It's the lowest unique number of all responses you'll receive."} {"your_number":"8","show_your_work":"There is no Nash equilibrium in pure strategies for this game, so lets pretend I computed a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium, randomized appropriately and came up with a choice of 8. Or maybe I just like the number 8."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Hope no one else picks it"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"It came to me in a dream."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"There is no work. 9, because why the fuck not? Who would be stupid enough to answer 9 to this question?"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"A number comprised of a series of digits, subtracted from its reverse, always results in the same unique number for series of the same length. All 3 digit series of numbers (e.g. 345 subtracted from its reverse 543) result in 198. All 2 digit series of numbers (e.g. 12 or 23 or 34) when subtracted from their reverse, result in 9. 9 is the lowest possible unique number since two digits is the shortest possible series of positive integers."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"I think everyone else will mindgame themself off of picking a 1-digit number"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Birth Date. Usually this number chase me"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"unclear how many people will participate, but I'm guessing it will be enough that at least two might choose each of the lower integers."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"it's a good number"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"You have to pick something. I picked a very low number, but figured that other people would pick the few numbers below mine."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"4+5=9"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Because 7 8 9"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Pretty arbitrary, to be honest"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"A unique number is the difference, a constant, between consecutive digits in ascending order and descending order. The lowest unique number, also a positive integer, is 9. 21-12=9, 32-23=8, etc."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"It all comes back to 9."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"I think nine might be lower than the actual answer, but maybe everyone else will think that too."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"The optimal answer depends on the (unknown) number of participants and their (unknown) strategies."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Seemed like a good number."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"intuition"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number, low, and I'm guessing that people will go mostly higher to try to be unique."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"If you flip it upside down its a 6"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Its my habit to think of 9 when I'm asked to pick a number"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Why would anyone pick 9?"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Favorite number"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Lucky number"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Benfords law/hoping ppl overthink and go too high"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"When I described the task to a friend's very bright four-year-old, she suggested it."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"I do this game at the end of my middle school math classes, if we have a minute or two of free time at the end of the period. All the kids write down a positive integer on their paper (without showing anyone else their number) and then I call out, \"who wrote 1?\" If one person (and only one!) raises their hand, they win. If more than one, they're all out. Then I ask, \"who wrote 2?\" etc. Until we find the unique lowest number. The kids get a kick out of it, and try to psychoanalyze each other to change their guess each round. One class I had a kid who wrote \"1\" ALWAYS -- so if the class didn't want him to win, *someone* had to sacrifice themselves and write, \"1,\" too :) The winner is pretty much always a number from 1 to 10. But the class is only a class of 27 or so... so who knows if among your multitudes of participants, if the answer will be bigger...?"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Nine, nine nie nine. Nine nine: nine."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Numerous people will all pick 1, 2, or 3, so those numbers are foolish choices. A few sly people will shoot for 4, 5, or 6, as I was tempted to do. The numbers 7 and 8 are way too popular, so I, of course, must choose 9. \"Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!\""} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"N/A"} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"People will overlook a random low figure attempting to accurately predict a higher figure; discounting the linear nature of the problem."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"It's a gamble that some people will try for lower single digit numbers and others will try for higher primes, missing out on a high single digit like 9."} {"your_number":"9","show_your_work":"guessing that others will go much higher, expecting all lower numbers to be guessed"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"I feel like most people will pick an odd or prime number thinking it will be unique. All single digit number will probably be submitted. 10 feels like a number that people will not choose because it is too commonly used."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Most of the single digit numbers will be taken by people trying to go as low as possible or just prevent others from winning. You must go reasonably high to guarantee uniqueness, but that gives you almost no chance of winning. I saw 10 as a number that not many would choose because is has the perception of being a number everyone thinks of, thus causing no one to choose it. 10 is a very low number, but not low enough to get everyone thinking to pick it."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Applying some reverse psychology. People will probably go for more \"unique\" numbers, so I'll pick a nice round number."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"It \"looks\" less random than odds, primes, etc. So perhaps nobody will choose it, because it seems less obvious."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"There's a small amount of empirical data showing 10 is statistically less popular than other small numbers in the decimal system. Assuming lots of people guess a single or small double-digit number \"just in case\", why not try a lower popularity small integer."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"I figured people may be trying to think of odd, prime, or \"more unique\" numbers than a nice easy round 10. 10 is probably too low to be unique, but worth a shot."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Just a feeling it might be overlooked. This is so volatile I thought people might neglect picking a \"normal\" or \"base\" number"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Someone will forget about the lowest 2-digit number"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Hoping to get lucky and that others think it's too low and too \"round\" to be played. I'd expect the real answer to be at Number of Participants divided by 20ish though."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"I figure people will try the first few numbers. After that, most people will pick a \"random\" low number. When people try to pick a random number it often times follows a subconscious set of rules (not even, not numbers that are divisible, not numbers that mean something), and most people end up picking the same \"random\" number. 10 is probably too low, but it might just sneak in since it holds so much significance that no one else will pick it. Therefore, I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Teachers have a knack in multiple choice A-D questions to hide their answers in the middle (B or C), and in a similar way, I think that people submitting this answer will feel safer with a number that appears hidden (I'm guessing that odd integers not divisible by 5 will be the most common answer in this riddle). While I think that there will be those trying to outsmart the game by choosing \"1\" or \"2,\" I think 10 as the base for our decimal numerical system is perceived as too common for being an answer, and something undesirable for entering into a situation that calls for the perception of being unique. Unfortunately, by submitting a form that requires people to \"show your work,\" it is likely encouraging everyone to overthink this problem, which will likely result in several others choosing 10 as an all too common number. If this were the case, I fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is Never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this: Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Seems like a number many people would skip because it is too obvious."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"How many fingers do you have? Yeah, 10. That's what I thought."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"I suspect all one-digit numbers will be chosen. Prime and odd numbers seem more \"unique\" so I suspect they will go as well. 10 may or may not."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"well, I figured if 10 is the least commonly picked number between 1 and 10, then it has a better than average chance of not being picked. see also https://web.archive.org/web/20150228025301/http://nfrom1to10.appspot.com/results/"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Just instinct. The lowest few numbers actually seem promising, because everyone will be thinking \"no one would pick numbers THAT small, too obvious\". However, others will be thinking that too! So at least a few will choose very small numbers, thinking they are going against the grain. So I want to go a little higher; seems like 10 is somewhat \"obvious\" too, so I hope won't be chosen by anyone else."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"I chose this answer for shits and for gigs"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Champion of the most recent Nikoli Derby"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Critical information seems to be the expected number of submissions which I really have no idea on, so this is a wild guess."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Nobody's favourite number. Lowest non single-digit. Depends on response volume - unknown."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Others may avoid round numbers"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"idk"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Fav"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"I'm going with 10 because I'm guessing all the single-digit numbers will be taken. 10 seems like a nice round number to guess, and I'm banking on everyone else thinking the same and opting for a less obvious number. :)"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Without knowing the number of people who will submit numbers, I guess that the lower numbers will be duplicated but the higher numbers will be too high, plus people will choose non-obvious numbers, so 10 has a chance of bring the lowest unique number because of its obviousness."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"I picked something that seemed like a popular nimbler hoping people would avoid it."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Gotta go low. My first thought was 17, but I recognized that I was choosing it because it's an ugly number and therefore seems unique... but other people likely had the same reflex. 10 is too obvious. Maybe so obvious that it was overlooked?"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Meh"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Everybody is going to think 10 will be taken!"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Too round to be common"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"I expect others will overthink it. Or will cheat by making many many submissions"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Because it's a common, but not common, number."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Figured enough people would answer, that it would likely not be a single digit. On the other hand, wanted to pick a number that wouldn't be considered 'unique' by other people trying to guess. This question is similar to lowest unique bid auctions."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Relatively low if we imagine lots of responses. Also, it does not feel like a \"rare\" number that people may pick. But perhaps everyone does."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"God"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"it seems low but too obvious for other people to choose. Also I feel like this depends partially on how many responces you typically get. I def wouldn't pick 7 tho--I bet theres a lot of 7s lol."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"round numbers may be too obvious to select"} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"The number is probably going to be a low number that people assumed others already chose. When selecting a number people are more likely to choose an odd number and prime numbers because they believe others will not think of it. I chose 10 because it is an obvious number that most people will probably forget about."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"lowest positive integer is just any whole number and I suspect a lot of people will send in 1-5. The plan is then to pick a number that people would not regularly choose."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-popular-numbers-grapes-of-math/\n\nOn that list the lowest number after 1 is 10. I wanted to not count that because it's such a round number but then the next is 16 and there has to be nerds guessing all the powers of 2 and the next is 18 (chai) so I didn't want to guess that so 10 it is..."} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"\"ten is a stupid number to pick, pick a weird number that nobody else will\""} {"your_number":"10","show_your_work":"Seems like a number that is too common to be common"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"The assumption is that most people will pick higher numbers in an effort to be unique. Some people will pick number one as a gamble against everyone outsmarting themselves.\nPeople will continue to pick either low of high (3 digit) numbers leaving a gap of 2 digit numbers.\nI'm estimating numbers 1-10 will be chosen more than once (just by counting fingers) so I'm trying eleven (Count Rugen may ruin this plan)"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Because"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Obviously most really low numbers (1-10) are going to be picked by a large number of people. This might mean that they're actually a good choice, since most people will realize that and avoid them. But I anticipate the Riddler audience will contain a decent number of 'one level up' readers, who will understand that. This leads to the Sicilian Problem - I have to model what level my opponents are playing at.\n\nEventually, this path leads to madness and indecision. I considered submitting my age, or a moderately-large prime number (or, better, one less than a moderately large prime) but I then decided '11 will do'. I doubt this was unique, though. Still, it should be more unique than most lower-level players will do, though anticipated by higher-level players than myself."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Seems like a nice enough number to choose"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Some people will choose 1. Realizing that, some people will choose 2. Realizing that, some people will choose 3, etc. etc. The trick is to go one step further than everyone else, but how? \nThe previous popular submissions (Riddler Nation wars 1&2) had approximately 1,000 entries. Let's assume 1,000 will enter this one too, because it's a nice easy number. Assuming they're all logical player, let's say half (500 players) choose 1, half as many of that (250 players) choose 2, etc. This means by the time we get to 10, we're down to 0.977 players (let's round that to 1)."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"The battle for Riddler nation had 1382 submission. If half those people pick 1, and half of the remainder pick 2, and half of the remainder pick 3 and so on, the first number without a whole person left to pick it is 11. So basically this is a wild guess."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"The density will decrease rapidly as the integers get larger; I think there is a psychological anchor at double digits"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"I think everyone will try a single digit number. I feel most people will be hesitant to use a double digit number, except those that are much higher."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Born on the 11th"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"It felt right."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Mine goes to 11"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"S.W.A.G.: A scientific wild-ass guess."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"No real reason"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"completely arbitrary"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Oh, it is mostly a guess. I figured the single digits were likely to be duplicated, but that there might be better odds with the low double digits."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Trying to anticipate how quickly people will leave single digits is tricky. 11 is just beyond the double digit threshold. It's also prime, which I feel like may make it more forgettable. Finally, it was my number in baseball growing up."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"There will be a big cluster close to one then a random dispersal trailing to a round 1-billion. 11 feels big so people will avoid it. God's speed!"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Most people will choose a number 10 or lower or a common number. I chose the lowest prime above 10."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"It was difficult to gauge how many people submit to the Riddler Express, for that seems an important piece. But in the absence of said information, I went with 11, the first double digit prime. There is no dominant strategy, for if there was, someone else would pick it, and then we'd lose. We have to guess under the number of players N, as some number under that would be a winner. Otherwise, it might be best to avoid low numbers, as someone is bound to try going low, and avoiding commonly chosen numbers (7,10,12,etc.)."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Restating the challenge, we are to pick a number that is sufficiently low, and sufficiently unpopular. \n\nThe only rule that I used in determining popularity was to choose a prime number. I've observed a tendency when people are asked to name a number at random to pick a nonprime number. There is something innately attractive about numbers that can be divided evenly by other integers. While I haven't rigorously tested this, a quick perusal of numbers selected as favorites, such as sports uniform numbers or NASCAR vehicle numbers leads me to believe that prime numbers--especially two-digit prime numbers--appear less frequently than if numbers were assigned by mere chance. \n\nSo then the question is what the lowest number that is unlikely to be selected by anyone else likely to be. I selected 11, because it is the first two-digit prime. For whatever reason, I think that single digit primes are exceptions to the rule that prime numbers tend to be less popular than nonprimes."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"It is my favorite number"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"A guess that more than 1 someones will go for the gusto of 1-9, so I expected a whole bunch of 10s. I was also born in November."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"pretty much chosen at random"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"I figure that all numbers up to 10 will be chosen a bunch. Pretty arbitrary, but there's really nothing else to be done here than guess."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"It's kind of low?"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Just going with my gut."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"I have no idea how many people submit here..."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Well..."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"11 is my favorite number!"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"It's my second favourite number, I thought my favourite (6) was too low:)"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"It's my lucky number. It's low enough that I could see it actually winning, but since it's not single digit hopefully no one else guesses it."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"There is no way that people all doubled up on any numbers higher than this (or at least the odds feel pretty slim) at the same time I feel like it fits the happy medium of non repeatable and still low enough"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"My reasons are my own."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"It's a prime number and it's lowish. I think people don't often think about the number 11."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"First Prime number above 10"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Low but not too low plus a prime. Hoping people will over think this"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Gotta risk it."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"-"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"N/A -"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Picking a large # is a crapshoot. Hoping people overestimate the number of others picking low numbers and choose #'s which are too large. 11 is a prime so its hard to arrive at by chance."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Perhaps people will exhaust the counting numbers, but not touch the teens?"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"It is the best number, even if it is wrong."} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"Its just a guess"} {"your_number":"11","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"the largest monosyllabic number (in English)"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"it's a low double digit, non-prime, non-square that hopefully people won't spam up to"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"I have no clue."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"it's a dozen"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Most counter-intuitive answer above 10"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"It's a good number, Brent."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Why not 12?"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Lucky guess"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"It's an even, easily divisible number so unlikely to be picked by people who are trying to find a random number that others won't choose, but very low also, so if I am in fact the only person to choose this number it is likely I will win."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number, and it's small enough to win but large enough that people won't get there by adding a few to 1."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Bots are going to make me wrong :("} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Because 1 + 2 = 12"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"I don't have real \"work.\" And since I'm unsure how many submissions you receive, I can't do much in the way of estimation. My logic followed that all single digits would likely be chosen, therefore duplicated. I'd guess the first unique number would be between 11-30, roughly, so I went on the low end."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Random number generator"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Gut."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"It is high enough to be out of 1-10 and not too common of a number."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"1-10 has a large probability of being chosen. 11 also has a high chance."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"It \"feels\" right"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Just guessing"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"i chose 12"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"12"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Was chosen by a random number generator"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"why not?"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Not so low that anyone will pick it"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"I thought the single digits would all be taken, but once we're into double digits, I don't think there's anything special about 12. Also, each number higher you declare requires that every single number less has 0 or >1 guess, so I think the actual answer is likely to be below the average (and also the median) submission."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"I think picking a number between 1 - 10 is too risky given the number of people that read this website. Also, I think it's likely multiple people will think they are clever in picking low, uncommon prime numbers. People making their choices based on what they think other people did are more likely to avoid commonly used numbers. Therefore, the greatest commonly used number greater than 10 is 12."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Lucky Guess"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Classic gut instinct. Great problem."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Thinking"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Many people will choose small numbers. Many people will pick odd numbers like 3,5, 11,17 etc. So 12 seemed about right.\n\n The main issue is how many people are participating. The more participants the more crowded the smaller numbers get. I guessed it's hundreds and so thought 12 was about right."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Favorite number"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Not a single digit + not 11?"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Because"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Figured most people would avoid low double digits, but that a lot of gutsy players would aim for each of the single digits. I've got a feeling that there will be a gap of sorts between the slamming 9-1 get and the group of people who flock to the high 20s and 30s. Just a feeling."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"because twelve is the twelviest"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Someone will pick 1 through 10. So an unlikely number above 10 I guess 12"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"I figure a lot of people are going to choose relatively high numbers, so I'm just trying to undercut them."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Assume all single digit numbers will be selected."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"I hope that people are attracted to prime numbers. 12 is the opposite of that."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Relying on luck."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Birthday"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Gut feeling"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"I figure all the primes will attract people, as will 1-10, so I picked the next number that isn't a prime and is over 10."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"I assume others will overestimate the risk of choosing numbers with many dividers."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Pure guesswork :)"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"My birthday"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"whim"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Seems legit"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"Wild guess"} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"12 is an ugly number."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"I think all numbers under 10 will be selected, as well as unique numbers like prime numbers. So, I picked 12 which is the lowest number over 10 and not prime."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"I think most people will anchor to odd numbers because your intuitive first thought upon seeing lowest positive integer is 1. Based on typical follower interaction, I anticipate maybe 150 responses, and I think all single digit responses will be used multiple times. Also wanted to avoid any \"round\" numbers such as 10 that easily come to mind."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"So obvious it has to be it."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"deep thoughts."} {"your_number":"12","show_your_work":"12 is so ordinary i think it might be missed. When people think unique they tend to prime numbers, and 12 is pretty much the complete opposite of a prime number"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"my birthdate"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"It's unlucky."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Its a guess."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"\"I'm not superstitious, but I'm a little stitious\""} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Betting on the superstitions of others"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"triskaidekaphilia"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"No real reason."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Lucky number"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"13"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"People generally think 13 is unlucky so maybe they wont pick it. If enough people play it could work! Sorry... don't have enough time to get mathy with it."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"I figured some luck was needed, so let's go unlucky and prime. Probably not..."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Everyone will aim very high or very low, and no one seems to like the number 13"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"everyone will pick 1, 2, 3 etc. There's diminishing returns to picking a higher number at some point. I'm also at work and don't have the time to calculate what that sweet spot is, so 13 is a solid lick finger test the wind direction kinda thing. I also don't play golf, and I don't know if that metaphor even makes sense anymore, so there you go :)"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"1 + 3 = 13"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"People's subconscious fear of the number 13."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"It's pretty low, but the type of unlucky number I'm hopeful others will avoid."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Simple guess due to trolls and Nash equilibrium"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"We played this game in my intro info theory class, I was one of the suckers who picked 1 thinking no on else would. Lots of people did. The distribution was approximately exponential, with 30 people and the winner picked six. I figure at this much higher scale, doubling feels right, and 13 is a cooler number than 12. Totally an eyeballing guess."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Unlucky, maybe that will make people avoid it."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"I've really got nothing to go on other than dumb luck."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Numbers below 10 are probably gonna be filled with trolls. The best option. Like the coffee pot problem is to take as low as a reasonable number as possible."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Balance between to low and not low enough. People also have an irrational fear of 13."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"I assumed fewer people would go for unlucky 13. \"Fewer\" as in no-one else, hopefully."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Luck"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"27"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"It is my lucky number"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Favourite number"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"13 needs some love."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Intuitive"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"It's unlucky. Nobody else wants to pick it."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"I figured the lowest number will be lower than most anticipate, but the trolls will make sure 1-10 are off the board"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"13 seems low, and I think there might be a psychological barrier to picking an \"unlucky\" number."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"I computed the Nash equilibrium mixed strategy for this game, estimating 3000 players, and then took the first random number there. Surprisingly (to me at least), it looks irrational to play a number larger than 445 with 3000 players."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"Because it's prime, it's in the Fibonacci sequence, and Triskadecaphobes won't choose it."} {"your_number":"13","show_your_work":"It is unlucky. ;)"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Hopefully no one else picks it!"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Least obvious number after 7."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Pete Rose"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I figure most people will pick odd numbers."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"random"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Largely at random"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I figure all the numbers 1-12 will be chosen more than once and 13 is unlucky."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I started by trying to figure out the best number mathematically but then realized that everyone else can do that as well. So then I figured I'd just pick 1 because no one would pick 1. But then I realized that other people would do that as well and then I didn't want to mess with the chance that they wouldn't choose it because they knew other people knew that other other people wouldn't choose it because it's the lowest. Then I was like screw logic I'm picking 14. Also 110 isn't much loved so I was going to go with that, but then I thought someone in riddler nation might also have access to google so I was like screw it I'm going with 14."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"It's my birthday today"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"14"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"feelin good abt it"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I think all of the single digits will be chosen, plus \"lucky\" numbers 11 and 13. 10 is a decade or anniversary and 12 is a dozen, so they're associated with common things in people's heads. 14 is the first double digit, non-lucky, non-associated number."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I picked a number."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I think people will try to go for prime numbers because they look unique so I am going to try to miss that with 14"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"My jersey number for hockey - it has to be lucky one of these days!"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Single digits and primes- right out and single digits are obvious (even in the double-bluff way), and primes are the clever person's way to sneak in. I took the lowest multiple (excluding 12- a number so ubiquitous it may as well be a single digit)."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"it is the most overlooked of the teens"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Even numbers less popular than odd numbers, trying to sneak in with a low one"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I'm bold, but pragmatic."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"14 is lower than numbers higher than it, but also higher than numbers lower than it. That is very common for numbers."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Let's do some game theory"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Hoping 1-13 will all have duplicates"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Just a random number"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"*shrug*"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Seemed good"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"With apologies to the integer 14, 14 was the smallest positive integer that I found to be \"uninteresting.\" I was trying to find a balance between a number that would still be competitive, but would be hopefully overlooked by other players of the game."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"It seems like a nice numebr"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"why not"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I'm hoping people go high in order to try and win and people neglect the fact that that opens up the smaller numbers. Also 14 is my favorite number."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Nothing 1-10 is getting through. 11 and 13 are prime, and I think people are drawn to prime. 12 has too many stinking factors. 14 it is!"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"guesswork"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"first number above 13"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Have to pick a low-ish number to win. I figure all single digits will be chosen. So why not 14???"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I was winging it, though I think an even number is safer than an odd one."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Somebody will pick 1, hoping that nobody will pick a number that low. Others will pick their favorite numbers, which tend to be low. Who cares about 14?"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Just a guess."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Think most will go up to 13...lucky number for most."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"This is tougher without knowing how many submissions to expect. I went with 14 on a hunch no one else picked it based on perceived number popularity. I suspect the lower numbers will be taken if for no other reason that people decided they couldn't pass it up in the event that they may be the only one to pick it. The other number is almost chose is 32 because it is the first not birthday number in play. Not much math involved here..."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I'm ruling out single digit numbers for random passers by that are just hitting a random number. 11 and 13 are lucky numbers, 12 is a multiple of too many things. 10 is too round, I figured (a multiple of 5) - 1 was most likely to be ignored by people."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Most people will chose single digit or odd numbers"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Most people will chose single digit or odd numbers"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"1-10 are obviously out. 11and 13 are primes and will get picked. I would say 12 but I feel like someone will pick it. 14 is very boring."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"i've done this at work and usually the number is way lower than you'd think but i feel like way more people will send in numbers also someone will pick 13"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"It's not a prime number, and it isn't round, it doesn't have a lot of factors. It's just not an interesting number."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Because crowsmilk"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"high enough to be plausibly unpicked (someone will still pick 1, 2, etc. even with the game theory involved), and low enough to possibly be the lowest unique. Knowing the expected number of responses could make this more exact.."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"no one likes 14"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I suspect that the least chosen numbers are going to be the most unobtrusive numbers. Odd numbers, primes, and powers of 2 will probably be among the most commonly chosen, based on common results from asking people to pick numbers between 1 and 10. 14 is even, not a power of 2, and does not otherwise have commonly appreciated properties (like 10). This holds for 6 as well, but 6 is small enough that I'm guessing it's more likely to be chosen by others."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"People likely to pick 13 as it's an 'unlucky' number--thinking, othees won't pick it, and more likely to anchor to a lower number near zero. Therefore +1 is more likely."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Single digits will be taken. 10 and 13 are attractive numbers and will be taken. Others will think 11 and 12 are crazy enough it just may work. 14 is a forgotten number and will likely be overlooked"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"First order thinking is to go low. Second order thinking is to avoid those people by going high. I'm going third order by trying to avoid both the first and second order people. Also maximizing my odds by avoiding \"common\" numbers (e.g. 10, 12, 15)."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"13 seems too low. 15 is way too high."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"HA!"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"SWAG"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"It's small enough to be smallish, large enough that people don't immediately think of it, and is generally an underappreciated number that deserves more credit than it gets."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I really don't know. 14 feels boring, and I didn't think of it at first so it's probably an okish pick."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"it's my lucky number"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Odd number, near the start."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"It's the number I wear in sports"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Among the thousands that play, it's likely that at least 2 people have picked every single digit number. Prime numbers are too exciting. So I tried a low-ish but nondescript number that could easily be overlooked by everyone else."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I like it."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Favourite number"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"because"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"A simple guess to help the site get a good number of guesses and assess the probability density function of user guesses better."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Numbers one through ten will all be fairly heavily populated. Eleven is just two ones, too similar to the most obvious choice. Twelve is too nice a number, the product 2 x 2 x 3. Thirteen is an 'unlucky' number so people may have reservations about choosing thirteen. But, assuming anyone else follows my train of thought, they will choose 13, forcing me to choose 14."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Not too high, probably too low, but maybe I'll get lucky"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"It seemed like a number few people would pick!"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"It's low but not very interesting. It's not a prime but doesn't have a lot of factors. I thought it'd be a low number others would be less likely to try."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Lucky number"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"14 is an unassuming number."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"This puzzle is great, in that it makes all attempts at a logical solution self-defeating. I choose my number for no reason, on the grounds that if I have a reason, someone else will probably have the same idea, which makes it a bad idea!"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"If I decide on a number it means that it is a number a human would think of in response to the question, thus it is more likely that other people will decide on that number. So I generated a random number from 1-30. With a random number generator. It's entirely possible that the RNG told me a number a human would pick, but it's more likely to pick a number a human wouldn't pick than a human is to pick a number a human wouldn't pick. 1-30 seems to have enough numbers which stand out (For people to avoid picking because they think they'd be popular) and enough numbers which don't (For people to not pick because they don't think of them) that I'm predicting that there will either be an unclaimed number or the winner in that range."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Just looking for low but inconspicuous number."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Pure Guess"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"no one thinks of 14 bro"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"I figure there will be a team of people who aren't trying to win, but rather trying to prevent others from winning by submitting 1, 2, 3, etc. In trying to figure this out, I looked at Alex Bellos' work on the world's favorite number. Basically, every number from 1-10 is going to be wildly popular, since they are the most common, and they make up every other number. Submitting 1-10 would be highly risky. If it works, it would be because every other person was psyched out. After that, unique numbers like 11 and 12 (not called one-teen or tendy-two) will attract people to pick them, as will 13, a highly polarizing number). Therefore, I'm picking 14, in hopes that it will be ignored by everyone else. I think that people will try to be cheeky and guess numbers 1-13, and then try to submit some other numbers in the low 20s, but hopefully 14 bests them all."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"Here goes nothing."} {"your_number":"14","show_your_work":"First number that I didn't think would be an obvious choice"} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"Nobody likes 15."} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"I looked for the smallest number not on this list: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-popular-numbers-grapes-of-math/"} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"The one digit numbers will probably all be taken, and those who choose a 2-digit number will try to be sneaky and choose a non-obvious number. 15 might get overlooked."} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"Aiming low and kinda round because I think others won't do that."} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"I chose a low number on the assumption that everyone will think the low numbers will be in high demand and then choose higher numbers. Someone must choose the lower numbers. But I also assume the low-low numbers will be picked by other people with this mindset, so I'm hedging my bets with a slightly higher number. Also it's not a prime, because that seems too cliche :D"} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"I was torn between choosing this, and choosing 4. I presume tons of people will trollishly choose 1 and 2, and probably a couple of people will choose 3-10. 15 seems both common enough (not prime, not as popular as similar numbers 13, 16, or 18) and boring enough to make it through."} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"."} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"This is maybe the ultimate bluffing problem. In order to solve, we are required to pick exactly one of the countably infinite positive integers (not including zero, which is neither positive nor negative); and the winning requirements is to be the lowest UNIQUE positive integer.\n\nThis problem begs people to avoid choosing very small integers like 1, 2, and 3, for example. However, some people will likely call the bluff and choose these small integers anyway just in case. It is a matter of choosing a number which is small enough to win, but random enough that there is probable cause it could win.\n\nTherefore, I picked the number 15 because it is my favorite number. There is really no logic to be had beyond taking a good guess and hoping nobody else chooses it."} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"Just hoping"} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"Seemed about right"} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"A shot in the dark"} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"probably the majority of 538 readers, if i'm predicting right, will think \"well, i can't pick a single digit number, because everyone else will have picked it, so i have to do something like... 25, to avoid hitting anyone else's number.\"\n\nthe people you're competing against are other readers of fivethirtyeight - it's reasonable to assume that these are people who are at least a standard deviation smarter than the average bear. then, you divide that group further given that they had to click \"Pick a number, any number\" and decide to submit one with a form like this that asks for just a touch of effort. what's that group like? it'll include casual and regular/committed readers, probably a handful of data professionals or at least people who work with analytics and data professionally, and some of them will have some pretty good reasoning about the numbers they choose too. while a good deal of the rest of them are more like me - just sort of spectators who read a lot and aren't that dumb. a good deal of them are just here for the sports and politics and predictions, and decided to take a casual puzzle on because it sounded at least mildly interesting. some are just here to see if trump's approval rating has gone down meaningfully or some other politics related thing - there's a very small set, in other words, of people who came specifically for the riddler. and there's also probably a set of people who are relentlessly competitive, which is where i fit in.\n\nwhat kind of numbers do they all choose? the more casual readers, particularly the ones just here for glancing at the sports and politics, probably pick something in the 10s or 20s. it'll be the people feeling particullarly risky and brave or aware of their own biases who'll pick something the single digits. zero will be picked by a bunch of people who are slightly having a laugh, so that's out. a lot of people will submit \"one\" just for the sake of it\", so that's out. at least a couple of clever buggers will do 2, 3, etc... except this kind of runs into a more important question. you can identify these sub groups all you want, but how many people in total are actually applying? i just mentally think \"500\" maybe, but now, at this point, i really have no frame of reference. i can reason \"this is a smaller subset of general 538 readers and people who clicked that headline\", but i have no idea how many people that is in the first place. how many people see the 538 homepage every day? dunno. how many people out of that group click into the riddler? dunno. and without knowing that it's... harder to guess whether numbers like \"4,6,8\" etc are taken - you kind of just assume they are out of caution.\n\nso... with that direction a bit trickier to figure out, maybe, i think, it's better to think about what kind of numbers people will pick casually first, and then eliminate those - and i think what people will pick casually first, is their favourite numbers (which means, 7 is out). so i just google what people pick. what are the most common favourite numbers? at least that way i can get some more numbers definitely excluded. so i went to here https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-popular-numbers-grapes-of-math/\n\nand i didn't see 15 on this list. it feels risky, because it's a multiple of 5 and of 3 too, it feels like it'd stick out in people's minds. at the same time... some part of me thinks \"just go for it roxy\", so i did.\n\n"} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"I'm not sure of readership on this column, so I picked a random number 6-20."} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"Testing whether the site permits multiple guesses (and thus the problem could be 'solved' by brute force guessing n=n+1 on each successive guess)"} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"Math"} {"your_number":"15","show_your_work":"maybe that's way too low."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"Hopefully everyone else picks higher numbers hoping to avoid matches, so my low number will sneak through."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"No reason :)"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"A good feeling."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"Random number sub 20."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"Someone's gotta take it"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"It's non-prime, not too low, but fairly low."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"Seems like a good choice"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"It's small but not too small. I think it is a number that other people won't choose because they will think that other people will choose it. (Of course, if anyone else is thinking like me, then I'm in trouble.)"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"I feel like the sweet 16 doesn't get enough respect"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"I expect that readers of the column will in general think too much about ensuring a unique entry rather than going low and pick numbers that are too high, so I have gone relatively low. But not too low, since others will think like me on that front and go 1-10. I have also picked a number that does not \"feel\" particularly random, like 47, as people are likely to pick that in an attempt to be unique."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"When asked to pick a random number, there is a known preference for odd numbers, in particular 17. Many people will pick odd numbers, even more so because the question is seeded with consideration of 1. \n\nSixteen is even, and less than 17. 18 would be a good choice if there were two of me."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"Because I'm feeling it"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"Random choice!"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were but a measuring of ability; but this is not a contest among persons. The humblest citizen in all the land when clad in the armor of a righteous cause is stronger than all the whole hosts of error that they can bring. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity. When this debate is concluded, a motion will be made to lay upon the table the resolution offered in commendation of the administration and also the resolution in condemnation of the administration. I shall object to bringing this question down to a level of persons. The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies; but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest of principle.\n\nNever before in the history of this country has there been witnessed such a contest as that through which we have passed. Never before in the history of American politics has a great issue been fought out as this issue has been by the voters themselves.\n\nOn the 4th of March, 1895, a few Democrats, most of them members of Congress, issued an address to the Democrats of the nation asserting that the money question was the paramount issue of the hour; asserting also the right of a majority of the Democratic Party to control the position of the party on this paramount issue; concluding with the request that all believers in free coinage of silver in the Democratic Party should organize and take charge of and control the policy of the Democratic Party. Three months later, at Memphis, an organization was perfected, and the silver Democrats went forth openly and boldly and courageously proclaiming their belief and declaring that if successful they would crystallize in a platform the declaration which they had made; and then began the conflict with a zeal approaching the zeal which inspired the crusaders who followed Peter the Hermit. Our silver Democrats went forth from victory unto victory, until they are assembled now, not to discuss, not to debate, but to enter up the judgment rendered by the plain people of this country.\n\nBut in this contest, brother has been arrayed against brother, and father against son. The warmest ties of love and acquaintance and association have been disregarded. Old leaders have been cast aside when they refused to give expression to the sentiments of those whom they would lead, and new leaders have sprung up to give direction to this cause of freedom. Thus has the contest been waged, and we have assembled here under as binding and solemn instructions as were ever fastened upon the representatives of a people.\n\nWe do not come as individuals. Why, as individuals we might have been glad to compliment the gentleman from New York [Senator Hill], but we knew that the people for whom we speak would never be willing to put him in a position where he could thwart the will of the Democratic Party. I say it was not a question of persons; it was a question of principle; and it is not with gladness, my friends, that we find ourselves brought into conflict with those who are now arrayed on the other side. The gentleman who just preceded me [Governor Russell] spoke of the old state of Massachusetts. Let me assure him that not one person in all this convention entertains the least hostility to the people of the state of Massachusetts.\n\nBut we stand here representing people who are the equals before the law of the largest cities in the state of Massachusetts. When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your action. We say to you that you have made too limited in its application the definition of a businessman. The man who is employed for wages is as much a businessman as his employer. The attorney in a country town is as much a businessman as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant at the crossroads store is as much a businessman as the merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, begins in the spring and toils all summer, and by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of this country creates wealth, is as much a businessman as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain. The miners who go 1,000 feet into the earth or climb 2,000 feet upon the cliffs and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured in the channels of trade are as much businessmen as the few financial magnates who in a backroom corner the money of the world.\n\nWe come to speak for this broader class of businessmen. Ah. my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast; but those hardy pioneers who braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose—those pioneers away out there, rearing their children near to nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds—out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead—are as deserving of the consideration of this party as any people in this country.\n\nIt is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came.\n\nWe beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!\n\nThe gentleman from Wisconsin has said he fears a Robespierre. My friend, in this land of the free you need fear no tyrant who will spring up from among the people. What we need is an Andrew Jackson to stand as Jackson stood, against the encroachments of aggregated wealth.\n\nThey tell us that this platform was made to catch votes. We reply to them that changing conditions make new issues; that the principles upon which rest Democracy are as everlasting as the hills; but that they must be applied to new conditions as they arise. Conditions have arisen and we are attempting to meet those conditions. They tell us that the income tax ought not to be brought in here; that is not a new idea. They criticize us for our criticism of the Supreme Court of the United States. My friends, we have made no criticism. We have simply called attention to what you know. If you want criticisms, read the dissenting opinions of the Court. That will give you criticisms.\n\nThey say we passed an unconstitutional law. I deny it. The income tax was not unconstitutional when it was passed. It was not unconstitutional when it went before the Supreme Court for the first time. It did not become unconstitutional until one judge changed his mind; and we cannot be expected to know when a judge will change his mind.\n\nThe income tax is a just law. It simply intends to put the burdens of government justly upon the backs of the people. I am in favor of an income tax. When I find a man who is not willing to pay his share of the burden of the government which protects him, I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours.\n\nHe says that we are opposing the national bank currency. It is true. If you will read what Thomas Benton said, you will find that he said that in searching history he could find but one parallel to Andrew Jackson. That was Cicero, who destroyed the conspiracies of Cataline and saved Rome. He did for Rome what Jackson did when he destroyed the bank conspiracy and saved America.\n\nWe say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. We believe it. We believe it is a part of sovereignty and can no more with safety be delegated to private individuals than can the power to make penal statutes or levy laws for taxation.\n\nMr. Jefferson, who was once regarded as good Democratic authority, seems to have a different opinion from the gentleman who has addressed us on the part of the minority. Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business.\n\nThey complain about the plank which declares against the life tenure in office. They have tried to strain it to mean that which it does not mean. What we oppose in that plank is the life tenure that is being built up in Washington which establishes an office-holding class and excludes from participation in the benefits the humbler members of our society. . . .\n\nLet me call attention to two or three great things. The gentleman from New York says that he will propose an amendment providing that this change in our law shall not affect contracts which, according to the present laws, are made payable in gold. But if he means to say that we cannot change our monetary system without protecting those who have loaned money before the change was made, I want to ask him where, in law or in morals, he can find authority for not protecting the debtors when the act of 1873 was passed when he now insists that we must protect the creditor. He says he also wants to amend this platform so as to provide that if we fail to maintain the parity within a year that we will then suspend the coinage of silver. We reply that when we advocate a thing which we believe will be successful we are not compelled to raise a doubt as to our own sincerity by trying to show what we will do if we are wrong.\n\nI ask him, if he will apply his logic to us, why he does not apply it to himself. He says that he wants this country to try to secure an international agreement. Why doesn’t he tell us what he is going to do if they fail to secure an international agreement. There is more reason for him to do that than for us to expect to fail to maintain the parity. They have tried for thirty years—thirty years—to secure an international agreement, and those are waiting for it most patiently who don’t want it at all.\n\nNow, my friends, let me come to the great paramount issue. If they ask us here why it is we say more on the money question than we say upon the tariff question, I reply that if protection has slain its thousands the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. If they ask us why we did not embody all these things in our platform which we believe, we reply to them that when we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and that until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished.\n\nWhy is it that within three months such a change has come over the sentiments of the country? Three months ago, when it was confidently asserted that those who believed in the gold standard would frame our platforms and nominate our candidates, even the advocates of the gold standard did not think that we could elect a President; but they had good reasons for the suspicion, because there is scarcely a state here today asking for the gold standard that is not within the absolute control of the Republican Party.\n\nBut note the change. Mr. McKinley was nominated at St. Louis upon a platform that declared for the maintenance of the gold standard until it should be changed into bimetallism by an international agreement. Mr. McKinley was the most popular man among the Republicans ; and everybody three months ago in the Republican Party prophesied his election. How is it today? Why, that man who used to boast that he looked like Napoleon, that man shudders today when he thinks that he was nominated on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Not only that, but as he listens he can hear with ever increasing distinctness the sound of the waves as they beat upon the lonely shores of St. Helena.\n\nWhy this change? Ah, my friends. is not the change evident to anyone who will look at the matter? It is because no private character, however pure, no personal popularity, however great, can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people the man who will either declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon this people, or who is willing to surrender the right of self-government and place legislative control in the hands of foreign potentates and powers. . . .\n\nWe go forth confident that we shall win. Why? Because upon the paramount issue in this campaign there is not a spot of ground upon which the enemy will dare to challenge battle. Why, if they tell us that the gold standard is a good thing, we point to their platform and tell them that their platform pledges the party to get rid of a gold standard and substitute bimetallism. If the gold standard is a good thing, why try to get rid of it? If the gold standard, and I might call your attention to the fact that some of the very people who are in this convention today and who tell you that we ought to declare in favor of international bimetallism and thereby declare that the gold standard is wrong and that the principles of bimetallism are better—these very people four months ago were open and avowed advocates of the gold standard and telling us that we could not legislate two metals together even with all the world.\n\nI want to suggest this truth, that if the gold standard is a good thing we ought to declare in favor of its retention and not in favor of abandoning it; and if the gold standard is a bad thing, why should we wait until some other nations are willing to help us to let it go?\n\nHere is the line of battle. We care not upon which issue they force the fight. We are prepared to meet them on either issue or on both. If they tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization, we reply to them that this, the most enlightened of all nations of the earth, has never declared for a gold standard, and both the parties this year are declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization, why, my friends, should we not have it? So if they come to meet us on that, we can present the history of our nation. More than that, we can tell them this, that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance in which the common people of any land ever declared themselves in favor of a gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have.\n\nMr. Carlisle said in 1878 that this was a struggle between the idle holders of idle capital and the struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country; and my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight. Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses? That is the question that the party must answer first; and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic Party, as described by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses, who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party.\n\nThere are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.\n\nYou come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. I tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.\n\nMy friends, we shall declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth, and upon that issue we expect to carry every single state in the Union.\n\nI shall not slander the fair state of Massachusetts nor the state of New York by saying that when citizens are confronted with the proposition, “Is this nation able to attend to its own business?”—I will not slander either one by saying that the people of those states will declare our helpless impotency as a nation to attend to our own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but 3 million, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation upon earth. Shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to 70 million, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, it will never be the judgment of this people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good but we cannot have it till some nation helps us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we shall restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States have.\n\nIf they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"3 is apparently pretty common for people to pick, but I didn't want to go too high. So I generated a random number between 4 and 30 (inclusive)"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"Ugh. First I thought something in the 20s (22). Then my thinking was that was a good baseline for what others might think. So I halved it (11) to get to a lower number, which I'll call \"number two.\" Thinking some people might do that same step, I then halved the difference between the baseline and number two, and added that to number two, to get to 16."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"Testing to find out how quickly user fatigue will prevent continued guesses"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"The first non-trivial power of 4! Surely no one else would be so bold."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"It seems too obvious."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"Watching Bos, KC. End of the 3rd. R+H+E+LOB+Inning"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"People wanted an interesting sounding number or a prime number or something like 167 that feels unique. I predict they shy away from numbers with lots of divisors. Also people will be afraid a very low numbers."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"Cause it's a cool number."} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"This is one of those games where the optimal strategy is to pick 1"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"2*2*2*2"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"It has a sort of eBay-pouncing vibe to it, looking for the sweet spot between low numbers that many will choose and higher numbers that are rare enough to maybe be unique, but not so high that they fail to give the contest a real run for its \"money.\""} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"N/A"} {"your_number":"16","show_your_work":"Intuition"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"complete guess"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Kind of a random one, right?"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Lucky number. High enough that it stands a chance of being unique"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Shot in the dark."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Something makes me think people are less likely to chose a prime number"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"--"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"My best guess as to the lowest number no one else would pick"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I like prime numbers"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"just picked a number\n"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Chose a number people dont really think about much"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Relatively small, positive, and prime number. Figured it would be thought of relatively less than other integers between 0 and 20."} {"your_number":"17"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"nobody likes the number 17"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"because 18 is to high"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Don't know"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"1. 7."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"dumb luck"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Intuition."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Completely wild guess to be honest"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Seems logical"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Everyone is going to go for 13."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"17"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Nice low prime number, just a guess though"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I wanted a reasonably low number, but higher than most people, but also lower than other people using the same strategy who might put something in the 20s"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Good a guess as any."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"If I knew the number of expected submissions, this would be a better guess. I assume around 50% or so (+- 20%) people will choose 1, and then 50% (+- 20%) of the remaining or so will chose 2, and so on. \nwith maybe, idk, 100,000 submissions, log base 2 (100,000) = 16.6 ish.\n\nThat seems way too low but wahtever."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"16+1=17"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I think the number will be between 17-100."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Hoping to get lucky?"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"It was my jersey number"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I hesitated, since it has a 3 in it. But I feel like it's not anyone's favorite number (nor least favorite, like 13), isn't a multiple of anyone's favorite number, and is still pretty low. Almost went with 23-but then remembered Michael Jordan."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Just had to pick a positive integer"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I did not want to choose any number 1-10, so I randomly chose a number in the next bracket."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"It was either 17 or 31"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"It's prime right"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Pure guess"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Just a guess no real logic behind it"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Seems like a pretty low prime number that might not get picked ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I guessed!"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Just a hunch"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Fermat prime!"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"cuz"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"who thinks of 17?"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Very low numbers will be said a lot so I don't want to pick those and 17 is my favorite number."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"It's my favorite"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I enjoy the number"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I feel lucky"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I love reading five-thirty-eight and am baffled that most people I mention articles to have never heard of it. I warrant even fewer participate in these. 17 felt high enough to not be used more than once, but low enough to win! That's all."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Wild guess."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Prime"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I assumed a Pareto distribution with mean 20 (and min value 1) for the responses, and determined that the value such that there was a 95% of numbers being less than that was 17, under the assumption that this was the range in which most numbers would be replicated by participants."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Blind guess"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"17!"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":":)"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Several will pick 1 because they think no one else will due to being too obvious. Perfect squares and their roots are also out because they are common answers to these types of question. So 1,2,3,4,9,16 are out. Numbers over 50 and below 100 will be guessed randomly. I pick 17."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Guessed."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":":)"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Wetware fuzzy logic"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Logically, I believe that all numbers up to approximately 16 will be chosen, but that the majority of guesses will be above approximately 30 (as a result of these people factoring in the number of submissions). Also, 17 is a prime number so..."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Smallest integer I thought had a chance of being unique."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Randomly, or did I?!"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Doesn't seem like a number anyone else would take."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"It's a good number that is not to close to 1."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I have a good feeling about 17."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"It's my fav positive integer"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"The yellow pigs told me to pick it."} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Prime numbers are not generally chosen"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"relatively low prime number"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"17","show_your_work":"I assumed most people would choose a number under 15, so I chose 17 in case someone else chose 16."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"People have a natural preference towards round numbers, but riddlers have a natural preference towards interesting numbers (primes, squares, etc.). This is the lowest uninteresting number I can think of."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Seems like a good one"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"It's low... but not too low. ;-)"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Seems like a nice number."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Random Guess!"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"High enough to avoid the trolls but low enough to win."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"just a guess"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"17 is prime, so I thought some might choose that. Otherwise, just random - I'm probably too low."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Pure guess"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Pure Guess"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"wild guess"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Birthday, why not"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"No reason"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Beats me. I just picked a number."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"No good reason whatsoever."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"I had a college professor obsessed with the number 17. I figure everything below 17 is likely to be taken. Some other student of David Kelly is going to pick 17. So, 18 it is."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"???"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"With no knowledge of what everyone else will submit I assume the distribution will have a low population in the single digits and teens, then rising up across the rest of the double digits, and dropping down again for the triples.\n\nBasically the gambit is that some people will guess the single digits trying to sneak in hoping no one else chooses them since they're obvious. My hope is that enough will pick them that they'll get doubled up, but that not enough will do that in the teens, and I'll sneak through."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Who the heck is going to say 18"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"There is no point choosing a single digit number. But there will be people who either don't know this or they think everybody would know this and use it as winning strategy. What you want is a number that is low enough to have a chance to be unique but heigh enough that nobody else uses it. 18 might be that number."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"it's the number i feel like fits in the worst in the 1-20 range"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Not too high, not too low."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"July 18 is my birthday"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Seemed about right"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"I'm making a contrarian guess. I think that most will guess a somewhat high, odd number. I am guessing relatively low and even, though a somewhat oddball one."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"I think many people will over think this puzzle and choose solutions that are too high or too low"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Is a complete crap-shoot. Seemed about right."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"This one is a guess."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Favorite number"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Small, but not too small, also not a \"human-random\" number"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"It was my soccer jersey number."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"No logic, or math here. Just a random guess."} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"It is"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"giving it a shot"} {"your_number":"18","show_your_work":"Just because"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"no 3s or 7s (most used random numbers). Not too high, but not too low"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"My birthday is on the 19th:)"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Really?"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Psychic powers"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Just because"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"I'm partial to 19"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"I just like 19"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Decided to go with a number low enough that it might win, but high enough that it has a low(er) chance of being duplicated. It may not be enough, but it's worth a shot."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"it seemed like a good number"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"My jersey number in hockey."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Really hoping no one chooses this number."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Lucky guess!"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Not much thought - just picked a prime number which perhaps aren't as popular in coming to others' minds."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"19 is the lowest number that cannot be the score of a hand in cribbage."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Low number which does not match the jersey number of a famous athlete."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"low but unique"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"I am obviously going to lose. But here's what I would do, I would program a robot to submit duplicate entries in ascending order (ie 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,... ) until 5 seconds before your poll closed (at which point I would have gotten to n,n). And then my last submission would be n+1 and hopefully n+1 wins. I lose if some guy's robot got further along than me."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number and it's semi unusual for people to pick"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Assuming a high number of responses, then there should be enough variation in people's logic to cover the single digits. Then it's a matter of choosing a low number that didn't occur to anyone else. 19 seems likely to be ignored as being the highest in the teens."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Low, but not too low. I like primes."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Look, someone's got to pick a bit lower."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Random Man"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"It felt right"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"It is the 8th prime number and I thought that in terms of uniqueness and an assumed large-type of sample size of participants that this would put me out far enough from the low number cluster of the sample, but still close enough to the \"lowest\" positive integer."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Idk"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Who can say really"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"1-10= too easy, 11= specious choice 12= too many Tom Brady fans, 13= unlucky, 14= maybe, but still too low. 15= avoid multiples of 5 at all costs 16= too common in everyday culture, 17= plausible, but false, 18= (see #12, but for manning), 19=juuuuuuust right"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Hopefully a forgotten number."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Just guessed one of the lowest \"high\" numbers that others maybe wouldn't think"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number and I know no one else will pick it"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"I guessed that all single digit integers will already be chosen, and 19 feels obscure enough out of the 10-20 range that it might get passed over."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"My intuition suggests that a gamma distribution is a good match for the distribution of guesses. I will assume that on average at least one person other than me will choose x=1. So I will take a distribution with scale parameter 1 (for simplicity) and shape parameter chosen so the Prob(x<=1.5) ~1/1000, where 1000 is my rough estimate for number of other people playing. This shape value is roughly 6.95. I want to choose the first x* such that Prob(x<= x*) ~1/2000, so there is a large probability I will be the only person to take it. This corresponds to x*=19."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"my favorite number :-)"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Lots of people don't seem to pick primes when picking \"random\" numbers. However, with as many people as read this blog, people are bound to pick the first several lowest spots. I was debating between 17, 19, and 37, so I went with the middle one"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Not too big. Not too small."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"While still very low I think 19 is an \"odd\" number that will be overlooked."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Just a stab in the dark, also my lucky number."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Because I feel like other people will pick most of the numbers before 19"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Sounded Nice"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Just a guess...I know people generally avoid guessing numbers with \"1\" in them (ex: the frequency of the number 1 in forged documents is lower than it is in legitimate documents). I wanted to choose a single digit number but I am sure many other brave souls already have. Also, I love 538 but I don't think thousands of people pay attention to the riddle page, so I am sure that the lowest unique integer is not only going to be below 100 but it will also be a neglected number on the lower end. Hence, 19."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"It seems like a number people will forget about choosing."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"I have scientific basis but I feel like the respondents will form into two camps: those who don't worry about duplicating and submit a very low number (<10) because they think everyone else will fall into the second camp - those too worried about duplicating so they choose a rather high number (>50). 19 is a prime number on the low end of the 10-50 range. People don't like prime numbers, right? I was going to choose 17 but I feel like that number is on people's mind more than usual because it's shorthand for the current year."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"18 seemed to low, 20 seemed to high..."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Did not want one too low as more people would take it try to find one maybe no one else would take."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Not too low. A favorite number"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Steve Yzerman"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"I went from 31 to 36 to 18, before going up to 19, which I feel is kinda overlooked because it's prime and falls between 18 (USA adulthood age) and 20 (no longer being a teenager)."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Dumb Luck"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Because no one ever chooses 19. Except me, this one time."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Everyone will submit 1 or 2 or 3. Some people will go higher, but pick favorite numbers (7, 10, 12, 15, 17). It's just luck, but I think 19 might be unique."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Nobody thinks of nineteen"} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"I like primes."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"Just low enough that it could win, just high enough that nobody is going to pick it."} {"your_number":"19","show_your_work":"I guessed!"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"I think most people's strategy will be \"pick a random number that's pretty low\". To be unique you have to avoid numbers selected by that strategy. I know that human beings tend to pick random numbers poorly: avoiding even numbers and multiples of 5 since they seem less random. I want a low number that's the opposite of that."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"To win."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Obviously can't go too low. Lots of people will pick primes and other odds as they \"feel\" less obvious. Hopefully people will think that 20 is too obvious."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"No real reason. Maybe people don't like numbers divisible by 10 because they're too obvious."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"I thought people will be likely to pick single digits and avoid round numbers because of the natural tendency to want to pick round numbers."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"It's a guess. Might be a better estimate if I knew how many people were participating."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Suckers!"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"with a couple 1000 entries, the winning # won't be too high. banking on others picking prime #s or otherwise oddball values and overlooking a simple #."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Choice of least chosen lotto numbers"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"I'm guessing that many people will pick odd numbers thinking that they are random. 20 is a nice, low, even number. I'm sure others may also attempt this trick also, but it's worth a shot."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Gut feeling! :)"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"I have to figure a lot of readers of this column are going to game theory their way to the really low numbers, so I want to stay low while avoiding that scrum."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"I figure people will try to be unique by choosing unusual numbers, so I'm picking a normal one. 10 seems probably too low. Not sure how may people will submit to this."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Feeling that people will stay away from 'round' numbers in favor of 'unique' numbers (like primes)."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"It is a round number, not too low, which perhaps people will steer away from in favor of a seemingly more uncommon number."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"When asked to pick random numbers, people shy away from the big 0-ending numbers, so I think all the multiples of 10 are less likely to be picked. My guess it that someone at least will try 10 and all other numbers under 20, but I think there's an outside shot 20 will get dodged because it's not \"random\" enough. We'll see!"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"I'm guessing that most people will assume that too small a number will be picked by other people, and that other people will second-guess that decision and pick the smallest numbers under the assumption that no one else would try that. A \"weird\" number like 23 will probably be picked by those who are trying to be unique, so I'll pick a nice round number that everyone else (hopefully) will assume other people would have already picked. \n\nI wouldn't be terribly surprised if a really small number wins, like 4."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Statistically unlikely number to be picked by humans."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"*shrug*"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"I love exercises like this -- there's a whole quiz worth of questions like this at http://alpacafarmtrivia.herokuapp.com/quizzes/2497 (you might have to join first, but it's free)."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"When people choose random numbers, they tend to ignore numbers that end in zero. But someone might be thinking the way I am, making them choose 10, so I chose 20."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"All the single-digit numbers should be thoroughly covered up. The winner's going to have to get a little lucky. I expect there will be several hundred submissions overall. I'm banking on people taking uncommon numbers rather than nice, round ones."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"20 is typically the least chosen number if a group of humans is asked to pick a random integer between 1 and 20, which seems like a somewhat related problem."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"20 is a very unassuming number. Low enough to win and enough factors to not be chosen."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"The solution (if there is any) must be strongly dependent on the number of submitters which is unknown to me. So I think this is a very luck dependent strategy, going too low won't win (well, except everyone else thinks so too), going too high won't win either obviously. So I tried to go for a middle ground."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Lol"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Who would pick 20?"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"I selected a number that is higher than the simple one-digit range because many people will likely select those. I selected 20 because I decided that most people who thought up to this level would pick a number that seemed \"random\" and would pick an odd or a prime or something, so I picked 20 as it is a very boring number. I doubt this wins."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"guessing that lots of people will pick a low number hoping no one else does, so picking one slightly higher to avoid the crush. 34 is a pretty boring number so maybe doesn't get picked (not prime, not a significant age, not a birthday, not a square, etc.)"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"When you don't know how many participants there will be, it is difficult! I think enough people will say really low numbers. I think a lot will try higher numbers. I am trying something low but not too low."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"It's just a guess."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Without knowing the size of the set of people contributing, I'm assuming it's pretty large, and therefore I'm choosing a round number that is so clean that nobody in their right mind would choose it. I'm banking on the riddler meta being that people will choose janky prime unclean numbers. Also ten is just too too easy."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Think people will submit 1-10. People trying hard to figure low, \"unique\"-looking numbers will go 11-19, 21-29. Think round number is less likely to be picked."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Just intuition :)"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"I wanted to pick something small but not too small that didn't look human random."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"1-10 is too obvious, 11-19 are often people's favorite numbers, numbers ending in 5's or 0's are statistically less often chosen"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Just taking a shot at a low number."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"I think people will try hard to select \"uncommon\" number. 20 is pretty common."} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Its the best number"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"Maybe people won't pick a round even number"} {"your_number":"20","show_your_work":"no one ever picks 20"} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"Felt like a good number. I have no data to go by, it is a pure guess. I assume that most people will avoid low numbers and instead place themselves a bit higher up. At the same time some people have modified their strategy to account for that by choosing lower numbers that the previous category think will all be taken. My strategy is to place myself in the lower end of the middle of these two groups, but where that middle is I can only guess."} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"I assume that single digit numbers, numbers in the teens, and round numbers (10, 20, 30, etc) will be fairly common, and this is the first number that isn't any of these."} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"uh I forget why it is 21, but basically to assume other people are also ssmart"} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"It's somewhere in the popularity range between \"no someone definitely picked that\" and \"maybe no one thought of this one so I'll pick it.\" Here's hoping it just got overlooked."} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"why not?"} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"1-10 are gonna get tried, 11-20 are probably gonna be filled with people too clever to pick 1-10, so i'm too clever for those. So 21! Hot damn! Look how Smart i as! SMRT!"} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"Go small or go home - and this is a number which is neither interesting nor boring"} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"I like the number"} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"It seemed like a good number."} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"Because it's Peter Forsberg's number, and Peter Forsberg was a badass. No, I know I'm not going to win. I just wanted that states for the record."} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"Sean Taylor #RIP21"} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"Guessed"} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"It's been a lucky number for me. I also opted away from prime or even numbers as I felt these would be obvious selections."} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"Picked randomly"} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"Assuming a lot of people will pick numbers 1-20."} {"your_number":"21","show_your_work":"gut feeling"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"This is a guessing game, so I am predicting a number people will avoid because it is high enough to not be done as a 'what the heck' and low enough to win. There are psychological reasons for the first 21 numbers to be tried. Will anyone else have the 'guts' to try a palindrome number?"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"asdf"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Low enough to be close to zero without getting to close to everyone else's guess."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Single digits seems ukulele to work, and 22 is low, but not as likely to be chosen. Kinda a random guess"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I'm turning 22 next week.. why not?"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Why not"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I hit the 2 and then the 2 again."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"22"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"It's lucky"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"22 is my favorite number"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"It's low enough where it might be unique, and 21 and 23 seem more popular."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Lucky number"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"hoping that this number is too high... its been my number of choice for years."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Random Guessing"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Not too big, not too small!"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I slammed my head into the wall as many times as I could. That was 22 times..."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Total guess"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Instinct."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"???"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Seems reasonably low, most people will probably choose pretty low numbers but you never know which one might fall through the cracks!"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"It felt right. Hard to guess because I have no idea how many people will enter"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I assume most numbers between 0 and 20 would be chosen at some point. I also assume that most people have the intuition to avoid even numbers when choosing numbers randomly, so I chose the even number above the range of obvious number choices"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Few others would choose such a non-random looking number, surely?"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of FiveThirtyEight readers: are they the sort of people who would select low numbers, with the hope that no other has selected the same integer? Now, a clever man would select a number greater than 50, because he would know that only a great fool would assume the lower numbers would be left untouched. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose a number less than 50. But, you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose a number greater than 50. \n\nAm I finished? Not remotely. Because Mr. Krishnan could have recently visited Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me to resist choosing a low number, so I can clearly not choose a number greater than 50.\n\nBut you must have suspected I would have guessed the submission's origin, so I can clearly not choose a number less than 50. \n\nTherefore, I choooooose....58. \n\nWhat's that you say? I'm wrong? You only think I guessed wrong! That's what's so funny! I switched numbers when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is \"never get involved in a land war in Asia\" - but only slightly less well-known is this: \"Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line\"! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha... \n"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I'm guessing most people will choose primes. I have to assume all the numbers 1-5 will be taken (by people messing with the system if nothing else) and someone will take 6-20. So 22 is the first acceptable number after that."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"No"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"lol"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"No real logic here. I wanted to go high enough to be unique while trying to stay pretty low."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I'm unsure of the number of people who submit answers to the Riddler, but it's likely to be in the thousands. Most people will assume they'll need to enter a number between, let's say 70 and 200, so I'm pretty sure one of those smaller numbers will slip through the cracks.\n\nFrom another perspective, people will instinctively try to pick odd and prime numbers to try and \"stand out\", but that biases against even numbers and multiples of 5. So here we go!"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I needed a number that was low enough to beat out my opponents, but also one that everyone overlooked. I figure 1-20 will go pretty quickly, but as soon as the numbers got into the twenties it all comes down to picking a number that other people wouldn't. 22 is just \"popular\" enough that people will be scared from picking it, but just low enough that it gets the job done."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Most people when asked for a number will not choose one with repeating digits. Of course, everyone is trying for the lowest number that no-one else has picked. Save for 11, the lowest number with two digits the same is 22, and people trat the numbers through the teens differently - as if they were individual, not place notation."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"My wife, who hates math, told me it was the first number that popped into her head after I explained why 1 was probably not the best answer."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"When asked to choose a random number, most people choose prime numbers or numbers that have individual digits far removed from each other. 22 has a repeat and seems like a boring normal number, while being high enough to dodge what I'm sure is a cluster in the single digits and teens. It seems like thinking too hard about this almost makes one more likely to lose."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"It's not a very special number, and it's low enough to win but not low enough to be submitted by other entrants!"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Neither to high to not be lowest or to low to not be unique and not a number I expect most people to pick. A complete guess"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I figured that people would gravitate towards low numbers and prime numbers. And a few hundred (or maybe a couple thousand) people would participate. So I tried to think of a nondescript, non-prime number low enough where I had a chance of winning, but not so low that someone else with a similar thought process would also grab it."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Figures bunch of people will say other stuff below this"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Seems about right."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Based on the poll here: http://web.mit.edu/thinkBIG/challenge/popular.htm\nThis is the first number to not show up on the left. I hope no one else thought to do this."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"This will be some kind of Pareto distribution. I wanted to be just outside my guess for the median guess but low enough to still win. I figure people will avoid numbers with obvious patterns."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"It's just a guess"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"1-20 Are too common. 23 is prime and likely to be chosen. 21 is blackjack."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I felt people would look too far out and miss an early number like this."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Picking an even number because I feel people will choose odd numbers thinking they will be less popular. 22 because it seems just high enough it may go unnoticed."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"MJ-1"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Semi-but-seemingly-not-random low-ish number"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"1-10 is too obvious. 11-21 is too obvious. 22 is a rare number to chose."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"wil guess"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I started counting up until I hit a number I thought not many people would take..."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Mindgaming the f out of everybody"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Because 22 is the loneliest number, not 1"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I assume everyone will overestimate"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"Just because"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"I'm feeling twenty-twoooo"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"It's my age"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"No work needed. Pure guess."} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"My favourite number"} {"your_number":"22","show_your_work":"This weeks question doesn't really have a 'why'. Why not?"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Not too big, not too small. It's an ugly prime number if you ask me."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Random guess!"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"First thing that came to my mind."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Seams obscurely low enough"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"I feel like it is the lowest unique number anyone will pick"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"meh"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"No one likes 23, its such a clunky number, no one else will pick it"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"My lucky number"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"I went to random.org and found a number I liked after randomly generating 10 integers."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Random Guess"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Low, but not so low that others may pick it. Really don't have much logic here; if I knew how many people typically visit this forum, I may have more a more intelligent guess."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Prime and high enough so that maybe others won't guess it?"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Above teens, but a prime number"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Nobody likes you when you're 23"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Pure guess!"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Nobody likes you when you're 23!"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"It seems like a number that others would forget about."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"The Illuminati will it so.... (I'm just guessing)"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"-"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Wanted a low number, but not too low, as most may be taken. 23 jumped out (from 23 enigma)."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"I assumed that all the single digits were taken, then similarly assumed that the tens would be popular by anyone making the first assumption, then thought some people would be willing to take 21, and less people 22, and decided that 5th-level winging it was sufficient for a game (probably not)."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Jordan"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"I chose this number because it is a low prime number"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"I like this number"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Prime number, my birthday, low but not too low that others will pick it."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"In competitions like this I think (without any proof) that there usually will be a surprisingly low number that wins. Obvious or \"rounded\" numbers never win (1, 10, 50), neither do numbers that have a well known connections to something (13 for bad luck, 7 for luck or 69 for...well..., not to mention all baseball and football players and whatever numbers you North Americans give them). 23 seems like an anonymous enough number. Hopefully no-one remembers Michael Jordan. ;)"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"From past 'social experiment' type Riddlers I know that >1000 people answer these. 23, a little-loved prime, seems high enough that I have a chance at being unique while still being low enough that it'll undercut some other attempts."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"None"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"-"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"It's fairly low, and it's an unpopular prime."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"A lot of people will pick numbers quite low, looking to outsmart the question and other people. Therefore, I picked a prime number outside of 21. I don't know why but I think less people will choose prime numbers. Who knows?"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"My lucky number."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"I figured there would be a bunch of opportunistic aims at the single digits. So i went for what seems an obscure yet low double digit."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"My birthday"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Hail Eris!"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Lucky number!"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"It's prime"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Picking the lowest obscure number I can find. No one really thinks of 23 as a number."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Purely a guess. Not many associations with 23, seemed reasonably low."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"aa\n"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Honestly, with no reasonable estimate of how many people are doing this, just guessed"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"It's prime and it's odd (people tend to like even numbers and multiples of 5, so I avoided both of those). It is also the number of my two favorite NBA players (LeBron and Anthony Davis)."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"23"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Kinda high but not too high and also prime"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Why not? Nice smallish prime number. My favorite number, actually."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"It was the first number that popped into my head."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Random number generator"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"seems reasonable"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"Just a intuitive guess"} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"It's small-ish a prime."} {"your_number":"23","show_your_work":"It satisfies the Law of Fives"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"It feels right"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"*shrug*"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"Picked a low number."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"Prime numbers, single digits and numbers ending in 0 or 5 are probably going to be popular. 24 seems like a low enough overlooked number."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"Random Number Generator between 1 and 200."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"Most people would go for uncommon numbers, like weird primes (19? 31?) or others that don't come up much. I figured I'd pick a relatively common number that people might avoid for being too \"obvious,\" which still wasn't too low."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"Feel like it's high enough things will have started to spread out a little"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"It's a nice number."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"More defense than offense here. I expect the actual answer to be in the low hundreds."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"I've heard that when people think of a unique number, odd numbers often occur to them. The first 2 numbers that popped into my head were 37 and 317. I decided to work against type and chose a number that seemed easy, thinking others would avoid it."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"Nobody picks composite numbers"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"I feel like the number is going to be lower than everyone expects"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"1 is going to be trolled. I expect prime numbers to be heavily submitted. So a prime plus 1 doesn't seem too daft."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"¿Porqué no?"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"I feel people will be more inclined to choose a single digit number and numbers between 10-19. For those having the same reasoning, I picked 24 to be a bit safe in case they decided with 20's."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"This number is so mundane it has to work"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"It's not prime, so less likely to be chosen. I am assuming that about between 1000 and 10000 are entered, so most lower numbers will be chosen. Apart from that, not much thought has gone into it"} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"Should look Zipfian and I I'm guessing that this the point at which it will bottom out. I avoided 23 because it think others will be drawn to its random-ish sound."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"I think there will be enough entries that all the small numbers will get picked, and people will be more likely to pick more \"random-seeming\" numbers like 17 and 23."} {"your_number":"24","show_your_work":"Dunno, seems about as good as any. I feel like people tend not to pick numbers with lots of factors? I have zero data to back that claim up."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"I don't know how many people will submit entries, but it seems plausible that the winning entry should be under 100 -- unless this contest is a lot more popular than I expect. The numbers 1 through 5 seem particularly ambitious. So I picked a randomly generated number between 6 and 45."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"I decided 1-10 are off limits, over 50 is unlikely to be good enough with only 1000 responses, assuming this draws similar interest to other puzzles. I couldn't. I am hoping people will steer clear of round numbers, so I'll try 25."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"It is so dumb that no one would choose it. Trolls will choose all of the single digit numbers. Numbers that think they are fancy, like 17, will be chosen by prime number snobs. The primes are terrible. I estimate the number of participants in this competition at 1200. I have sent prayers to all of the major gods requesting that I win this so that I am entitled to the substantial cash prize that comes with it."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"it's the winning number"} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"My instinct was to pick an odd-ball number (not ending in 5 or 0, maybe something prime, random). Since I thought others might have that instinct, I fought it and picked a not-so-odd number that was sufficiently high (because I assumed there wouldd be a preference to go too low)."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"Random walk"} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"Painfully obvious number should scare people off that's not too low to trigger too much greed"} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"Low-ish, single digit numbers should all be take. Some people may figure out how to submit multiple numbers so if they do, I figure they at least do 1-20. 25 seems like an obvious \"round, non-unique\" type number, so this is my shot at it falling through the cracks."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"just a guess based on maybe 200 submissions and pick a round number because people might avoid them"} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"Best guess"} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"Not too low; I'm thinking people will choose primes, so I want to pick a more common number."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"I hope this reasonably high enough so as to be unique, but low enough to win the challenge."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"It's obvious, so no one will pick it."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"Why not"} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"Fav"} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"AA"} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"n/a"} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"People will gravitate towards weird primes and numbers they think are unlikely. No one would be so foolish to pick the very square 25."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"Am sure some speculators will choose numbers ≤ 10. Picked a 'boring' number above 10."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"I decided sneaking in a very number was unlikely to work, so picked a nice round number that I hope will scare others away."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"small-ish, round number"} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"Went for something \"obvious\""} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"I think people will either submit very low numbers and hope to get lucky, or slightly higher non-round numbers to try to be unique. I hope 25 is large enough to avoid the first group and round enough to avoid the second."} {"your_number":"25","show_your_work":"Not too small, and not too “unusual.” I think people might expect primes to be somehow less likely to be chosen."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"-"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"26"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"I'm assuming something like ~1,000 answers. That's a lot, but low enough that I feel like the eventual winner will have just gotten lucky picking a double digit number. The number can't be notable like 7 or 13, and primes and doubles (11, 22, etc) seem risky as well. I think 26 hits the sweet spot. It's a fairly ho-hum number-not round, not prime, and not divisible by too many numbers below it."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"I just tried to pick a number that didn't seem \"popular\" (i.e., 7) or too rare (i.e., 13) and which was small but not too small."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"26 is the only integer that is one greater than a square (52 + 1) and one less than a cube (33 − 1). In base ten, 26 is the smallest number that is not a palindrome to have a square (262 = 676) that is a palindrome.\n\n...Yeah, I just picked a relatively bland smallish number."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"I'm taking a chance."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Figured all numbers in single digits and teens would be taken, but things might thin out in the 20's. 26 is boring because it's in the middle of the pack, not prime, and not a number that is used a ton in society. It just felt right."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Didn't want to go too low, randomly picked a number"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"No work needed"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"20 + 6"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"I chose 26 because it seems boring. \"Smart\" people will try to choose unique/interesting numbers, such as primes, while \"not so smart\" people will pick round numbers and square numbers and that sort of thing. 26 is neither interesting nor round. It's just boring. And relatively low, too."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"I guessed randomly. 26 seems nonchalant and with ~1000 responses, I won't win statistically no matter what."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"This is a guess haha"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Some people will pick high. Some people will know that, so will take a chance and pick low. A low-medium pick seems best."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Not too high and not too low"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"I avoided prime numbers, squares, multiples of 10, and popular numbers in culture/sports. 26 seems like a pretty mundane number"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"My first instinct was 27, low but not too low. And prime. But then I realized the Riddler nation probably tends to go prime, so I reduced it by 1 to 26."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"I wanted a medium sized number that is visually unappealing and relatively boring so that others who put down the first number that comes to mind have a lower chance of choosing it"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"It's the date of my birthday. I'm a simple man."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"The old hoping to get lucky strategy"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Logic leads toward a conclusion that a pool of choices will concentrate toward lower digits, thereby leaving 1 as both the lowest possible number and the most likely chosen one. The obviousness of this conclusion, however, suggests that this simplest of answers, 1, will go chosen far less by those with any intellectual savvy about them. That this, too, is overtly apparent, will likely draw multiple contrarians along with the village idiot or two to selecting this answer, 1. This leaves 2 as the second greatest and second worst answer, for the same reasons, and 3 as the third, etc. \"I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you, ...and can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.\" The correct answer will have two digits, be greater than 20, will not be a prime number, as those are, by nature, perceived to be unique, and will not be particularly associated with victory (23, 42) or puerile humor. The second lowest (to be safe) number remaining after all eliminations is 26."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"13*2"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"50-24=26"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"It's a bit of an unnoticeable number, neither prime, square or palindrome. Low amount of factors."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"No one chooses 26"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"I guessed"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Can't be too small, can't be too big. Something like 1000 people seem to respond to the crowd-sourced riddlers, and this one is so easy I imagine responses will be at least that high... and this feels like it might be big enough to be unique. Also it isn't a number like a prime or like 42 (see my email address) that has nerd-favorable qualities that attract extra attention."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"I'm turning 26 on Monday. It sounds lucky."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Seems like it could fall in a slot between the obvious low numbers and submission of higher numbers under the assumption that low numbers would be taken"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Wild guess"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Many people will likely select unique, or lucky numbers such as 7, 11, and 13. Others will select numbers just less than a unique number (such as 6, 10, or 12). Multiples of 5 or multiples of a dozen seem too common. There are 8 oz. in a common drinking glass, 16 oz. in a pint, and 32 oz. in a quart; so they seem like overused numbers (along with their multiples, such as 4, 12, 20, etc.). The number 26 is not used for any common measurements."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"It just felt right."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"It's the smallest number that I wouldn't tend to pick. I assume someone will submit at least 1 to 1000, and I really have no idea how to pick a number for this, so I just want to submit this before I spend too much time thinking about it."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"First number >10 that came to mind."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"I just want to mess up the other guy that picked 26"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Takin' a chance."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Just a guess."} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"<20 is too low, 26 is about right (and not prime or square)"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"26","show_your_work":"just a guess"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"Much like many players in this game, I'm just trying to find the balance between low numbers and second-guessing other players."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"Didn't want to go too low, otherwise random."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"It's obvious, isn't it? 27!"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"20+7"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"I assume that a lot of people will pick large numbers but the winner will likely be a relatively low number that somehow doesn't get chosen by others. I figure that 27 is relatively low and does not have the distinction of being a prime number or having other particularly momentous age-related milestones associated with it."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"I tried the math. I failed the math. I went with intuition."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"27 is my go-to number"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"First number I thought of after 1."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"Lucky Number"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"pourquoi pas?"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"Looked about right :)"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"Why 27? Why not?"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"I thought about 7 first, but figured everything below 20 would be guessed by someone. 27 seemed far enough away to have a chance."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"God only knows. Maybe I'll get lucky?"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"It's prime, not terribly popular, and the most famous athlete with that number was a pitcher back in the 60's."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"When I was a kid, I had an obsession with the numbers 2 and 7, since I observed that people would write these two numbers in different ways."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"Intuition"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"Must be on the lower end, but it can't be too low because most people will pick on the lower end so if will get congested. Depends on the number of people participating how low to go exactly."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"I figure everything up until 20 will definitely be taken. People are less likely to choose 7 than numbers like 3, 4, or 5, so why not?"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"Total and complete guess work."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"AA\n"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"No reason."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number."} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"Highest unbeatable score in cross country"} {"your_number":"27","show_your_work":"I feel that humans are more likely to pick even numbers. It needs to be high enough to be safe but low enough to be competitive with other submissions."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"Perfect number"} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"I just like the number"} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"No real reason. Just hoping it's the lowest unique one. I'm hoping everyone forgot about 28."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"Chose an \"unattractive\" relatively low number"} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"Seems like a good guess considering how many people tend to submit; I deliberately selected a low number without special properties (isn't prime, for example)."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"Estimation of the number of submissions. Probability of perceived \"number that no one will pick\""} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"28 is a pretty boring number"} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"I want a number that isn't too low -- SOMEONE will pick 1, 2, etc. I also wanted a number that wasn't too \"random-seeming\" because everyone picks numbers ending in 7. 25 was out as a square and being too obvious for THIS strategy, so I went to 4x7=28."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"There's roughly ~1000 people who answer this survey. I figure the first 25 or so numbers will be double-booked, and this was the first number above that threshold with a little extra added leeway."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"It's medium-sized and not prime or a power of 2—less chance of collisions that way, if it's unremarkable."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"The winner will probably be some random small number that no one else thought of, I picked 28 because it is relatively small, and perfect."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"Logically, you don't want to pick an extremely low number because anyone entering the contest knows that they are more likely to be duplicated. But everyone entering the contest also knows that, so they will avoid super low numbers. You expect a few people to be contrarian thinkers by picking very low numbers by assuming everyone is smart enough to not pick the extremely numbers. My pick is just a shot in the dark to find a sweet spot between the contrarians and the naive rationalists. It's still probably a bit too low."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"It's a funny number 😂"} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"My guess is that at least one number under 30 will manage to sneak through--28 doesn't have anything that should psychologically draw people (prime, multiple of 5, square, famous sports number, etc.) I suppose with a minimal amount of coordination you could just send in like every number up to 1,000 but I'm going to trust in people's honesty/laziness."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"Twenty eight."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"five plus thirty plus eight is 43. subtract the number of characters in fivethirtyeight (15) and you're left with 28. science!"} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"Worth a shot..."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"28 is a \"perfect number\" (no other reason) :)"} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"Generated random number between 22 and 40. Gf submitting under same process but she is going higher..."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"I wanted to ignore primes and numbers I could readily associate with something while staying as low as possible"} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"My favorite number."} {"your_number":"28","show_your_work":"It seemed like a good choice."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"It's a good number"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"thought I'd just pick a low ish prime number"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"Random Guess"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"Hopefully big enough to not have duplicates and small enough that no smaller number is unique."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"2. 9."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"Feeling. Wanted an odd and prime number. Guessing single digit and teens would likely be covered. And felt reasonable that about 30 would be covered (I have no idea how many answer this so hard to make a rational choice I think)"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"Maybe it is weird and common enough to get overlooked...maybe"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"it is prime"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"High risk, high reward. 29 is a very low number, but if it works, it works!"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"Just thought about it in my head."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"Seems potentially high enough"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"The perfect crib hand"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"My birthday"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"i expect most really low numbers (e.g 1-10 and probably most of the teens will be taken) and i think numbers with a lower second digit are more likely to be taken than higher. i'm not sure i could offer an entirely coherent justification for that instinct."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"29"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"Seems legit."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"Lucky number"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"A fair amount of people will try the double bluff - you want a low number, but loads of people will try a low number, but maybe because they know that, actually they won't go for a low number so I will. So I think single digit numbers will be really highly subscribed. The volume of people will drop for 10-25 but there will still be a decent chunk of people going for those numbers. My guess is that the lowest unique number will come somewhere in the next tier, say 26-40ish? My initial thought had been that it would be much higher than that - I should go for a number in the 70s for example - but on reflection I thought there would be some obscure number in a lower band that would make it through. I picked 29 specifically just because I had to pick a number and that seemed as good as any in the band I was looking at."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"I've run this experiment with 10 people before many times. I know that there is no chance this many people will leave any of the bottom dozen alone, and from there I chose a relatively low prime (so, uncommonly used) number to rest my hat on."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"In the words of common core responders 'I came up with it in my head'...but really, I thought a 'higher' number and one that was not a multiple of 2, 3, 4, or 5 was needed"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"Just a guess but thought a prime number might be less likely to be chosen by others."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"AA"} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"A prime. All sub-20 will be taken..."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"Every four years, there is one day with this number (February 29th). The next year with this date will be 2020. It is also a prime number that is not often mentioned in our society."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"It's a nice number."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"I figure 1-19 are too low; 2 and 9 are far enough away on the keyboard that I'm playing into the difficulty of typing."} {"your_number":"29","show_your_work":"got married on the 29th"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"It's the best"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"No method to my madness"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"It's pretty low."} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"I suspect that most answerers will avoid numbers perceived as being too \"obvious\" (i.e. perceived as common or special) since it's highly likely that someone else will pick that number. However, other answerers will realize this and try to get lucky by picking an \"obvious\" number that everyone else will avoid. I expect that the winning number will therefore be an \"obvious\" one that's just high enough to potentially avoid duplicate \"obvious\" guesses (for instance, *someone* will surely submit 1) but low enough to beat all the other submissions with the same strategy. I don't know how many people will submit answers, so at a wild guess I'll say that no one else will pick 30 and that this number is sufficiently low to win. (I suspect my odds of victory are not much better than straight chance, though.)"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"Gut that people wouldn't choose such a low, round number"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"It's a nice number."} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"Not too low not too high."} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"I think people will stay away from round numbers, but I could also imagine a bunch of people getting together to submit the first 20 numbers or so."} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"Cuz Ima boss"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"It seemed right"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"get em all"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"It's round"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"I'd imagine prime numbers to be more popular, so I picked a highly composite one instead. Greater than 31 because there is a population that picks birthdays. Small enough that there wouldn't be (a lot of) gaps (I hope)."} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"538 readers are sophisticated, but maybe not *that* sophisticated. I choose a number that's rounded, because it seems so obvious of a choice that people might avoid it, and not too small, because the size of 538's reader base nullifies any kind of *read* that one might have, so that the first dozens or so integers will probably be filled."} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"print(random.randint(1,100))"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"Multiples of 10 hopefully seem somehow 'less unique', so hopefully people won't choose them as often (?)"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"Seems like a good compromise, and also my current age. Didn't choose a prime since people might have a tendency to go for them when picking random numbers."} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"I figure that many people are going to shy away from choosing 'obvious numbers' meaning number divisible by a lot of stuff and will lean towards primes and other numbers that's seem less common. However there will be many greedy people that will choose low numbers in the hopes that nobody else also chose them. I'm hoping that 30 is obvious enough that it will he over looked by others as too obvious, but folks picking obvious numbers (and hoping for the best) will choose smaller numbers like 10 and 20."} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"My favorite number"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"It seemed high enough that other people might not choose it, while simultaneously low"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"The smallest options are obviously out, and I'm guessing most riddlers will pick a non-round number (and probably lots of primes picked, too) because they feel more unique, if that makes sense. I chose a not-too-small, nice, round number."} {"your_number":"30","show_your_work":"Intuition"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"I was going to choose 17 but that might be too random."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Guessing that people will choose lower, knocking each other out."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Random shot in the dark"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Why the hell not!"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"not too big, not too small"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Small but not too small"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"no particular reason"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Supposed reasoning: Because a few thousand people will submit numbers, one would think that all the integers below 100 will be taken. Knowing that will cause people to overcompensate and select numbers well above 100. Knowing that some people will then over-overcompensate and select numbers less than 10. 31 is somewhere in between those groups, low enough to have a chance but not so low as to be widely chosen.\n\nActual reason: 31 was my football jersey number in high school."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Seems like a good number"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"No Reason"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"No work that just seems like a safe bet"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Blind Faith"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"I picked a number. Any number."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"idk maybe no one will pick this one"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"There are a lot of people likely to respond, likely filling up any very low integers. The 30s seem like they might be open, and within them I hope the lower ones place to be open as well."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Because people might forget about 31."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"I just knew"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"First thing that popped into my head when you said \"pick a number\" without even reading the victory conditions. But it seems reasonable. Low enough to maybe win, high enough that maybe others didn't pick it."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"it's prime"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Shrug"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"This follows the principals of a Unique Bid Auction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_bid_auction), where there's no real optimal strategy except to pick a number that most people won't. I'm essentially trying to guess what other people would have picked, and trying to not pick that."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Adonal Foyle's number, duh!"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"People forget about the 30s and Prime numbers. At least I hope they do."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Just a number I lik, I guess. Prime numbers are probably less popular."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Dumb guesd"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"I saw it in my dreams. (I don't think that many people will participate)"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Why not"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Trying to find a number people may overlook."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"pick em all"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"https://www.google.com/search?q=random+number+between+0+and+100"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Idk"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"prime number"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Not math based."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Lowest prime of relatively little interest."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"random.org"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Random guess!"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"A small prime."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"Used a RNG to pick a number between 1-100"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"random number generated between 10 and 50 - I figured that's about the range of solutions"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"No one likes that number."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"hmm"} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"It got Mike Piazza to the Hall of Fame. Plus, it is relatively low... I figure a bunch of people will choose single digit integers."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"A couple thousand people often participate in these, so there will be sufficiently many who risk picking a tiny number. I picked a number that was admittedly risky given how tiny, and I also picked a prime number cuz nobody likes those."} {"your_number":"31","show_your_work":"It was a guess"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Nobody can have this as the day of the month of their birthday."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"You had 1538 submissions for the coffee riddle. \nI assume all the lower numbers that correspond with birth dates will be picked but that most participants will guess a higher number, assuming all the low numbers will already be picked. \nI also think many will pick prime numbers thinking those are less likely to be picked.\n\n\n"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Today is my 32nd birthday."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Felt right"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Just felt right."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Was thinking, I didn't want to go too low, as picking one or two seems irrational. Then, a number over 100 seems a little risky. And since many will resort to their birthday or birth year, I picked the first non birthday number (and I'm assuming it wouldn't be a birth year for many readers)."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Nobody picks 32 as a lucky number."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"I figured people would gravitate to prime numbers or perhaps their birth date so I picked the first number that avoided these traps."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"because you probably won't accept \"bleven\" (see \"Nineteen Fifty-Bleven\" in \"Hollywood Said No!\" by Bob Odenkirk & David Cross)"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"seems like a good number"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"I figured numbers divisible by 5, or that were prime would be popular choices. Furthermore, based on the size of Riddler Nation, numbers under 30 would all be taken. This is the smallest number that meets these requirements."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Just a guess, went with a even number as I feel people in general will pick more odd numbers"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Not a birth date"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Number of my favorite baseball player growing up"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"No way of knowing how many people will participate. I imagine it thins out enough by the thirties, but no way of knowing what the lowest untaken number would actually be, of course. Just kind of hope to get lucky."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Because there aren't any birthdays on the 32nd."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"I think people will try to choose \"random\" numbers--numbers they don't think anyone else will guess. When trying to come up with random numbers, people tend to concentrate on 3s, 7s, and 8s (I think I've read that in a study somewhere). I also think people will tend to guess lower numbers and that you'll get more submissions than average because this is an easy problem to guess at."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Even, greater than 20"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"It's underappreciated."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Well, my first thought was to pick an odd number, because, you know, odd numbers are kind of cool. But then I figured everyone else would be picking an odd number also, so I thought to go with an even number. Was thinking of an unusual even number (meaning of course one with only a few factors), but then I figured everyone else would be picking unusual even numbers, so I went with a very common even number with lots of factors, that hopefully no one else picks! ;-))"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"People tend to think that odd numbers are more \"random\", so when asked to arbitrarily pick a number people tend to pick odd numbers way more frequently. 32 is a guess that most people will be picking numbers from 1-30, and that most people are going to avoid 32 for it's property of being 2^8."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"AA"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"It's an educated guess based on my estimate of participants"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"."} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Feeling really lucky"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"I smashed the numbers on my keyboard"} {"your_number":"32","show_your_work":"Seemed like a low # that might go overlooked. Also my daddy's baseball #."} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"I figured people would avoid numbers with factors, so might resist the draw to 2^n. But in an attempt to resist numbers with factors some would be tempted to try (2^n) -1 as these are famously used in the search for primes, so I decided to go for (2^n) + 1.\n\nThat just leaves the value of n to choose. Assuming P people submit, I'd guess they'll pretty much cover everything up to sqrt(P), so my choice became 33 or 65 depending on how many submissions you get. I'm gambling on around 1000 entries and all the above guesswork voodoo being correct :-)\n"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number, so why not"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"Larry Bird"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"Yup."} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"This number is easily overlooked. I had to think for a long time and I still almost didn't think of it. Are there numbers that are more easily overlooked? Definitely. Smaller than 33? None that come to mind..."} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"Aeluromancy"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"Frankly, it was mostly random, but I did put some amount of thought into it. I didn't want to go too low, so I decided to skip the single-digits, teens, and twenties. I chose 33 because I figured some people trying to choose a random number would be instinctually averse to repeated digits."} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"Just guessing!"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"My jersey number in basketball"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"My age, low enough to win"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"I like it"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"I'm hoping it gets overlooked."} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"a random integer between 1 and 50"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"Larry Bird's Jersey Number"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"33 is a positive integer, 30+3=33, 1+2+4+5+6+7+8=33, 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=33, 66/2=33, 33*1=33, 11*3=33, cos(20)*cos(40)*cos(80)*264=33, 33^0*33=33"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"1-31 all fall on days of month which could conceivably be their favorite number, 32 is going to be a popular guess because of this and so I go with next available. 33"} {"your_number":"33","show_your_work":"Feels low enough to win, high enough not to be chosen by others."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"I would submit my lucky number, 17, but I think that's too low, so I'm doubling it."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"2x 17... not a real reason, I know."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"http://www.gettyimages.com/event/finals-game-6-los-angeles-lakers-v-bos-80398146?esource=SEO_GIS_CDN_Redirect#-picture-id81611994"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"34"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"No idea, just guessing."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"I chose what I thought was the lowest boring even number. Anything under 20: out. Odd numbers: out, people tend to pick those. 22: double digits. 24 has a lot of factors. 26 is the number of letters. 28 has a lot of factors. 30 ends in a zero. 32 has a lot of factors. So 34 it is."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"It's just an uninteresting number."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Its a lowish number"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"I assume that people may want to pick uneven numbers. I also think the winning number will be lower than might be expected on first thought."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Anything below 20 I expect will be picked. 20 is my favorite number by quite round. 21-25 are too interesting to math nerds with common multipliers and a prime in there. 26 is intriguing, but it will thus be so for others. 29 the same. 31 is close, but 34 feels right as I think more people may go odd."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Above 31 since people may pick days of birth, and a couple higher than that since people may pick 32 by the same logic, and 33 is a nice number that may get picked. Plus, Nolan Ryan."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"It's not a date in the month, and 32, the next lowest number, is a power of 2. So 33 makes sense. But because 33 makes sense, I'm doing 34 as someone could think of what I thought."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"With the castles problem, btwn 1000 and 2000 people participated. Gut feeling with that large of a group is that the answer lies somewhere between 20 and 70. (~10% chance of each number <100 being chosen...). Some people might gravitate toward birthdates, so I want to be higher than 31. I think you'll get more odd numbers in the response, so I went even."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Just trying to get lucky! ;)"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"I looked at the Wikipedia page for the Unique Bid Auction. I checked the mathematical analysis and realized I didn't have time to go through them. This is a random number between 30 and 40 calculated via random.org."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"I feel like the point is to pick a number that's low (lower than you'd think) but not so low that other people choose it. The 30-50 range felt about right given what I think the distribution might look like, probably wrongly. Within that, I wanted a composite number because I think people think primes are unusual numbers and are more likely to pick those. And I wanted a number with few factors as well, because numbers with lots of factors are too common. 34 felt like it could blend in."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Half numerology, half inspired by the gamma distribution"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Seems low enough to have a shot, but not so low as to definitely collide. The bottom 20 numbers seem really unlikely to work. Others may think the same and go for the 20s. The thirties seem like the first area where someone might get lucky. I'm not sure how many submissions we'll see, but I'm expecting a winner in the 40s or 50s, but psychologically I'd rather fail boldly than lose timidly. This number feels like it strikes that balance."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"It's my lucky number."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"It is a good number."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Because"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Took a random guess in the late 20s early 30s"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"It's my favorite"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"My age and pure guesswork..."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"I am predicting a bimodal distribution: a narrow low-value mode corresponding to people who play to undercut, and a broader high-value mode corresponding to people who play to hit gaps in the right-hand tail of the distribution. The best number will sit in a valley of thin counts between those two modes. It is hard to guess where that will be! The recent coffee challenge had about 1500 entrants, so my intuition combined with some MATLAB simulations tells me that the valley of thin counts will be in the range of 25-40. What number to choose in that range? It should meet the dual constraints of not being a \"nice round number\" (like 30 or 40), but also not being a number overly loved by the types of math geeks who will probably play this silly game (primes, etc.). 34 just might do the trick, but it's a crap shoot no matter how you look at it."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Not too low, but hopefully unique enough to be low enough."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"It just feels right"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"???"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Can't be a date of a month. Can't be one more so 32 is out. Then 33 is also out because two digits are the same. So 34"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Because why not?"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"It is a relatively low, yet hardly thought of number. Most people would choose a more common number (35, 36), or very obscure integer (37), than this boring, average number."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Random pick"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Hoping for the best!"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"A random low-ish number that isn't a multiple of anything useful"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"I'm guessing there will be a lot of people who play relatively low numbers (1-10) who think that others will not. Then a decent proportion of guesses between 10 and 50. I'm hoping to get lucky and that others in this range happen to not pick mine. Avoiding multiples of 5 and primes (since for some reason I think people are more likely to pick those values)."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"hopefully greedy but not enough to be detrimental."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"An unremarkable number which hopefully no one else will pick. I expect 1-30 to be highly populated."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"I expect no one will even bother with the first 30 or so"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Kirby Puckett, duh"} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Just hoping. Seems like a fairly boring, fairly low number."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"I figure a lot of people will try for low-ish numbers by assuming others are going to go high. I relied on research into which lottery numbers people play the most often in an effort to avoid common lucky numbers. Numbers over 31 are less common because people often use their birth date as a lucky number. 32 is a factor of 2, so I think some people like it for that reason. Essentially, 34 is the lowest number over 31 that isn't interesting in any readily discernible way. A paper based on the UK lottery confirms that it is among the 5 or so least commonly picked lottery ball numbers."} {"your_number":"34","show_your_work":"Let 'w' be the winning number. \n- 'w' better not be an exciting number so primes, squares, cubes are out. Even the *rather* composite-y kinds like 12 are out. \n- Ah, how about trying my date of birth... that would be sooo lucky!? So w>31. \n- Hmm.... 32 is a wild one (highly composite, 2^5, 32 Fahrenheit = 0 deg Celsius etc. etc.)\n- 33 is cool, very cool. It is actually also rather sexy. \n\nSo, the smallest number which also happens to be a listless and boring one in my viewpoint is 34."} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"It is a low number, but not an obviously low number. Also, it was Frank Thomas's jersey number and has always been my favorite number."} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"Low, but not too low, non-descript (no repeats, no pattern)"} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"There are several numbers visible on the page that might influence an attempt by some readers to submit a random number, these numbers should not be picked because they are like to be picked by someone else. Additionally people tend to pick numbers associated with birthdays so anything under 31 and especially under 12 is risky. Attempting to go low low but not under that threshold."} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"guess; looks common so less likely to be chosen"} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"I figure most people will pick 1, 2 etc so 35 it is"} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"I'm guessing there will be at least one gap in 10-100. 35 is a low, round number and may be forgotten."} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"Cause all I do is win win win no matter what"} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"I'm not sure how many submissions you get per challenge. I guess there will be more with this one because it is so accessible. I'm just banking on everyone else doubling up on smaller numbers than this!"} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"cuz"} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"Hmmm. Figure that -someone- will take each of roughly 1-20, with a high cluster of guesses in the middle of that range. I think their will be a gradual drop-off in frequency from there, moving higher. Really didn't think about it any harder than that. Since I have no idea how many people typically enter these contests, it's more or less a shot in the dark."} {"your_number":"35","show_your_work":"yolo"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"Pick a random low number hoping no one else does."} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"random(20,50) and pray"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"I didn't want to pick anything too low, since a lot of people will pick things like 1 'just in case'. I also didn't want to pick anything too common, since the number has to be unique, so I avoided even numbers and primes, immediately obvious famous jersey numbers, etc. I generated 36."} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"Just a guess I hope for the best!"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"I figured most relatively low numbers would be quickly submitted. More importantly, I know there's a lot of evidence people think odd numbers are more \"random\" and prime numbers even more so. So I picked a square with lots of factors."} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"People tend to think of odd numbers as unique or \"special.\" I tried to pick an unremarkable number with lots of factors that wasn't too large."} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"I think the number is going to be quite a bit lower than most realize. I'm estimating about 1500 submissions. Half of which will be 100 or more. That means that about 750 or so people will choose a non-random number of 100 or lower. I have to confess to not doing the math, but I suspect that sampling with replacement will show quite a few numbers less than 100 being 'unselected'. So, I originally choose 38 - a riff on the website name. But that's a dumb move, so I went with 2 less than that."} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"good luck"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"Because it's one less than 37"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"Tried to balance picking a small number with picking a large enough number that it is unique. Could pick something like 1638 and that would most likely be unique, but certainly not the lowest. On the other hand, picking a number like 10 only takes 1 other person picking it to disqualify you. This would become a little easier if the number of participants was known."} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"36 is my lucky number. Also, based on the assumption that 1500 people will answer (like the coffee problem), and assuming a Poisson distribution with a lambda of 20 (I think most people will guess around 20), it's at around 36 where there is likely to be be few enough guesses that I might get lucky."} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"36 is seems high enough. IDK"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"I figured a few hundred entries with about 10 people picking each of the lower numbers"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"idk"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"Why not"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"random guess"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"Ran random number generator from 1 to 100, hoped to get lucky."} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"I like multiples of 9"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"How does one win the Swedish lottery (one name for this game) except by guessing a number and getting lucky?\n\nhttps://youtu.be/62P3mZBkb8E?t=4m10s"} {"your_number":"36","show_your_work":"Lucky(?) guess"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Luck"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I like 37"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Honestly, it was the lowest dis-interesting number I could think of."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I'm just hoping for the best."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Its a good number"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"cause I like it"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I've always liked the number, and given the number of entries is likely around 500 or so, it might just win."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"It's a number I like that isn't too high or too common."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I expect there to be around a couple thousand entries, so I expect the lowest unique to be probably below 100. I wish I had a bit more of a mathematical explanation."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"A prime number comprised of prime numbers (3 & 7)"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"zero reason other than love for the number 37."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"First prime after 1-31 (possible birthdays)"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Prime number"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"My favourite number - first irregular prime"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"random number generator popped this number out"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"No reason"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Randomly selected number that hopefully no one else would choose to pick"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Lucky number"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Seemed like the most random number at the time"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"First number that popped into my head"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"The population of 538 readers that participate in these games is large enough that I expect all the single digit and low double digit numbers will be selected. I have arbitrarily determined that it starts to thin out in the 30s, and that people are probably less likely (as a group) to pick prime numbers, so....here we are."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"FTW!"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"my assumption is the winner will be 2 digits. many readers will pick their birth year, so anything 50-99 seems risky. round numbers (multiples of 5 specifically) will also be picked multiple times. numbers of famous athletes (ie 34, 42) seem risky as well. best to pick a number in the 20-49 range fitting those criteria."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I chose 37 as the first prime number above the birthday numbers. Felt pretty good."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"it feels right!"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Very random guess that no one will pick 37"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"random guess."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"guessed"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"No reason, just felt like it."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I figured I should choose a relatively low number that's also obscure so I chose 37. A prime number that no one really thinks about very often."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Random guess. Why not?"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"expecting hundreds of responses and going with a prime number thinking it will be less likely to be a popular choice"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Optimism."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"why not"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Lucky number."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number (love those primes)"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Random enough someone else might not choose it"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Ruling out 1-20. I have no idea how many people submit answers, but it can't be THAT many right? Prime numbers seem more unique.\n\nThat said, maybe based on this smart audience outsmarting itself, it will be something like 2."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"It's ugly."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Prime number"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I guessed my favorite prime number"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Hope it is low enough and unlikely enough to be the winner. Feel like I would just be matching numbers lower than this, but have no idea how many people will enter."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Guessing there will be enough people to rule out single digits and the teens, I like prime numbers so what the heck: 37"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"A wild guess, in the hope that 1-36 would either be chosen repeatedly or ignored."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Monty Python"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I think a lot will load up under 30. I think higher than 40 will be too high."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I guessed based on the only available information 1382 readers submitted to a previous riddle (battle for riddler nation)"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"It just feels right (plus, it's prime, and I❤️primes)"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I expect many folks to pick a \"higher\" number (but perhaps not triple digits). Similarly, I expect at least some readers to \"outsmart\" everyone and just pick the single digits and teens in the hope that no one considers that option. This feels like a happy medium."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Feel it's not too low or high, not a birthday or a date and as a prime number is easily forgotten as it's not in any factor tables. Who knows ..."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Lucky guess"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Expecting most people to pick much higher."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I assume all numbers less than 31 will be chosen because of birthdays. Prime numbers are the best, so I chose the next smallest prime number."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"A lot of people will pick their birth date, so I eliminated 1-31. 32-36 seem like common, popular numbers. So my answer is 37."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I chose a relatively low prime number, because I don't think that prime numbers are as popular."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Why would anyone pick 37"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"It is the smallest irregular prime number, a category I've spent a lot of time thinking about. It also seems about right, large enough to have a shot at being unique, but small enough to be small."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"37"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Because it's my favorite number."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I guessed?"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Thousands may play but I'm hoping I'm one step ahead of them"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Whimsy"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Because it's not a number people will think of easily."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Just seems like a low, random number."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"A prime number and also my age - as good a choice as any"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I like 37. Seems like a good choice"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I'm trying to pick a small integer, but not so small that it will have been chosen by someone else. Pure guesswork and some risk-taking."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"3 and 7 are uncommon"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Riddler Nation has enough saboteurs to keep 1 from being an option. The singleton will be some anamoly in the 30s."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"No one likes it"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Shot in the dark. Obviously 1-10 are unlikely to appear just once."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Kind of an odd number."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Thought about going higher but think the winning number will not be much higher than 30"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Riddler Nation has enough saboteurs to keep 1 from being an option. The singleton will be some anamoly in the 30s."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it's prime I guess"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Without knowing how many people usually participate I tried to compromise. A prime number , hopefully not so common to hear, small enough to look plausible"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"It's a joke from my favorite movie"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"big number"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"high school football number"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"There is no optimal selection so I picked a number and am hoping I'll get lucky"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Just a hunch."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I don't know."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"You asked for a lowest unique positive integer. This means you can be the only one to submit the number. 1 is the lowest possible solution but the chances of someone else also submitting this is extremely high. The high you go, the less likely you are to overlap with some else. I have no math behind my answer, it is just a guess based on how I would expect others to behave."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Low enough to be in the running. High enough to avoid the people who answer $1 on The Price is Right. 37 because it's everywhere."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I just guessed"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Feels right"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"I figure all the numbers 1-20 will be taken, so I simply picked a random prime in the high to mid 30s"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Wanted to be out of the range of days in a month and commonly used sports Jersey numbers"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"It's the lowest prime number that doesn't fall on a day of the month (birthdays and such)"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Smallest prime number above the most days in any month (31). My logic, beside the total luck in this game, is most people have a lucky number or a birthdate that they may pick. 37 is not only not common, yet also is impossible for anyone to be born on October 37th, etc. I'd assume this puzzle is completely random and depends on the number of people who guess and the typical number people guess the least often."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Lowest prime greater than 31"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Just took a guess - needs to be higher than a single digit number, but anything over 50 is probably too high to win. Wanted something spread apart on the keyboard to capitalize on lazy typing. It's prime, which might be good or bad."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Beyond the roulette table based lucky numbers people may have."} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"37 is my favorite prime"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"=)"} {"your_number":"37","show_your_work":"Prime numbers rule"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Lucky guess"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Optional stopping problems tell you to pick the next option after 37%, so I picked 38."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Humans tend to round things numbers so it might be more likely that people submit round numbers. On the other hand, people are trying to submit unique numbers so they will be more likely to submit non-round numbers. But everyone knows this so whole numbers might again become more popular. So I submitted a non-round number."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"It just feels right"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"I used random.org to choose a random number between 0 and 100, then threw out what I didn't like until I got this."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Just a low number that isn't necessarily common."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Assuming 1000 submissions I tried to find a low number that isn't prime or otherwise notable. I assumed the first 10-20 would be guaranteed to be filled but after that the range of answers would expand."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"One more than 37 (the most random number between 1 and 100 ... :-)"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"It's not that interesting"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"just picked one."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"I picked a random number from 1 to 40 (expect it to be relatively low)."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"no particular reason"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Hard to guess without knowing the response population. I'd reckon the numbers 0-20 will definitely be chosen by people, while for 100(and all numbers below it) to be chosen youd need i think at least a few thousand responses(going for a sort of normal distribution with its peak around 25?). 38 seems like a nice incospicous number. Not too high for when im overestimating the response size, but not too low that its definitely going to be picked."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"No reason"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"shrug"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"My goal was to pick a randomly low number that was also high enough that someone probably wouldn't guess it."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Not too small (under 20 seems like it will be common), but not too large, and not a round or significant number that others might focus on."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"People are gonna try and be too clever and 37 will be a popular flippant guess."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"intuition :)"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Common number but not the most common."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"avoiding the super low numbers and estimating like 1500 people will fill this out to get the area where i think it will be. avoiding primes because people love those, numbers that can be birthdays, and super even numbers like multiples of 5 or 10, oh and other special numbers like perfect ones even tho i love perfect ones."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"37 is a commonly selected seemingly random number, reducing the odds of a 38"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Guesstimate of other answers and how many replies you get"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"I figured that the lowest number would probably be less than 50 so to eliminate bias I did a random number generator between 1 and 50 and got 38"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"It's a reasonable small number that isn't particularly notable"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"When asked to pick a unique number, people often come up with a \"strange\" number - something prime or odd. 38 is a nice even number that could be overlooked. I didn't pick a number too low since more than likely readers will try their luck with the first few integers."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Wild ass guess then plus 1 to make it even"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"A lot of people are likely to chose their birthday's day of month so 1-31 are out. 32 is mathematically interesting especially in this kind of group. 33 has nice symmetry. There is absolutely nothing special about 34, but since it the first such number people are likely to pick, some will pick 35 as a result of same thinking. 37 is first prime after all these numbers, so I'll go for 38"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Total guess"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"I predict around 1,000 - 1,200 people will submitted numbers. Days of the month for birthdays and anniversaries are likely to be picked. I also find it likely that odd numbers and prime numbers are likely to be picked because human nature. So I picked a random even number in the 30's mostly based on hope."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Perfect number"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Non-prime number, fairly low but not too low."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"No clue how many entries you get for something like this. Just a guess."} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"I feel like everyone is going to try to find the \"most random\" number. According to some study I vaguely remember from Princeton or Harvard or something, most people consider odd numbers to be \"more random\" than even numbers, and prime numbers especially. Then there will inevitably be someone that submits different numbers repeatedly, probably starting with the number 1, then going up. There will also be plenty of people who just pick their favorite number, and according to another study I think I saw once, people's favorite numbers tend to be between 1 and 20, or squares of numbers. I believe 38 is sufficiently far from submission-troll-territory, sufficiently \"unrandom\", and sufficiently disliked. Fingers crossed it works out!"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"No"} {"your_number":"38","show_your_work":"Instinct"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"It felt good"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"I wanted to pick a prime number that had a 9 in it."} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"3 less than 42"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"GIven some assumptions of the number of submissions, combined with a guessed distribution of said submissions"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"My lucky number"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"I'm guessing the first third at least will be swamped, and \"37\" is one of those numbers people think of when picking an arbitrary number, so two above that to avoid single-look-ahead spoilers. Probably not likely, but hey, data in the pot!"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"No reason"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"Its just a guess"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"Large dartboard."} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"I just picked a random number from 1 to 50. I figured the smallest number wouldn't be that big."} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"meh"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"Probably too small but hoping it's a random enough number to work."} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"Hasek"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"💁🏻‍♂️"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"A pure guess. I can't assume the Nash Equilibrium is in place, so there is more likely more than one person that picked 1 out of sheer lack of understanding of game theory (of which I am not an expert in myself). Narrowed to an odd number because odds are less \"aesthetically\" pleasing. Save for integers ending in 7 because people have a tendency to think 7 is random, and 5 because our minds tend to work easier in sets of 5. So i decided it had to be an integer ending in 1, 3, or 9. I wanted to eliminate primes because I think smarter math folks will try to focus on primes. Then it's just trying figure out how high can I go. So I settled on 39. Thinking people would probably exhaust most options below that, while also trying to figure out exactly how many people would try, and within that how many a-holes just want to watch the world burn and submitted multiple bids to drive the number up. Like I said, pure guess using what little a know about game theory, cognition and numbers, and the trollish nature of the internet."} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"Site is so popular, thought you'd have lots of low entries (though maybe not ultra-low) but then again, enough readers to have someone sneak in an ultra low number. But with the 39 Steps -- a totally forgotten classic, so thought this might carry the day."} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"A pure guess. I can't assume the Nash Equilibrium is in place, so there is more likely more than one person that picked 1 out of sheer lack of understanding of game theory (of which I am not an expert in myself). Narrowed to an odd number because odds are less \"aesthetically\" pleasing. Save for integers ending in 7 because people have a tendency to think 7 is random, and 5 because our minds tend to work easier in sets of 5. So i decided it had to be an integer ending in 1, 3, or 9. I wanted to eliminate primes because I think smarter math folks will try to focus on primes. Then it's just trying figure out how high can I go. So I settled on 39. Thinking people would probably exhaust most options below that, while also trying to figure out exactly how many people would try, and within that how many a-holes just want to watch the world burn and submitted multiple bids to drive the number up. Like I said, pure guess using what little a know about game theory, cognition and numbers, and the trollish nature of the internet."} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"Because 40 is too high."} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"Eh."} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"seems random enough"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"Semi-random"} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"Without knowing the amount of submissions with any accuracy, I had to go on my gut feeling."} {"your_number":"39","show_your_work":"random"} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"People will tend to choose 'random' numbers in the view they are more 'obscure'. Choosing something like 10 is the opposite of this 'obscure' approach. Of course, others may have the same strategy, so I went up a few multiples."} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"Even numbers are less likely to *feel* unique because they are not primes. Closest one to \"42\" without being a prime (and of course 42 is a very significant number)"} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"From previous Riddlers, I'm guessing that a couple thousand responses will be submitted, so that the first ~30 integers will be blanketed. (The square root, or something.) Then, I imagine that many of my fellow Douglas Adams readers will be naturally distracted by 42. Avoiding this number 'once' suggests that 41 would be a reasonably-unlikely choice, and applying the logic a second time (murmuring something about Nash equilibria), gets us to 40, which I also enjoy as an obvious-enough-it-might-not-get-picked option. (Inspired by the commonly reported perception that numbers like '7' are 'most random', and hence more likely to be guessed by the member of Riddler Nation https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/13/favourite-number-survey-psychology)"} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"Figure almost everyone is going guess an odd number, and there's probably going to be a lot of guesses. I dunno"} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"It seems large enough that it won't be drowned in a sea of other pickers, and it's anti-pseudo-random."} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"Trolls will pick primes, it is composite but not obnoxiously so- also about 1000 answers get submitted each time, this is a bit more than the square root of that- figure people will spread out poisson ish you know"} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"No great rationale. I did speculate that the distribution of answers might approximate a declining exponential (with some spikes at \"attractive\" numbers). I suppose I could have done something with that if I estimated the number of participants, but summer sloth won over."} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"Whenever you guys do game theory problems, it seems like there are always a fraction of responses like \"game theory can't handle chaos\" with a response that intentionally messes up the data. With that in mind, I'm not picking based on an elaborate Nash equilibrium or principle. People won't pick round numbers at the rate they pick \"unique\" ones--primes, their favorite number, etc. I'm guessing that 40 is high enough that no one will guess it, but it's still surrounded by numbers people want to pick--like 37, which is prime, or 42, a common favorite number."} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"I don't know"} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"Not too high, not too low"} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"I assumed there will be about 1,000 submission, since that's how many people submitted for the battle a couple months ago. \n Using this data: http://pages.bloomsbury.com/favouritenumber, I eliminated any number that was picked more that 0.1% of the time, then picked the lowest remaining, which was 40."} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"I think primes and 'weirder' numbers are more likely to be guessed. When people are asked to pick a random number from 1-20, 13 and 17 come up a lot. So lets go with highly composite!"} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"Costless to submit an answer so I used a random number generator"} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"I think people will tend towards odd numbers so a nice round number like 40 might be avoided."} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"Guess."} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"namaste"} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"..."} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"It can't be too low, cause some smart person will pick it, but it also has to seem like it will already have been chosen."} {"your_number":"40","show_your_work":"Irregular numbers are more popular."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Because why not?"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"one less than 42, the answer to life, the universe, and everything."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"n/a"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Some suppositions entirely unsupported by evidence:\n* All the very low numbers are likely to get taken, even if most people will avoid them. Anything less than 20 is clearly out. \n* Anything over 100 is, in my estimation, unlikely to be the lowest.\n* I believe the winning submission will be somewhere in the 40's or 50's.\n* Round numbers will be \"attractors\" - even though most players will likely avoid them, enough people will go with a round number to make them unlikely to be unique. \n*Many of your readers are likely to be nerds (I count myself among them).\n* Nerds love Douglas Adams\n*Therefore, 42 will be very popular. \n*This will make 42 an \"attractor\" - most people guessing non-round numbers in the 40's will gravitate to 42. \n* 41 is both small enough to win and in the protective \"shadow\" of two nearby attractors. \n* I mean, why not?"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Just trying my favorite number. 41 starts a chain of 40 prime numbers: 41, 43, 47, 53, etc\nFORTY is the only number spelled alphabetical order, while ONE is the only number in reverse alphabetical order."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"No 0, 2, 3, 5, or 7"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"just a hunch!"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"cat chose 42"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"It's a special number to me"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Who would pick 41?"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"It just spoke to me"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"High enough to avoid birth dates, no curving digits to lure people in to choosing it. Plus it's a prime."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"rare number to choose and elevated high enough to avoid simplistic answer choices"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"its a stupid number, often overlooked. i bet a bunch of ppl choose 39 (which is a much better number)."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Seems like a good number"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"42 is the answer but everyone knows that"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"I chose 41 because it is one less than 42, which I predict might be some sort of strange attractor for this exercise."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"I don't know"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"my favorite number"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"41"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"I think there will be a few hundred responses with single digits having no chance, so reasonable chance no one submits 41 - hope it is the lowest with no one else choosing."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Everyone's gonna pick 42"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"A guess!"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Lower than 42"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"dirt bike racing number growing up"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Shot in the dark"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Assuming at least 500 participants, it seems unlikely that any number under 30 would go unselected. I debated choosing many numbers within the range from 30-50, but I settled in the middle. A prime number seemed less likely to be chosen."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"41 is one below the meaning of life, which I imagine many people will pick."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"It seemed right."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"assuming 1000-ish entries, most will pick ##s << 500. Let's say we estimate the entries 1-100 are chosen by 500 people. That avgs 5 people per unique #, with greater probability toward the low end. Guessing that humans will be nature be cute and more will pick \"42\" as the answer to everything, that leaves ##s near 42 as less likely to come up. Hence, 41."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"I'm using the opposite of psychological pricing where consumers are attracted to certain values: even numbers, containing a 7 digit, ending in 9, etc."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"The most underrated, humble number 1-99. That is, because Dirk Nowitzki is the most underrated superstar. And he's too humble to say it."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"I like that number"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Educated guess? Hard to say how many people will be entering and what the expected responses are. Went high(ish) compared to my initial gut, but based on this problem it's entirely possible something below 10 may win since it's mostly a mind game."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Arbitrary"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Seemed high enough to be uncommon, low enough to possibly win, but not connected with any cultural reference I could think of off the top of my head."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"=42-1"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"41"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Dave Matthews Band song from my childhood (i.e., the song is titled \"#41\"). Also, one digit short of the Universal Answer."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Douglas Adams' over-popularized answer of 42 for everything makes me inclined to squeeze in under this without being too small to be popular."} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"It is one less than 42"} {"your_number":"41","show_your_work":"Idk lolz"} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"Magic."} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"Not too low (a large amount of people will probably miss the point and choose 1) and it's the answer to life, the universe, and everything."} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"Mo"} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"I guessed?"} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"My logic is that someone is going to get lucky with a mid-double digit number. In an effort to feel random, most people will guess odd numbers, so it's got to be odd. I expect that the winner will be a lucky person that take a number in the 20-60 range, and is by chance the only one to pick that specific number."} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"Meaning of life"} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"Pretty much random."} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"It's the answer to life, the universe, and everything."} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"That's the answer for life, the universe, and everything."} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"I like the number 42"} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"It's the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything."} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"why not"} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"Just a wild guess"} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"It is the ultimate answer, after all. If this is not the ultimate question it still seems a good hedge"} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"Because Marlin found Nemo at 42 Wallaby Way."} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"42","show_your_work":"The Answer to life, the universe and everything"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"One higher than the best number (42)"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"odd prime number"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"i have no doubt someone submitted 42, so I am employing \"The Price is Right\" asshole strategy"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"I feel good about it"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"I once had a conversation with my high school friend. \"What's the most bring number between 1-100?\" \n\"43\" he said.\n\"Wow, that's weird. That's the exact number I was thinking of too.\""} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"43 or 23 seemed good candidates. Though I was tempted to take 1."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Not too low, not too high. With luck, it's just right."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"I think it could be lower than expected. People will pick single digits and then might jump up to hundreds. Something in between might get missed (depends somewhat on how many responses)."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"42 is the meaning of life."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"This was my jersey number in middle school basketball"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"1,2,3,...,43"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Low but not too low assuming thousands of entries"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Random number generator"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"random choice"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"It's the first integer that occurred to me."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Just because."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Mostly intuition."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Small enough to have a chance... large enough that I'm hoping there's no duplicates"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Just a guess. Probably too low"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Seems like a decently high enough number that the trolls won't spam up to this, and is not a multiple of 5."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number and I'm hoping to get lucky!"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"feels good"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"I'm hoping others who hone in on this region of the number line will be drawn to 42 (since it's the answer to life the universe and everything.) A few others may have similar logic and decide to go 1 lower than 42, so I'll go for one higher."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"im jackie robinson's +1"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Lucky number"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"I figured lots of folks would submit 42, the ultimate answer. So, 1 more than that."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Randomly selected 2 digit prime number"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"I'm just trying to find the sweet spot and I think it's around 40-50"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Lucky #"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"A little more than the answer."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Seems weird"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Not too big, assuming people like even numbers more."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Cause"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"It felt like the lowest common number people will select"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything and I knew some people would pick that so I went one higher"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"42+1"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"42+1"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"Hail Mary! Better to have a chance of winning then a safe number like 319711 that will likely be unique but not low."} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"prime-ish"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"43","show_your_work":"No deep reasoning was used here. I just picked a prime that wasn't too small."} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"My instinct is that the winning number will be lower than people might expect. I went with 44 since it seems like a number people are unlikely to feel is \"random\" (43, 37, and so on) but also unlikely to submit as a \"round\" number (35, 40, 45)."} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"No work"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Semirandom choice."} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Hoping everyone thinks they have to go higher and 44 gets missed. :-) Every attempt I make at logically picking a number ends in me thinking but won't everyone think that way?!?"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"42 is the answer to life the universe and everything from the hitchhiker guide, 43 and numbers that end in 3 or 7 are most likely to be picked as random numbers, so 44 seems like a good choice."} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Srsly?"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Figuring at least some people will guess low on the hope that everyone else will discount that possiblility, so trying to get above that group to where submissions start to spread out a bit. The avoiding things that are either too round, prime or might otherwise seem attractive. But pretty much a WAG"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Seems about right!"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"My friend's experiment on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SampleSize/comments/5vnp4w/results_enter_a_positive_integer_the_smallest/?utm_content=title&utm_medium=browse&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=SampleSize"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Game theory among nerds."} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Believe in the 4ce"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Guessed"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"1) I assume people are more likely to choose numbers they think are unique, so more likely to choose odd or prime numbers. I will choose an even number not divisible by 10.\n2) Just guessing, I'd imagine that the first sqrt(n) numbers will all be taken. I am also guessing that maybe 1000 people will play, so probably the first 32 numbers will all be taken. I'm looking for an even number greater than 32.\n3) Just to fudge a bit, I'll pick 44. (42 seems too cliche a pick. 38 might be a possibility.)"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"I once held the same game in a classroom, something like 11 or 13 was the winner. More people are playing here, hence the number must be higher."} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"There will probably be on the order of 1000 people submitting numbers. There is definitely a chance that no one will choose 1 or 2 or something else extremely low, but the best chance probably lies in choosing a number below 100 that seems unlikely to be guessed by anyone. People are not random."} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"I'm just a simple man who likes the number 44."} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Seemed unlikely to be chosen?"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"It was the second-hand on my watch when I looked"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"It's low but not too low. It repeats; perhaps people will avoid it."} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Assuming there are approximately 1,000 participants, I am guessing that enough people will pick the very low numbers (1-10), hoping no one else picks them, that they do not win. I expect the peak in the distribution to be in the 20-30 range, and for it to drop after that, with single digit number of picks for numbers in the 40s. There will definitely be higher picks, but the competition is to pick the lowest number that no one else picks. A well thought-out choice may get you in the ballpark of the winning number, but beyond that it is simply luck."} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Um guess ed"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Cultural dislike of the number."} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Medium low number with no very special properties"} {"your_number":"44","show_your_work":"Out of a hat"} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"it's sorta low"} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"Donald Trump is the 45th president; I think readers of this website will have a natural aversion to that number."} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"Just a guess."} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"Low enough to win, high enough to not be likely to have sentimental value. Also, multiples of 5 don't \"seem random\" to a lot of people."} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"Multiples of 5 often aren't popular."} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"I just chose it."} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"Guessed"} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"Intuition"} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"I wanted to contribute to the volume of answers so the results would be more interesting"} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"There is no strictly dominant strategy so I am just guessing"} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"Surprise motherfuckers"} {"your_number":"45","show_your_work":"Just guessed a number!"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"We know from Riddler Nation that around 1200 people will contribute. That's a useful stat - with 10,000 contributors, I'd need to be looking at a higher number. So what number? Not too low, obviously. Lots of people will think, \"Well, no-one's going to be stupid enough to go for 1, so if do, I might win!\" Then, mathematically inclined people may go for mathematically important numbers such as primes. Best to avoid those. And other people trying to avoid primes might go too far in the other direction, so that rules out anything like multiples of five or ten. I think 46 hits the sweet spot - not too low that lots of people will try it, not too obscure but just obscure enough."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"47 is the most frequently occurring number in the universe, thus, people are unlikely to choice a number close to it."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"It seems uncommon enough. It's near the square root of 2000, which I'm guessing will be the number of votes. That seems like it makes sense after I just woke up. 😃"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"Low side, but maybe less common?"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"fairly low even number."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"It's a normal not too low not too high number."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"I figure 1-10 will all be used by people submitting for fun and to troll, and too many people will try and get clever and submit a number between 10-20, that means I should look to submit a number between 20-40. But everyone else will probably have that idea too, so I decided to go with a number in the 40's."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"Feeling it out, I feel like numbers in the 40's might be where an opening could first appear. In that range, I'm feeling 46 is an unremarkable number, but not remarkably unremarkable, that it could be in the Goldilocks zone of remarkability.\n...39 - Too low\n40 - x10\n41 - Prime\n42 - That's in that movie\n43 - Prime\n44 - Twin digits\n45 - x5\n46 - Chromosomes, Japanese syllabaries, prime x2\n47 - Prime\n48 - 4 dozen\n49 - Perfect square\n50... - Too high"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"I like the number 47, but 46 (47-1) has a better chance of winning."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"Pulled out of thin air."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"Not prime, not interesting and not 42."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"Im knitting a hat with that many stitches. It seems right."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"guesswork"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"It's one less than 47"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"46 is not too small, not to big & feels so bland that no one would pick it"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"Random.org (well, first I got 42, and that's not gonna be unique, because Douglas Adams, then, it was 21, nah, too low, so 46 it is)"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"Felt right"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"This is my best guess for the lowest number I thought no one else would guess - I imagine the distribution of submitted integers tails off by the 50s but it really depends on other people's strategies. I went a little on the lower end and chose a number which I thought few people would think to pick."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"I think it will be a lowish number that just happens to win because nobody picked it, but high enough that spammers who pick the first x numbers won't reach it."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"Good old fashioned guesswork"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"Guessing"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"I don't know. It just came to me."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"Not too low, a little bit boring"} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"People will gravitate towards odd numbers and prime numbers. Numbers 1-40 have a high chance of being random guessed by multiple people. 46 isn't divisible by 4, 6, 8, or 12."} {"your_number":"46","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Lucky Number"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"This is the number of the great Johnny Cueto, the most criminally underrated pitcher in baseball and master of the shimmy-pitch."} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"I tried to choose a number that was low enough to win but high enough to get away from the bulk of people guessing low numbers."} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"random guess"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Because when my wife is doing a Sudoku I always say 47 to \"annoy\" her"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"guessed"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"I am assuming that most people will take the quick route and guess a very low number (1-20) or move higher (70-100) and some will apply this same logic and take the mid range of numbers (20-40); however the high 40's will be on the verge of appealing numbers as it is low enough but high enough as to escape attraction by other parties. I also just picked 47 randomly"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"The answer to the universe"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"not a whole lot of thought here"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Just kind of came up with a number. Thought about going a bit lower or higher and eventually settled on 47."} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Generated a random number between 1-150"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Complete Guesswork"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"No real reason"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Sons birthday"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Low"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"It's the winner"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"No one likes prime numbers"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"My son says that 47 is a cute number."} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"It's an unassuming prime that deserves some attention"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Second guess"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"*shrug*"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Careful consideration"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Gotta just hope nobody else picks it"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"This will be the lowest unique positive integer"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Figured twitch ~10,000 entries that 47 would be in the 6 sigma range."} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Prime, not birth day, less likely birth year than higher numbers"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"There are only 46 other living human beings"} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"It's a prime number that's not too small. People are often averse to picking weird prime numbers like 47."} {"your_number":"47","show_your_work":"Gotta just hope nobody else picks it"} {"your_number":"48","show_your_work":"There is no strategy to this problem besides choosing a relatively low problem, without knowing the number of participants in the problem."} {"your_number":"48","show_your_work":"I think you had ~1,500 submissions for a previous iteration, so the right number has to be lower than that, and probably a lot lower since there will be trolls, duplicates, and a bunch of guesses higher than the winner. I tried to pick an uninteresting number in the right range."} {"your_number":"48","show_your_work":"This is 1 more than the most commonly occurring random (non-random?) number, 47, and thus is more likely to be unique."} {"your_number":"48","show_your_work":"I estimate that there will be somewhere around 300 responses. Numbers ending in 8 and containing 4s are less likely to be chosen. Some people will go high in the hopes of uniqueness, meaning a thinning out in the lower numbers."} {"your_number":"48","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"48","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"48","show_your_work":"Random number selected between 15 and 80."} {"your_number":"48","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"48","show_your_work":"I expect all the numbers below some bound will be taken. Since I don't know how many people will participate, I have no basis for guessing anything particular. As a blind guess, maybe the winner will be somewhere under 100, but not too low.\n\nBelow 20 doesn't sound like a good idea. More than one person is bound to pick 1 or 2 as a longshot. Good old rock, nothing beats it.\n\nI also expect some numbers to be over-represented for cultural reasons - everyone loves primes, right? So, I picked 48 because it's boring and composite highly composite."} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"So there are 90 unique positive two-digit integers. I'm guessing the number of people who go guess a two-digit integer will be low enough that there will be a significant probability that some two-digit number, if guessed, would win. Hopefully multiple people will guess all the single-digit numbers. So the remaining question, operating under this assumption, is to figure out what will slant the distribution of guesses of two-digit numbers and figure out the lowest gap in that distribution."} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"It felt right."} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"year my Dad was born. It is going to be random #. I think some people will over think it and submit 1, 2 or 3 believing they can out smart others."} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"I consulted the tea leaves."} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"No work, just my favorite number"} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"7^2"} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"Based on demographics of expected guessers"} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"high but not too high."} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"Lots of people will choose 1, 2, 3, etc, so the really low numbers will not be unique. I don't know how many people respond to these things, so it's just a guess of which 2-digit number seems the least hip."} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"just a guess"} {"your_number":"49","show_your_work":"seven squared"} {"your_number":"50","show_your_work":"Suspicion that people will avoid obvious and round numbers."} {"your_number":"50","show_your_work":"Im thinking people will miss a few very low numbers (1-100). I think people will have a tenedency to pick non-round numbers, so Im going with 50."} {"your_number":"50","show_your_work":"An educated guess."} {"your_number":"50","show_your_work":"It's big enough that no one will pick it just to mess the game up and round enough that people will not want to pick it out of fear that it will already have been picked."} {"your_number":"50","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"50","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"50","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"Feelin it"} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"Pure and unabashed guesswork."} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"It's just high enough that most won't choose something in the 50s, it's not exactly 50, but it's low enough that people who go for upper-double-digits won't think about the 50s."} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"Nobody's going to choose Lofa Tatupu's number"} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"It's my favorite prime-looking non-prime number. And seemed about accurate for the number of people who respond."} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"I always forget the 51 is divisible by 3"} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"49 is a number that I always forget about. Hopefully everybody else does, too."} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"the smallest positive number would be 0. I imagine that answerers will gather around 1 and likes. Hence I picked 51 because that's the Pastis liquor number ;)"} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"3*17, figured it'd be worth a shot"} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"I'm thinking many people will choose one and prime integers. Other small integers seem likely to be chosen by multiple people. Also, 51 is a multiple of my favorite prime (17)."} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"seemed good"} {"your_number":"51","show_your_work":"Nothing special about this number"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"I'm just hoping for the best."} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"Just a guess!"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"sounds like a good number?"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"Well, I was going to say 53, but that seemed like 1 too many."} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"It's one less than the first prime number greater than 50"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"Just a number. No reason."} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"felt good"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number."} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"Humans usually pick odd numbers, and I figured that there would be enough people submitting answers that I should eliminate the first 50 numbers completely. Hence, 52."} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"Third untouchable number"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"Who knows"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"Call it a hunch"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"AA"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"None in particular"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"Just hoping everyone forgets about the boring numbers"} {"your_number":"52","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"I have seen the results of a similar survey before, and I believe the lowest number was 44, but this may receive more submissions than the other survey, so I increased my number from 44."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"Assuming most people will be under 50, so I chose a random number between 50 and 60"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"The incentive here encourages people to play higher numbers to have a better chance at it, but inevitably a host of people will still play single and low double digit numbers. 53 is prime, higher, but (hopefully) not so high. Above the fray, but not that far. Which could be totally wrong, so we'll see."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"the number of seconds on the clock as I write this"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"I'm guessing people will be aggressive and pick very low numbers, or try to insure uniqueness by going high. This seems like a decent balance, and a nice prime number."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"guess based on the expected number of submissions and general shape of the distribution of others' guesses"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"It's a guess."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"I assume there will be a few thousand participants. Reject everything 1-50 (aggressive participants). Then reject 60-99 due to birth years (19XX), as there is likely to be someone submitting at least once to match their birth year for each number 60-99 (though there may be an emphasis on younger participants as I assume Fivethirtyeight readership skews younger). 100 even is too notable, and 100+ starts to seem too high. Then I just took a random guess on the lower end of 51-59, basically. This strategy seems misguided, but it's all I could come up with in the 5 minutes I had to spend on this today."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"53 is unsexy and has low chances of being picked if the number of participants is low enough."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"It feels high enough to be uncommon, but low enough that it still has a chance to win."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"This is really a question of how many people are likely to submit and how much risky they are feeling. I guess I think a lot of people and not very risky."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"1-29 was way too popular. 30-49 was a close range but in the end I wanted 50-60 and snagged a random number, 53"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"'Twas my basketball number at St. Norbert College"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"n/a yolo"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"x <-abs(rnorm(1))*500"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"Randomly, plus odd number"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"I'm guessing around 500ish people might submit numbers. So I don't think all of the numbers less than 100 will be taken. But people might choose their birthday, so I wanted something bigger than 31. And I wanted a prime number a little bigger than that (I don't want a multiple of someone's favorite number). I also choose to skip over the 40s, because 4s are a common favorite number."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"Prime number with an idea that at least the first 50 numbers will be covered."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"Fairly random"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"It just feels right."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"None"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"AA"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"People think in even numbers"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"Tried to pick a number people don't like"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"I doubt many people are submitting numbers so I figured it would be in double digits. Random number generator."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"Because"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"Ducy"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"Just hoping I can slip in something under 100 that won't also get picked."} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"feeling lucky"} {"your_number":"53","show_your_work":"Odd number, can't be a birthday"} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"I chose 54 because I am certain it will be the correct answer. Unless it's not."} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"Probably too low, but why not?"} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"I suspect that odd numbers will more popular and the 50s seem like a good range."} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"Because"} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"My inclination was to go just above 100. Assuming many people think that, they will split between guessing slightly above and slightly below 100. Therefore I guessed drastically below that hoping to be lucky. That's a long way of saying that it is a complete guess and rationalization for what I wanted to put down."} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"My brother chose 60, I wanted to choose something lower than him but still high enough, not a multiple of 5 but not ending in a prime number like 3 or 7"} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"X"} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"hopefully i can be the lucky one who is the only one who picks this number!"} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"Assumed 10,000 entries, and entries would assume 500 or less with skewed distribution with mode 100, 54 would give about 1% chance. Also, 54 is even and there may be tendency for entries to be odd to be prime."} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"Completely arbitrary guess"} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"Ran a simulation based on Zipf's law with the following (horrible) code in R. Ran it with various parameters and took a good ole guess based on those. \n\nx <- 0\ny <- 0\nsum <- 0\nfor(count in 1:5000) {\n x[count] = 1/count\n if(count > 1){\n y[count] = y[count-1] + x[count]\n } else {\n y[count] = x[count]\n }\n sum = sum + x[count]\n}\npick <- 0\nfor(numPeople in 1:2300) {\n rand <- runif(1,0,sum)\n pick[numPeople] <- min(which(y > rand))\n}\ni <- 1\nwinner <- 1\nwhile(1) {\n temp <- which(pick == winner)\n if(length(temp) == 1) {\n break\n }\n winner = winner + 1\n}\nwinner"} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"AA"} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"Obviously it couldn't be too big, or it wouldn't satisfy the \"lowest\" criterion. It couldn't be too small, or it wouldn't satisfy the \"unique\" criterion. Bottom line: I guessed."} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"Suppose 2000 other people submit numbers. The probability that 1 is a winning play is the probability that nobody else submits 1. If everyone picks randomly with a distribution that selects 1 with that very probability, it is a solution to (1-p)^2000 = p, which, numerically, is about 1/343.\n\nI couldn't think of an effective way to extrapolate this strategy to larger numbers, so I rolled a virtual 343-sided die."} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"Judging by previous participatory Riddlers, there should be about 1500 entries (probably a bit more than the others, since this one is more straightforward). I chose 54 based off the fact that the 54th triangle number is the first triangle number greater than 1500. Fairly arbitrary selection, but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. At the very least, it doesn't seem like it would be a popular number (like 42 and 69).\n\nPretty please post all of the numbers less than the winner which had only two selectors. I am super curious about \"near misses\" and people who had their picks spoiled by just one person. Also, all the numbers greater than the winner with only one selector and those less than the winner with no selectors will be interesting. Or you know... drop that .csv on the hub of gits."} {"your_number":"54","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number!"} {"your_number":"55","show_your_work":"54 seems a touch too small, and I can't count to 56."} {"your_number":"55","show_your_work":"Just guessing"} {"your_number":"55","show_your_work":"im smart"} {"your_number":"55","show_your_work":"Not too high, not too low. Not a little bit above 100 (likely people will pick it)."} {"your_number":"55","show_your_work":"sqrt(3000)"} {"your_number":"55","show_your_work":"I picked a random number, assuming the lowest unique integer would be double digits. Fingers crossed nobody else picks it."} {"your_number":"55","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"55","show_your_work":"Thinking one step ahead: everyone will pick an obscure number, so I'll pick a relatively non-osbscure one."} {"your_number":"55","show_your_work":"Its pretty small but not THAT pretty small"} {"your_number":"55","show_your_work":"AA"} {"your_number":"55","show_your_work":"For the number of entrants n>=3 the equilibrium is mixed. We don't know what n is - however for previously submitted games is it in the low 1000s. All strategies over n/2 + 1 are strictly dominated. Consider x as a choice strategy. In equilibrium no choice gives a higher probability of winning than another. But If you increase x it requires more non-unique entries. Hence the probability assigned to x (denoted p(x) ) is monotonically decreasing. Although mathematically cumbersome it appears for small n that p(x) is approximately 2(n-x) x<=n/2 and 0 otherwise. The median winning entry is n/6. I decided to randomize with the caveat to avoid numbers that might be over selected."} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"It's unremarkable in most ways (not prime, not a key part of any major sequences), and is hopefully large enough to not get otherwise picked."} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"A number in the tens might just be low enough to be unique. 56 is a multiple of several numbers, and it is even. Even numbers seem less likely to be chosen. A number in the fifties is hopefully high enough to avoid being chosen twice or more."} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"Take a well known, small prime number[1] and subtract 1.\n\n[1]https://mfluch.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/57-the-grothendieck-prime/"} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"First let's see what game theory says we should do.\nAssume N>>1 players. Optimal play is to choose each possible number n with probability p(n) such that you can't do any better by another probability distribution. Therefore p(n) is a distribution such that the winning chance is 1/N for each n-choice.\nWhat is p(1)? On average N p(1) people choose 1; the chance that no-one else does is approximately e^(-N p(1)); if I choose 1, my chance of winning is therefore e^(-N p(1)) which should equal 1/N, so\np(1) = ln(N)/N\nThe total chance that someone wins with this strategy is\n(number who try it)*(chance to win) = N p(1) * (1/N) = p(1)\nand the chance that no-one wins with this strategy is therefore (1-p(1)).\n\nSimilarly the chance that picking 2 will win is Exp[-N p(2)] (1-p(1)) which should also equal 1/N, so p(2) = p(1)-p(1)/N. And\nExp[-N p(m)](1-p(1)-...-p(m)) = 1/N or\ndp/dm e^(Np(m)) = -p(m)\nI don't quite see how to solve this but it's clear that the typical m-value is of order N/ln(N)\nIf I assume 1000 players then the typical number to pick is in the 150 range.\n\nBut people are bad at picking random numbers, they like either very round numbers or primes, so I should pick something smaller which is neither very round nor prime.\nSo I tried 56. We'll see how it goes.\n"} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"Took the first number that came to my head and subtracted one because if 57 came to mind immediately that might happen to someone else."} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"5*6 = 30"} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"It's yet another Nash Equilibrium problem. Probably most people will understand it as such, so I feel like it's at least possible we get complete saturation here, but I'm somewhat arbitrarily choosing a number much high than I think the equilibrium would work out to."} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"Not too high"} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"The other riddler nation games seem to have 20 percent people playing a spoiler/ cheese attack (something like picking 1-20 is my estimate) and then a large part playing a 3rd order defense and playing to conservative. this is my attempt to split the difference while also picking a bland number (no primes no squares)"} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"Pure guesswork"} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"Not too high, not too low :)"} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"There can't be *that* many nerds playing this game."} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"I want to avoid the first 40 numbers because they are likely so low in the order that at least someone will pick it. I want to avoid anything 90+ under the asumption that at least 1 number below will not be taken, as well as the fact that the 90-110 numbers are likely to be popular due to close prosimity to 100 (Y'know, base 10 centrism). Under the very arbitary asumption that 6 is an uncommon ending digit, i guess 56 would fit pretty well. It is just not obvious enough for the vast majority to take it. I will need to be lucky that no one else thinks of the number."} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"that's why"} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"I am assuming 30,000 entries, based on nothing much other than the idea that 538 is popular but that a great many people skip the riddles because they are demanding and rigorous. Entry to this one is easy and requires no hard work calculations, just a wild guess. I assume people will cluster in the low numbers, but not too low. I picked 56 as, just possibly, the lowest number that would exceed the other numbers chosen by others, assuming some clusteringing in the 20s and 30s. I am imagining a trailing out of numbers in the 40s. I am imagining a few scattered people will choose in the 50s and 70s, but that there will be skips above the 40s. I chose 56 as a plausible right thin tail of the curve of the bell shaped distribution. I am guessing lots of people in the 20s and 30s, the height of the bell curve. (FYI I have edited and revised my number up from the mid 30s, deciding that a lot of other people would be strategic the way I am and that the cluster would take place in the high 20s and 30s.)"} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"Uniqueness is my main concern. I'm going the conservative route with a high number. I think the winner will be less than 100"} {"your_number":"56","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"People tend towards even numbers? People will guess higher than 100 or lower than 50? Man... I don't know."} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"Guessed"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"For Grothendieck"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"Tried to think a number that wouldn't have much meaning and wouldn't be too low that others would pick it"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"Just a hunch"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"Not too low."} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"why not"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"seems low, but not so low that everyone will choose it"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"Just hoping for the best"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"My daughter just told me it's her least favorite number. It just might be low enough to win."} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"I just randomly picked grothendieck’s prime"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"My guess is that the first 50 or so positive integers will get submitted more than once each. 57 is one of those funny numbers that feels prime but isn't (3 x 19)."} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"No particular reason"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"I feel it has a lot to do with how many people submit answers. Everyone is trying to guess low so the lower the number more likely two someones will try that number. Need to go high enough that others dont pick it."} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"Think about it!?"} {"your_number":"57","show_your_work":"Cause it's a stupid fucking number"} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"70 - 12 = 58"} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"Because it's the right answer"} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"Seems like a good number. Not prime, but doesn’t have too many factors either."} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"Smallest doubled prime over 50"} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"Strictly gut feel. I assumed there would be some bias toward numbers between 1 and 25 (by eternal optimists), prime numbers (by overthinkers) and multiples of 5 (by quick-and-dirty entrants). This number seemed low enough to have an actual chance of winning."} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"Wanted to guess a non-prime, non-odd number because those were the first numbers I thought of. Intersection of the distribution of guesses and the probability that the number was not guessed is probably somewhere between 50 and 100 - depending on the number of replies. I was never very good at Swoopo."} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"It is the most anonymous number below 100"} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"Seems like an unlikely number, just picked almost out of a hat. Seriously, I just rolled a pair of dice twice."} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"I started by avoiding the numbers 1 - 31, as potential birth dates. That makes 34 a tempting choice but others are likely to think the same. It is necessary to think several steps ahead of others without getting too high and there is also a certain appeal about 2 x prime numbers, which are ugly enough not too attract too many people, but not as obvious to fellow competitors as prime numbers themselves."} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"I wanted to chose a number with a low number of factors, one that was even, and one that was not prime. 58 and 68 were my two choices, and I went with 58 due to it being lower."} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"I read something on Reddit about the least common jersey numbers in the NBA, and the lowest among those nobody ever wore was 58. I figured I couldn't go wrong by following some stranger's research without doing any fact checking. Plus, it seems like a good compromise between not putting any effort into this and putting way too much (which on a Saturday afternoon is anything more than spending 2 minutes on Google)."} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"About 1000 people entered the spy game, so I assume a similar number will enter this. While most people will go for higher numbers, I'm guessing there will be a sizeable number that try to outsmart everyone by going low. \n\nThere will assuredly be those who pick nice numbers; but there will be a lot who pick uncomfortable numbers on that logic.\n\nSo 58 - not too nice, not too messy, not too low, not too high (I hope)."} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"It's a random number that's not prime (which I assume will be everyone's strategy)"} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"a random guess"} {"your_number":"58","show_your_work":"felt like it"} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"luck"} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"Based on the number of submissions is previous weeks, I figured the number can not be too low. So I chose my dad's year of birth."} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"I chose it as not-commonly selected as a number and is low enough to possibly win."} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"Because it's not 1-31 (birthdays) and just high enough where if someone wanted to game the system by submitting multiple numbers, I don't think they'd have the patience to get this high. Although with macros, I'd wouldn't be surprised if someone submitted numbers through 500 (or even 1000 or higher) just to win. I know I created multiple accounts for the MLB ASB voting (5 times a day...psh, more like 100)(google + sign email trick.) I'd be curious as to what the highest picked number is as well."} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"59 is not a round number, nor is it a number associated with anything notorious."} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"Well obviously people want low numbers, seems like the vast majority of people will be in the sub 50s, probably one of those will be unique (I have no good estimate of the number of people who will submit to this). My first thought was 53, but human's can tend to be not that random, so I'm sure some other dummy is picking that number. So I proceeded to just add a few and I got 59. I better win."} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"Because why not."} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"It's my lucky number, it's high enough to control for people submitting low numbers, and just random enough to avoid people pulling a number off the top of their head."} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"I thought of a number I didn't like."} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"I think the winner will be greater than 10 but less than 100, not divisible by 10, and not an especially interesting number, like 42 or 69. Beyond that, it's just guessing."} {"your_number":"59","show_your_work":"why not"} {"your_number":"60","show_your_work":"Hoping for luck"} {"your_number":"60","show_your_work":"It's pretty clear that it's 60"} {"your_number":"60","show_your_work":"I believe every number below about 30 or 40 will be chosen at least twice. Above that, most people will pick random numbers, and some will be ridiculously high. I chose the next round number that wasn't to0 round (60, not 50, as some would pick the \"roundest\" number)."} {"your_number":"60","show_your_work":"Absolutely arbitrary."} {"your_number":"60","show_your_work":"It's just a solid relatively low number. Being divisible by [1,6] is pretty neat."} {"your_number":"60","show_your_work":"I figure trolls would submit most of the lowest options, and for whatever reason I think people think odd and prime numbers are unique, so I wanted an even number with a lot of factors."} {"your_number":"60","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"60","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"60","show_your_work":"People like odd numbers and primes, so I took the chance that no-one's going to go for a nice round number with so many different factors."} {"your_number":"60","show_your_work":"60"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"I felt the number must be somewhat high, given the amount of people submitting answers, and 61 just felt like a petty unique number."} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"Who the f*** cares about 61?"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"Wouldn't you like to know"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"go low!"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"Well usually 1000s of responses means that people will do the legwork and keep moving up the number line. Might as well avoid the trolls I suppose."} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"That's the page number I'm on for the book I stopped reading to answer this."} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"Assume N=2000 submissions by others (which is about the number of submissions here for popular problems), with each submission picking a number from 1 to M=1000 independently and with probability of n being k/n (so k≈2/15).\n\nIf you pick n, the probability that no one else picked it is (1-k/n)^N. The probability that there are no unique numbers below it as approximately\nproduct(P(m is not unique) for m = 1 to n-1), and P(m is not unique) = 1-N*k/m*(1-k/m)^(N-1).\n\nNumber 61 is reasonable in that the probability is close to maximal, though the probability that this entry wins is only roughly 2/300.\n\nPython 3 code for estimated winning probability:\n\ndef winprob(N,M,n):\n\tk = 1/sum(1/n for n in range(1,M+1))\n\tprob = (1-k/n)**N\n\tfor m in range(1,n):\n\t\tprob *= 1-N*k/m*(1-k/m)**(N-1)\n\treturn prob"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"Seems high enough but not too high"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"Cuz it's the best"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"Is there really supposed to be any logic to this?"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"Thought odd has to be more likely and also prime."} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"It seems like a number that would not be chosen a lot."} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"not sure"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"A few thousand people will reply. The distribution of guesses will have a small tail at low numbers, because of the expectation that these will be taken. Always good to be a contrarian in games against the herd."} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"Has to be fairly large. Few thousand submissions."} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"Based on loose assumptions on how many participants there will be and how they will choose their numbers. The \"choose\" model favors smaller integers..."} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"just a guess, aren't they all?"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"I generated it on random.org"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"It's a pretty good number!"} {"your_number":"61","show_your_work":"shruggie"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"Depends on how many people respond"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"I picked a number that's low but not too low!"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"No reason"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"Probably too low... But a pretty unremarkable number."} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"I wanted an even number thinking more people would pick odd. Also wanted something that would be less superstitious like sequential numbers or duplicate numbers."} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"Just hoping no one else chooses 62 I guess"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"fairly low number but not too low, nothing special about it to make other people think about it. I don't know how many people participate but I hope it's not tens of thousands."} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"I hoped to pick a low number that would be overlooked. I couldn't think of anything really special about 62, so I went with it."} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"It is even"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"Shot in the dark"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"I assumed there'd be 1500 submissions since that's what the coffee challenge had. So we know at least the winning number has to be less than 750, which isn't all that helpful, really. So then I figured people pick odd numbers more than even numbers. And this webpage was interesting http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/02/05/is-17-the-most-random-number/ But really, it was mostly just a guess."} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"I asked a coworker for a number between 1 and 200 and that's what they gave me."} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"I guess the amount of chosen numbers is poisson distributed with lambda > 1, so I guesstimated the users participating and from there intuition gave me a number. I tried to err a little on small number side as I want to win this. Tjere is no point in guessing a number no one else has, when that number is to big to win. Also I shied away from numbers dividable by 10 or 5 and prime numbers."} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"didn't want to pick a number below 50--thought others might have the same idea, so skipped 51-60. 61 seemed too obvious, being a prime."} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"Why not"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"cus"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"I think that the numbers from 1-50 all will be taken. Moreover, I think people are more likely to pick an odd number than an even (since odds are prime I think intuitively people will think that they are \"overlooked\" and thus less likely to be picked). I think 62 is perfectly placed, for an even, to be overlooked because it is sandwiched between 60 -- which has a lot of factors and stands out -- and 64, which is a perfect square and also stands out."} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"Nobody chooses 62"} {"your_number":"62","show_your_work":"Just cause"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"who even knows"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"Gut Feeling"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"I used my Masters in Analytics to pull a number out of the air."} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"No good reason"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"Honestly, I don't have a mathematical explanation. I know that it pays to be aggressive (as in, it pays to have a low number) but I know you can be too aggressive. This feels like the right amount of aggressive."} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"Year of my birth"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"Call it a hunch"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"There are a couple meta levels of decision making here, like the poison cup scene in Princess Bride. It seems obvious that the lowest numbers will be picked, so some much higher number should be chosen to afford a bare chance. But most people will figure that out, leaving the lower numbers unpicked. Yet many of them will also figure that out, and will pick some very low number. And many of them will take this one step further, and one further, again like the Princess Bride scene. At some point, as this is much more a social psychology problem than a math one, you just gotta pick a number.\n\nConsidering that with each iteration there were be fewer and fewer submissions ending at that iteration, and most players will stick to a relatively small number of iterations, I chose an \"even\" iteration (going high-low-high-low), ending with a relatively low number, but not as low as would be picked in the first low iteration (as some players will choose at every iteration, more numbers will be used up the further down the rabbit hole you go). So I chose a relatively low number, but ultimately it was based on feeling, and 63 is just a nice number, one digit being a factor of the other, the sum of the two being the square of one, with the product of the two numbers being a number whose individual digits also produces that square as a sum, as well as being double that square (36 would do all the same but felt too low).\n\nWhat fun! Cheers!"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"63 seems to be a number without many interesting properties that may cause people to pick it."} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"Intuition"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"63"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"63","show_your_work":"far enough from 1 but not too much"} {"your_number":"64","show_your_work":"Using some functions in excel, and the fact that a previous riddle (the coffee riddle) got 1500 responses, I created a few lists of random numbers weighted toward the lower end and found the lowest number in each list. The average was around 120. \nHowever then I looked at the responses for the coffee riddle and realized that of the 1500 responses, around 600 were \"throwaway\" responses who just submitted \"1\" or \"0.5\" likely without much thought. Using a random list of 1000 numbers, my average was closer to 90. The lower end of those was in the 60's, so I chose 64, to try to be more aggressive with my approach."} {"your_number":"64","show_your_work":"I have no idea how many submissions there will be. This seems close to where there win will happen. Of course, if other people have that same thought..."} {"your_number":"64","show_your_work":"Because 64"} {"your_number":"64","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"64","show_your_work":"just a guess"} {"your_number":"64","show_your_work":"I suspect many will go for a number above 100 that there might fall a few gaps lower than 100. Not sure where though. I went with a number that's rather obvious (any power of 2 is), which should deter most people from picking it, but not as obvious as say 50, because others might have the same idea."} {"your_number":"64","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"64","show_your_work":"Hi Abi"} {"your_number":"64","show_your_work":"I assumed everybody would default to a 3-digit number, and that those who submitted a 2-digit number would chose a number closing in on 100. I assumed the most likely range to be overlooked would be 40-65, since those would be assumed to be taken but less commonly chosen."} {"your_number":"65","show_your_work":"It just kinda felt right at this exact moment. Not too low, not too high."} {"your_number":"65","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"65","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"65","show_your_work":"Not too small"} {"your_number":"65","show_your_work":"I just guessed"} {"your_number":"66","show_your_work":"Even numbers are rarely considered 'random'. Especially with repetition involved."} {"your_number":"66","show_your_work":"Element 66 Dysprosium is my go-to number for random stuff"} {"your_number":"66","show_your_work":"Random number between 1 and 100"} {"your_number":"66","show_your_work":"Beats me."} {"your_number":"66","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"66","show_your_work":"I picked a 2-digit number using a random number generator."} {"your_number":"66","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"66","show_your_work":"doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122923 + some fiddling with the data."} {"your_number":"66","show_your_work":"Assuming people stack the low numbers"} {"your_number":"66","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"66","show_your_work":"Random integer between 1 and 100. Seems like the only optimal strategy in this game is to pick randomly, and I just guessed the range from 1 to 100 because I bet the optimal range depends on the number of players and that is unknown to me. This is just intuition based on some time having been spent on graduate game theory courses."} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"Stab in the dark."} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"I estimated that this is the point where people will start skipping over numbers."} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"Not too low. Not too high."} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"It can't be a very low number, but might be a higher, but not common number"} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"A couple lower than 69 😂"} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"aa\n"} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"I figured many people would go too high (100s or 1000s) or really low 1-10. This seems like a good number in the middle."} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"Its high enough where it shouldnt be selected but still low enough to win"} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"I suspect that single digit numbers will all be chosen by people. I suspect that two digit numbers will be chosen by some people, but that not all two-digit numbers will be chosen. I suspect that two-digit numbers will be chosen based on favorites, and peoples' own conscious or subconscious bias, and that numbers like 13, 42, and 69 are \"more common\" followed closely by some perfect squares. I feel that 67 is not a number that is closely associated with other things and is less likely to be chosen. It will be interesting to see what the final distribution is (perhaps more interesting to me than the winning number, are the numbers that are highly chosen, and the \"low\" numbers that are not chosen at all)."} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"I asked my daughter at dinner tonight, she said it was the best year for muscle cars. That sounded better than my original choice of 2 for people who initially thought 1 but then on second thought went higher and passed 2."} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"https://frankzliu.com/the-riddler-2017-07-28-edition/"} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"Nobody likes the number 67"} {"your_number":"67","show_your_work":"Past experience"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"It's really just guessing, isn't it?"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"Random pick"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"I rolled a d100 and got 68"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"Avoid 3s and 7s (most likely 'random' numbers to be chosen by people) Avoid prime numbers or other significant digits. Too low and many will select on the off chance that everyone else avoids it. I chose 68 because I am ignorant of how many people actually do the riddler each week."} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"Really counting on people choosing 69"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"One less than 69"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"I suspect the winning number will be lower than most people expect... however, I'm sure a number of people will make multiple low guesses to eliminate those numbers from contention. I'm hoping my guess will be just high enough to avoid those people."} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"It is not prime, and it seems fairly high enough to possibly be unique while still low enough to win."} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"1 less than the children who will choose 69 :-)"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"It just feels right."} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"Teams in the NCAA tournament"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"I feel like 68 is nobody's favorite number but also it isn't prime, it isn't a multiple of anything interesting, just kind of a dull composite number.\nI am most interested in the lowest integer that *nobody* submits."} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"Guesswork"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"I took the square root of my guess of the number of participants and chose a nearby even number that I thought others were unlikely to choose."} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"aa"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"No rhyme or reason"} {"your_number":"68","show_your_work":"I didn't think anyone else would submit it"} {"your_number":"69","show_your_work":"I just like it"} {"your_number":"69","show_your_work":"69"} {"your_number":"69","show_your_work":"Reverse Phycology ( lol )"} {"your_number":"69","show_your_work":"nice"} {"your_number":"69","show_your_work":"Nice"} {"your_number":"69","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"69","show_your_work":"Gronk's favorite number"} {"your_number":"69","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"69","show_your_work":"funny number"} {"your_number":"69","show_your_work":"Isn't it obvious?"} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"People usually choose good factorable numbers, so they won't choose one because they think others will."} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"Random number generator between 50 and 100 (arbitrary endpoints that seem about right)"} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"I literally googled \"weirdest number\" and there is a Wikipedia page for \"Weird number.\" I'm intrigued by this and eager to see what the winning number ends up being."} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"IDK, seems reasonable?"} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"Doing this right totally depends on the number of submitters, and what other submitters think is the number of submitters. Given ~n submitters, I think you aim for a random number between 0 - [n/2] and hope for the best. (And I think there will be enough smartasses trying something from 0-10.) Estimating 300 entries, my random number generator came up with the above."} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"69+1"} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"I expect the distribution to be very high for N=1, followed by very flat for small integers as people try to get a little too ambitious. It will likely then fall off gradually, with a great deal of noise and maybe even with a secondary peak from everybody thinking about \"not too high, not too low\" numbers. I haven't thought about it that hard, but it seems likely that some number a little above where I expect that possible peak will likely be the smallest unique one. I don't know how many submissions The Riddler gets each week - at least a few hundred, and maybe several thousand? The lowest unpicked number is then virtually certainly less than 2000, and probably not bigger than 200. Perhaps people will shy away from nice round numbers in that range and I'll be the only one to pick 70. Seems more likely than going with, oh, 8 or something, and if I picked something like 344 I may very well have a unique number but it probably wouldn't be the lowest one."} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"WAG"} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"Chosen at random :)"} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"No work done - I am lazy"} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"70","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"I guessed"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Seemed like a unique number."} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Aliens"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Figure a lot of people will go various routes to have the lowest unique integer (the really low numbers are too obvious). Just hoping this isn't too far back (although I wouldn't be surprised if a triple digit integer wins."} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Why not, seemed like a nice number (and prime!) :)"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"An uninteresting low number"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Why not"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Random number..."} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"71 is odd and a prime"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"I figure a weird prime number will be less obvious to everyone trying to find a relatively low number that no one else will choose. 71 fits the bill."} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"People thinking strategically won't pick a low number (1-10), but a lot of people will combat that by thinking they're going to be the only one to pick a low number. People will combat that strategy by picking numbers slightly higher. This continues basically until everyone participating has picked a number, so the cut off for unique number realllly depends on how many responses you get. In the end, given the simplicity of picking a number, you'll probably get around 700 responses. A lot of people will choose 69 cause why not, then a lot of people will choose 70 because it's one higher. So 71."} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"It's a nice number"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"its so close to 69 that most people in the vicinity will just choose 69"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"I dunno"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Just a random low guess"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Just strange enough to maybe be unique!"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Because every pervert is going to pick 69, and every counter-pervert is going to pick 70, so I am then a counter-counter-pervert. Does that make me a pervert then?"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"I do what the voices tell me."} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Chose a prime number and a bit high as people would rarely choose such a number"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Pulled it out of thin air"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"I innately knew the answer."} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"I expect around 10,000 entries, 80% will choose <= 10, so that leaves 2,000 of which 80% will be either 10's (20, 30, 40, ...), perfect squares (16, 25, 36, ...), birthdays (range [11, 31]), or age (assuming the typical internet user is somewhere between 11 and 70 years old). I chose the next number: 71. Hopefully the other 400 people that choose a number above 70 that's not a square or a multiple of 10 will go higher - possibly much higher. I'll be interested to see the distribution of guesses."} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Probably going to be a lot of trolls who fill up all the low numbers, so just pick a number and pray."} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"lucky number"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"I picked a random number between 1 and 100 (well, the first time it gave 1 and I rejected that.)"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Picked a random number from 1 to 100. that's it."} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Looking for a number that does not stand out"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Guessed"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Guess."} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Lutetium (LU) is both my favorite element and my wife's maiden name"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Random Number Generator ftw"} {"your_number":"71","show_your_work":"Just a hunch"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"Sandwiched between to delicious primes"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"Hoping to sneak a low number in!"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"Just throwing out a guess."} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"Pure guessing"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"First number that popped into my head after I read the prompt."} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"I used an estimate of 2000 submissions and a normal-esque distribution starting from 0 to determine what the winning number would have been in various simulations. 72 was the lowest \"reliable\" winner. So in other words, it was a total guess :-)"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"Feels just random enough and just small enough"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"Assumes Riddler readers will submit primes, so I wanted a seriously composite number!"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"It's a good number"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"Even number not to small, not to big"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"A guess. I figured many people will chose a number over 100"} {"your_number":"72","show_your_work":"My lucky number"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Aribtrarily not small, but not too large"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Because it is a prime, emirp, star number, and a palindrome in octal/binary. Essentially it is just the best."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Mmmm"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Prime number; interesting prime number, but hopefully not _too_ interesting (73 = 21st prime, 7*3=21, 37 is 12th prime; also a binary palindrome, 1001001). You usually get thousands of responses; I think that a number under 100, but not *too* far under 100, will likely win (though you'll get thousands of responses under 100)."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Picked out of thin air"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Figured at some point people would give up on numbers below 100 and try to be smart with higher numbers."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Low enough to plausibly win, high enough to plausibly be unique. Depending on how many people play, that is - I have no idea what the audience for this will be."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Prime"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"just a guess"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"538 typically gets a few thousand replies to it's riddler questions. I figure a lot of entries will be in the thousands, but that a low prime number might sneak through. 73 might not be right, but I bet the logic is."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"it's a number?"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Seems like an arbitrary number so maybe others won't pick it"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"There seems to be very little justification in choosing one number rather than another, since success depends on avoiding numbers chosen by other people who are just as uncertain."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Gut feeling, but decided odd number has a better chance of winning (probably succumbing to groupthink and failing miserably in process)\n"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Seems high enough without being to popular\n"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"it's a cool number!!"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"I wanted an obscure two digit number know lots of people would pick very low numbers."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"It's my favorite number, and one not usually picked for, really, anything."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"I totally guessed"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"I looked at a list of prime numbers and selected an non-obvious choice."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Kind of a random number, and it is prime. Thought the number was just high enough to be unique."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"I went largely on instinct"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Theoretical answer is infinite, but reality is different. It is the opposite of the famous Keynes problem."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Because 7 is an infrequently chosen random number and 3 is far away on both forms of keypad (less likely to be typed at random)."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"no body likes 73, I think it needs some love"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"It's not a number people really think of often"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"David Blaine once said that 37 is the most commonly-selected two-digit number between 0 and 100."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Prime numbers are less thought of."} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"yes"} {"your_number":"73","show_your_work":"Sincerely a guess, but I'm expecting a relatively steep drop-off in number choices and opted for a prime number for flare."} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"I think there's a temptation to go high, but it seems likely that there will be a couple of two digit numbers that are not picked so staying in that range feels like the right move."} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"There are about a 1000 entries per week, so anything below 50 did not seem feasible. I also did not want to pick a commonly seen number (75, 100, etc). 74 seemed like a good guess to maximize my chances."} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"My lucky number!"} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"No"} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"Because it seems reasonable"} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"It might work"} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"Common but not the most common."} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"It looked nice."} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"Random number between 1 and 150, rolled a few times until I got one I liked."} {"your_number":"74","show_your_work":"I just went for a number that didn't seem close to any other likely number. This had very little thought that went into it, other than liking 74."} {"your_number":"75","show_your_work":"I think that a number below 100 will be unique. I think that people will be trying to pick numbers that \"sound\" unlikely, such as prime numbers. 75 is high enough that it's not one of the obvious lowest numbers that people might pick as a hail mary (1-20), but it's also a number that is low enough that there's an outside chance it might be the lowest unique number."} {"your_number":"75","show_your_work":"Very small numbers are subject to reverse psychology: \"no one will pick 1 because that would be too bold\". So at least one bold person will likely pick each of the \"very small\" numbers (say, those you can count on two hands) because they consider it unlikely that anyone else will. Above this limit, the number of players is more of a factor - the more players, the higher the likelihood that any given number will be picked at least once. Since the number of players is unknown, I have no rational criterion to decide, even if I had a plausible model. Numbers that aren't \"round\" (multiples of 5) are probably more likely to be chosen than numbers that are, as people try to avoid the \"obvious\" choices. So I chose a \"not very small\" multiple of 5."} {"your_number":"75","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"76","show_your_work":"I hope no one else picks this."} {"your_number":"76","show_your_work":"Not too low, not a number commonly associated with something else, but not unreasonably high."} {"your_number":"76","show_your_work":"Single digits are expected, 10-25 are less expected, but still high probability that someone would choose, 26-50 are in a similar boat, only less so, same with 51-75. 76 Seems like a high enough number that few would pick it, it has very few connections outside of math, and is fairly unimpressive."} {"your_number":"76","show_your_work":"I have no idea how to guess what other people will be entering, so I am just making a random guess."} {"your_number":"76","show_your_work":"Because"} {"your_number":"76","show_your_work":"I estimate that maybe 1000 people might enter. I assume that numbers chosen might decay geometrically, such that 100 is 10% as likely to be chosen as 1. This results in a geometric ratio of .977 and P(1)=.023. Given 1000 people, and approximating a Poisson distribution for f(y), where y is the number of people out of 1000 choosing a number x, we have lambda (x)=23 * .977^^(x-1). I then get f(1;x) from this lambda. I then calculate the probability that x is the first unique = f(1;x)*P(all counts for less than x are not 1), where the second term is a product of independent probabilities ((1-(f(1;1))*(1-(f(1:2)) * ...). Putting this into an Excel spreadsheet the probability of the first unique value maximizes at 76."} {"your_number":"76","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"76","show_your_work":"Arbitrary"} {"your_number":"76","show_your_work":":drunk_smiley_face:"} {"your_number":"77","show_your_work":"Meh. Showing work is overrated."} {"your_number":"77","show_your_work":"Shot in the dark."} {"your_number":"77","show_your_work":"Hide \n68, 34, 17, 85, 5, 95, 19, 38, 76, 4, 92, 46, 23, 69, 3, 87, 29, 58, 2, 62, 31, 93, 1, 39, 78, 26, 52, 13, 91, 7, 77, 11, 99, 33, 66, 22, 44, 88, 8, 56, 28, 84, 42, 21, 63, 9, 81, 27, 54, 18, 90, 45, 15, 75, 25, 50, 100, 20, 40, 80, 16, 64, 32, 96, 6, 36, 72, 24, 48, 12, 60, 30, 10, 70, 14, 98, 49\n\nI am pretty sure there is a way to get to 78, but I can't figure it out. I looked at the primes first, saw where I could input them in my set, then I looked at numbers with only two multiples and thought of where they would have to go. From there it was a lot of trial and error."} {"your_number":"77","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"77","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"77","show_your_work":"I guessed"} {"your_number":"77","show_your_work":"Just a hunch..."} {"your_number":"77","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"I picked a number"} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"Whimsy"} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"Science!"} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"idk"} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"Not too low, not too high, just right"} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"Used a random number generator to pick a 2-digit number"} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"i don't know"} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"Many, many low numbers will be chosen. Most will not be unique."} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"Figured people might forget about that one"} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"No"} {"your_number":"78","show_your_work":"A magician never reveals his secrets."} {"your_number":"79","show_your_work":"I had random.org select a number between 51 and 149. I would retry any number that is a multiple of 5, but this one came on the first try."} {"your_number":"79","show_your_work":"random guess!"} {"your_number":"79","show_your_work":"It's a prime number greater than 50, below 100"} {"your_number":"79","show_your_work":"79"} {"your_number":"79","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"79","show_your_work":"I assumed people would work through 1-50 pretty quickly, so I tried to think of a number that I would think of last."} {"your_number":"80","show_your_work":"Generated a random integer between 1 and 200, got 191. I figure this is almost certainly too high the more I think about it, as it seems unlikely all other integers less than that will be used. Generated a new one and got 80. Decided to try with that."} {"your_number":"80","show_your_work":"People trying to be \"unique\" almost always pick odd numbers, or number with few prime factors. So I picked an even, \"common\"-seeming one that isn't too low."} {"your_number":"80","show_your_work":"random guess"} {"your_number":"80","show_your_work":"The stars told me to"} {"your_number":"80","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"80","show_your_work":"It sounds like a number a lot of people wouldn't choose, I think. I don't know. It's hard to reason this out."} {"your_number":"80","show_your_work":"I suspect lots of people will be hoping to get luck in the 20s and 40s and an aversion to 'round' or even numbers - meaning the candiate will probably be some round number above that point."} {"your_number":"81","show_your_work":"Best guess"} {"your_number":"81","show_your_work":"Seems like a good number to submit"} {"your_number":"81","show_your_work":"2-digit # has better chance. 80s might get overlooked, if I'm lucky. 80 is too obvious."} {"your_number":"81","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"81","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"81","show_your_work":"Seems it's the \"sweet spot\"; besides, it's 9², and the number 9 has some intriguing properties in our decimal counting system."} {"your_number":"82","show_your_work":"Going by the pareto distribution I would guess numbers with high leading digits would be less common answers.\nPlus 82 is neither prime nor well divisible so it isn't that interesting a number"} {"your_number":"82","show_your_work":"Lot of numbers out there."} {"your_number":"82","show_your_work":"Primes are obvious, high even numbers maybe not so much?"} {"your_number":"82","show_your_work":"This is an easy Riddler to participate in (if difficult to actually estimate well). Just under 1000 people participated in the last Battle for Riddler Nation, which was a similar strategy game with a low barrier of entry. My guess is that most of the first 100 numbers will get blocked out, but not all of them. Some numbers are more popular than others, for whatever reason. I would expect a number like 17 to be one of the top choices, because people have an affinity for numbers that “feel” random. My guess is 82. It’s below 100, even (to avoid pro-odd bias), but high enough that I think there’s a chance it will be the correct choice."} {"your_number":"82","show_your_work":"Just felt right"} {"your_number":"82","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"82","show_your_work":"Seems about the right range"} {"your_number":"82","show_your_work":"Go small or go home"} {"your_number":"83","show_your_work":"Feels like crumby number. Without knowing our sample size it's hard to know how high to go."} {"your_number":"83","show_your_work":"Random Guess"} {"your_number":"83","show_your_work":"I'd prefer not....that's how I managed to find a unique answer"} {"your_number":"83","show_your_work":"Randomness"} {"your_number":"83","show_your_work":"Random!"} {"your_number":"83","show_your_work":"randomly"} {"your_number":"83","show_your_work":"I wanted a number under 100, not too high (In the 90's) and not obviously too close to 90 that it appears to be deliberately under 90. 83 is prime, so not a multiple of any other number."} {"your_number":"83","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"83","show_your_work":"The number is an inside joke on Chicago sports radio. Also, being a prime, it's not a number that will tend to come to people's minds."} {"your_number":"83","show_your_work":"I assume everything under 20 will be picked, then some people will pick their age, so looking for a number above the average age demographic and hope for the best."} {"your_number":"84","show_your_work":"There are occasional mentions of the number of submissions for Riddler puzzles - based on 1,382 for the delightful battle for Riddler Nation, it doesn't seem too unlikely every number up to 100 will find a sponsor.\n\nSo I've gone through the obvious random-looking numbers (anything ending with a 7, anything prime, etc.) up to 100, as well as all the counter-intuitively obvious numbers that people will pick because they expect most to go for unusual ones (anything ending with a 0, any squares, cubes, etc.).\n\nThen, once I'd determined 24 numbers to be \"obvious\" and 29 to be \"random-looking\", I got bored and picked something dull from the higher end of what remained (in the expectation that the lower numbers were more likely to be taken) - it looks neither obvious nor interesting, and I have more faith in the Riddler readership than to assume there'll be any unadventurous 32-to-33-year-olds or Orwell readers taking a punt on a significant date."} {"your_number":"84","show_your_work":"It's small, but not THAT small"} {"your_number":"84","show_your_work":"Boring but not too boring. If I lose it will be the other guys' fault."} {"your_number":"84","show_your_work":"Ha. Antonio Brown's jersey number. Also, I kinda expect people to go for primes/avoid round numbers."} {"your_number":"84","show_your_work":"Not too high, not too weird (assuming people go for weird)."} {"your_number":"84","show_your_work":"It came to me in a dream."} {"your_number":"84","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"84","show_your_work":"People avoid even numbers. Assumed that 3-digits is too many."} {"your_number":"85","show_your_work":"High enough to avoid people going for it, taking the reverse of the even/odd likelihood assuming that 538 users are smart, 5s seem round in their own way"} {"your_number":"85","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"it felt right"} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"The number isn't prime, and seems sufficiently large."} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"I expect around 2000 submissions. I imagine the distribution will be somewhere proportional to 1/x, so somewhere in the 200s there should start to be a bunch of available numbers. but I don't want it more likely than not to have a unique number; I want the winning number, so I must choose a number that is likely chosen by someone else, hoping that I just happen to get lucky and that it's unique. I'll guess that a lot of people will prefer odd numbers (and even prime numbers). I also want to avoid really common numbers like 100 or 150. So, I'll choose a composite number around 100. 86 seems as good as any other."} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"it's less than 100, it's bigger than 50, and it doesn't have a \"7\" in it."} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"1-50 I wasn't going to touch. When people pick random numbers they tend to pick ones with 7 - so I avoided using it. 86 felt random enough to me while still being somewhat low."} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"86"} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"Lucky guess..."} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"Just a guess..."} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"I guessed that about 1000 entries would be submitted, and that the winner would be somewhere near the square root, near 100."} {"your_number":"86","show_your_work":"felt right."} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"Who knows"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"Don't be greedy ;)"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"I pretty much just guessed."} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"Mostly random. Can't pick too low of a number because that's where the majority of responses will lie."} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"It's smaller than I think is likely to win, which seems like the equivalent of going down swinging in this game."} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"Just a guess!"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"87"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"1000 submissions on battle for riddler nation 2 so number should be somewhere from 1-500. Many people probably pick between 1-75 so anything greater is probably a crapshoot to be unique and be the lowest number"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"I picked a number. That's it"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"Guessed"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"hoping it gets overlooked"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"Lots of folks will use their age. I don't think there are many 83 year olds reading this."} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"Out of nowhere"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"Completely Random"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"Smallish. Product of two primes, one of which is often overlooked"} {"your_number":"87","show_your_work":"Correct answer will surely be lower, but just picking a number."} {"your_number":"88","show_your_work":"My favorite number"} {"your_number":"88","show_your_work":"Lucky guess"} {"your_number":"88","show_your_work":"Did some math. How likely to win vs how likely to be unique vs likely random guesses. Didn't like any of my results so I randomly guessed."} {"your_number":"88","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"88","show_your_work":"42"} {"your_number":"89","show_your_work":"Just hoping to get lucky with a 2-digit number (the 11th in Fibonacci)"} {"your_number":"89","show_your_work":"I was born 1989, remove the starting 19 and voila: 89"} {"your_number":"89","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"89","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"89","show_your_work":"My football number"} {"your_number":"89","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"90","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"90","show_your_work":"I did some preliminary reading (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1105.0819.pdf) and guessed an even number close to a hundred."} {"your_number":"90","show_your_work":"I convinced myself that the optimal strategy for this is to choose from a distribution with P(X=n) strictly decreasing in n, nearly flat for small numbers but tapering off somewhere on the order of N/log(N), where N is the number of people playing. If everyone plays with this strategy, then the number of people choosing each number up to N/log(N) will be approximated by a Poisson distribution with parameter log(N), giving a 1/e^log(N) = 1/N chance of any given number being chosen by exactly one person. This is more or less what you want for a Nash equilibrium; i.e. in order for any given person to have no incentive to prefer larger or smaller numbers. (My first instinct--coincidentally, from playing this game with Abijith himself some years ago--had been to taper around sqrt(N), but this makes unique choices much too unlikely.)\n\nOnce I was satisfied with my heuristic, I estimated (based on past Riddler Nation puzzles) that between 1000 and 2000 people will participate, so N/log(N) ~ 1500/7.3 ~ 200. I picked a random number between 1 and 200. This turned out to be 42, which felt too obvious, so I tried again and went with 90."} {"your_number":"90","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"Benford's Law says that 9 is the least common first digit (and second digit) in naturally occurring sets of numbers. But others are likely aware of Benford's Law and so would choose 99, or, anticipating others' similar choices would pick 98, 97, etc. Since zero is the most common second digit under Benford's Law (and therefore unlikely to be picked by those aware of Benford's Law), it would be a good anticipatory choice as well, but, for that reason (and because it is the lowest number in the 90s), it is actually a bad choice. Therefore 91 is the pick."} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"The year I graduated college."} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"It seems nondescript. Under the radar."} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"Just a guess."} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"Often disregarded number that is low."} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"=FLOOR(RAND()*200, 1)"} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"Wild Guess"} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"Just a guess that anything lower than a high 2-digit number wouldn't be unique, and any 3-digit number would be too high to win."} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"its my lucky number"} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"Why not? Seems high enough to be unlikely to be chosen, but low enough to possibly win"} {"your_number":"91","show_your_work":"Super wild guess. Estimating somewhere between 10^3 and 10^4 submissions, we play a k-step game starting at 1, with the added complication that somebody's definitely going to guess 1, and of course somebody's definitely going to guess 2... so we're first looking for some point at which \"naive\" low guesses taper off and \"informed\" low guesses begin. Then we want to move forward just far enough to exploit a stochastic gap. I feel like it has to be less than 10^2 even with 10^4 guesses. But there are mini k-step games occurring around certain numbers like 99. After feeling it out it just feels like a 91."} {"your_number":"92","show_your_work":"Honestly, this is a total guess. I tried to wrap it in math but it's not even worth defending."} {"your_number":"92","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"92","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"93","show_your_work":"I generated a random integer between 10 and 150"} {"your_number":"93","show_your_work":"A lot of people will go over 100, and a lot of people might use their age."} {"your_number":"93","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"93","show_your_work":"Honestly, it's a complete guess. I'm not sure how many people participate in these so I don't know how many submissions I should be accounting for."} {"your_number":"94","show_your_work":"Benford's Law (foolishly, perhaps)"} {"your_number":"94","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"94","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"94","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"94","show_your_work":"Of all numbers 0 to 500, the page for the number 94 has the lowest number of total pageviews on Wikipedia. https://tools.wmflabs.org/massviews/?platform=all-access&agent=user&source=pagepile&target=9983&range=latest-20&sort=views&direction=-1&view=list"} {"your_number":"95","show_your_work":"Randomly generated a number from 1 to 200. I randomly generated it so that I wouldn't subconsciously go for a popular number."} {"your_number":"95","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"95","show_your_work":"Figured people will be selecting low numbers with increased frequency."} {"your_number":"95","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"96","show_your_work":"because it's more likely to be lowest unique than previous 95 ones"} {"your_number":"96","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"96","show_your_work":"Enough people participate to fill the board, but may ignore numbers close to 100. But there are a few people who will clog the very very top anyway, so I ratcheted down a few digits."} {"your_number":"97","show_your_work":"seems like blind luck to me lads"} {"your_number":"97","show_your_work":"I think people will think of 100 and 99 and 98"} {"your_number":"97","show_your_work":"Random number higher than 1 such that the other 000's of submissions would have duplicates below this number."} {"your_number":"97","show_your_work":"Luck"} {"your_number":"97","show_your_work":"Sum of first 20 digits of pi and largest two digit prime number."} {"your_number":"97","show_your_work":"Just a stab in the dark"} {"your_number":"97","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"97","show_your_work":"With choices up to 100, a nominal of minus 3 would represent a chance of uniqueness."} {"your_number":"98","show_your_work":"Mostly guessing, figure everything below that will be taken and 99 and 100 are too obvious (or not, don't expect to win this thing)."} {"your_number":"98","show_your_work":"Just a guess really. Didnt want to pick the lowest or any common numbers."} {"your_number":"98","show_your_work":"I dunno. Seems like a good number to me."} {"your_number":"98","show_your_work":"Best guess\n"} {"your_number":"98","show_your_work":"I have no idea."} {"your_number":"98","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"99","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"99","show_your_work":"Honestly, I just chose it because my laptop battery is at 99% right now."} {"your_number":"99","show_your_work":"Blah"} {"your_number":"100","show_your_work":"Kinda low, but kinda obvious that no one will think to pick it"} {"your_number":"100","show_your_work":"People are either going to go low, or go weird. 100's the most normal number out there"} {"your_number":"100","show_your_work":"Work? What work? Isn't this like the opposite of match game?"} {"your_number":"100","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"100","show_your_work":"People notoriously dislike choosing round numbers in random selection tasks. 100 is roundest number that's high/low enough to have a shot (10 is so low it will surely be chosen, and 1000 is so high that it will surely be higher than the winning entry). 100 may also be too high if I am dramatically overestimating the number of entries you will get."} {"your_number":"100","show_your_work":"It was the last number I could think of."} {"your_number":"100","show_your_work":"I figured no one would take a round number. But now that I think about it I'm sure someone else will think of the same thing. But I've come too far. It's too late to turn back now."} {"your_number":"100","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"100","show_your_work":"I thought no one else would pick it."} {"your_number":"100","show_your_work":"I'm assuming there will either be NO unique submissions or no one else will think to submit the largest number in the range"} {"your_number":"101","show_your_work":"I submitted a number that is prime but also triple digits--I assume that all the strategists would take the numbers 1-100, and others would overshoot to 150 and above. 101 is big, but innocuous; my hope is that no one else will think of it, and that all other numbers will be taken more than once."} {"your_number":"101","show_your_work":"Random guess based upon how many people I think will submit an answer."} {"your_number":"101","show_your_work":"Subtraction..."} {"your_number":"101","show_your_work":"It's a random number. I researched this game and the strategy used to play, but thought it might be more fun if I won on a random guess."} {"your_number":"101","show_your_work":"all numbers"} {"your_number":"101","show_your_work":"The first 3 digit numbers after 100"} {"your_number":"101","show_your_work":"Fuck it"} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"I am going to assume at least 2 people each take a flyer on all of the 1 digit numbers. I am also going to assume that people's ages, favorite athletes number, etc. will render 2 digit numbers out of play. 100 is too round. 101 is too first order reasoning. Let's go with 102..."} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"Because I felt like it"} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"Complete guess"} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"Small but not too small...also, people like picking odd numbers, so mine is even"} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"I figure that two-digit numbers will be very common, and 102 is very low in the three-digits while being non-prime, which makes it stand out less."} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"102 is fairly uncommon, and it's low enough that most numbers won't beat it. In addition, it's not like a lot of people think of 102 as a low number."} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"pure guesswork"} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"I figure that people are likely to pick a round number and go down a little. So I've picked a (very) round number and gone up a little. 101 feels a little too obvious, so 102..."} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"Avoid the trolls who will enter multiple entries up to 100 and attempt to win with 101"} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"Because obviously someone else would pick 101."} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"My theory is, 1-100 will all be taken - then odd numbers will be taken more than evens, so I'll pick 102."} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"Even numbers seem less random, and I figure something between 50 and 150 will win."} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"I chose a three-digit number close to a prominent one."} {"your_number":"102","show_your_work":"I wanted to choose a number that would not be someone's birthday (day of month) or age. That eliminates pretty much all of the numbers below 60 for what I imagine as the 538 demographic. Then you start to hit the likely two-digit year of birth for the same participants as well, so I decided to go for a low three digit number."} {"your_number":"103","show_your_work":"103 isn't a popular number. I figure everyone else will pick numbers lower than 100"} {"your_number":"103","show_your_work":"3 is a number I use for lots of things, but 3 and 33 seem too low, and are easy targets for repetition."} {"your_number":"103","show_your_work":"big enough and boring enough to not get chosen"} {"your_number":"103","show_your_work":"A nice low 3 digit prime number that's unassuming (and has a lucky number 3 in it)."} {"your_number":"103","show_your_work":"There will probably be about 10000 submissions, and I think people will pick in a roughly exponential fashion. Thus 103"} {"your_number":"103","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"103","show_your_work":"With as many people who participated in the last \"Pick a Number\" challenge with the coffee condundrum, I shouldn't expect to hit a home run. That and I expect more people to draw to round numbers and numbers one or two off, and this is just far enough away."} {"your_number":"103","show_your_work":"Seems like a good number"} {"your_number":"103","show_your_work":"Number's below 100 are fair game for anyone's random guess. I have no idea how many people use this site in general but I would guess at least a few thousand meaning these are likely all doubled up. 100 is a thoughtful guess if everyone thought like I do, but I imagine it will be picked by people not truly thinking about the problem. 101 makes sense as a guess, but I know i'm not the only one to think of that idea. Add 102 just to give me some space and my guess is 103."} {"your_number":"104","show_your_work":"Nobody likes the number 104"} {"your_number":"104","show_your_work":"higher than 100, even, hoping everyone else goes high"} {"your_number":"104","show_your_work":"Assumptions: 20M uniques per month, 660K uniques per day, taking direct traffic only: 330k uniques, only nerds will do this and maybe that's 1% of direct traffic: 3300 entries. Unqualified, random assumptions because I can't math at work right now: a cluster between 50-100 shows up, a cluster around 200 shows up, a cluster around 1000 shows up (3 clusters because this is all made up but let's pretend there are three major audiences that come direct: nerds, sweepstakers, gamblers). I picked 104 because I'm hoping that 100-103 are a popular, cultural reset point. And then of course some low prime number wins and proves God's existence."} {"your_number":"104","show_your_work":"None"} {"your_number":"104","show_your_work":"No work. Could be insanely high, could be insanely low. I don't know how many people usually participate (and am far too lazy to try to figure it out). It's just a guess."} {"your_number":"104","show_your_work":"Idk, feels good"} {"your_number":"104","show_your_work":"I think the number will be relatively low, but I can see someone spamming entries to a certain extent."} {"your_number":"104","show_your_work":"Just right"} {"your_number":"104","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"104","show_your_work":"Basically a random guess"} {"your_number":"104","show_your_work":"I ran a bunch of simulations and 104 was the median for the lowest available number."} {"your_number":"105","show_your_work":"I figured some trolls might submit numbers 1-100 and then get bored."} {"your_number":"105","show_your_work":"Just a guess that nobody else comes up with"} {"your_number":"105","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"106","show_your_work":"I figured most two-digit numbers and odd numbers (especially primes) would be taken)."} {"your_number":"106","show_your_work":"I looked at how many answers were submitted for the \"Battles for Riddler Nation\" (the challenge that I knew the number of participants was released for), and they had around 1,000-1,500 submissions. That was a much higher effort challenge, so I assume we'll have about 5,000 submissions.\n\nI bet most of those people (we'll say 4,000) want to pick a number 100 or below. That would mean the \"average\" number 100 or below is selected 40 times. I don't like my odds of finding a unique one.\n\nI'll go with something 100-200, but it can't be something too \"obvious\" like 100 or 150 or something too \"obscure\" like 137 or 113. I also of course want to pick something fairly low if given the choice.\n\nAt this point, I'm just guessing. But I'll go with 106!"} {"your_number":"106","show_your_work":"It was high enough to be unique."} {"your_number":"106","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"106","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"106","show_your_work":"Wife's lucky number"} {"your_number":"106","show_your_work":"It's an even number close to 100, which I'm guessing people will try to avoid"} {"your_number":"107","show_your_work":"I'm purely guessing, guys. Sorry I am defeating the purpose of the website."} {"your_number":"107","show_your_work":"Douglas Adams 42 adjusted for inflation"} {"your_number":"107","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"107","show_your_work":"It's a relatively low number that's random so maybe nobody will pick it"} {"your_number":"107","show_your_work":"all"} {"your_number":"107","show_your_work":"Too many people will submit 1- and 2-digit numbers. So I chose a low three-digit number of no special significance."} {"your_number":"107","show_your_work":"Figured someone would do all of 1-100, but would get tired shortly after that."} {"your_number":"107","show_your_work":"Exclude 1-31 (birthdays), 50-99 (birth years, 32-49 (too low). This leaves any 3 digit number. My great-grandmother died aged 107...as good a number as any"} {"your_number":"107","show_your_work":"Periodic number of Bohrium, one of the least interesting elements. So I figured the number of a \"boring\" element such a Bohrium might be a good choice for this competition."} {"your_number":"108","show_your_work":"It came to me in a vision"} {"your_number":"108","show_your_work":"Based on the \"Riddler Nation goes to war\" stats of ~2000 submissions, and because it is easier to submit to this version I'm estimating ~4000 submissions. Many, maybe as much as a quarter, will be very very low, due to human nature. The goal then, is to pick a number just past the point where there is statistical overlap of 3000 people. While some will guess as high as 400 or so, it will be strongly weighted low. 108 seems reasonably low, while still hopefully missing out on any psychological fondness."} {"your_number":"108","show_your_work":"Higher than typical lucky numbers, likely age, last two digits of date of birth. Not too close to a round number like 100"} {"your_number":"108","show_your_work":"Random number generator"} {"your_number":"108","show_your_work":"I assume many people will choose prime-like numbers since they give the impression of being more unique.so I chose an even number that is hopefully a good balance between magnitude and the frequency of other's selections"} {"your_number":"108","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"108","show_your_work":"special holy number that nobody would guess"} {"your_number":"109","show_your_work":"I figured 1-100 wouldnt be unique. I wanted to pick a prime number. So I ended up choosing 109"} {"your_number":"109","show_your_work":"I think everything 1-108 will be picked by someone else."} {"your_number":"109","show_your_work":"hunch"} {"your_number":"109","show_your_work":"My number choose me"} {"your_number":"109","show_your_work":"H+1"} {"your_number":"109","show_your_work":"~~~~~~~~"} {"your_number":"109","show_your_work":"not too big, not too small I guess?"} {"your_number":"110","show_your_work":"I've already spent longer trying to come up with any sort of reasoning than I did coming up with the number. Clearly, I have no method, nor rationale here."} {"your_number":"110","show_your_work":"Trying to avoid all the people who guess low hoping everyone else overthinks it, but still be low enough to win."} {"your_number":"110","show_your_work":"The Grapes of Math by Alex Bellos, although I'm sure someone else has also read that book"} {"your_number":"110","show_your_work":"Hoping that three digits will give me more space against the competition and a nice round number like 110 might give me a reverse-psychology advantage."} {"your_number":"110","show_your_work":"Has to be higher than a powerball number. Can't be a year that matters. Shouldn't be prime. There will probably be a two-digit number that slips through, but if not, this could work."} {"your_number":"110","show_your_work":"Eh, why not"} {"your_number":"110","show_your_work":"I think a lot of people are going to try to pick bizarre numbers like 67 or 113. I picked a 3 digit number, but it's still a multiple of 10, hopefully hitting the sweet spot of being uncommon, but not absurd."} {"your_number":"110","show_your_work":"110 Is thought to be a uniquely unpopular number, not sure if it is a little high for this purpose..."} {"your_number":"110","show_your_work":"111-1"} {"your_number":"110","show_your_work":"I'm guessing around 2000 people will submit a number, given that 1538 people submitted a number for the coffee riddler and this problem is easier. A solid 90% of the submissions will be under 100. I'm willing to bet that the distribution will be somewhat evenly spread out among the numbers between 20 and 100 (at least spread out enough so that there's almost no chance of a number in that range not getting picked). I'm guessing that people won't want to pick numbers ending in 5 or 0 since those aren't as \"random.\" Thus, {110, 115, 120} seem like decent numbers to choose. I'll go with 110 and, hopefully, nobody else has the same reasoning as me."} {"your_number":"110","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"111","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"111","show_your_work":"guess based on Fig. 4 of this paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1105.0819.pdf"} {"your_number":"111","show_your_work":"first one i thought of"} {"your_number":"111","show_your_work":"A number with repeated digits seems less random to the average person, so it is more likely to be unique."} {"your_number":"111","show_your_work":"triple one"} {"your_number":"111","show_your_work":"Why would anyone pick three of the same number?"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"random guess"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"it was Bob Gibson's ERA in 1968"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"it is small-ish"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"> 30 to avoid days of the month (e.g., birthdays); > 100 to avoid athlete jersey numbers; the 12 because it's my favorite number :)"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"Assuming there is a mental 'barrier' at repeated figures, the most obvious being 111"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"Because I like it"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"Assumed several hundred responses. Assumed a large number of guesses in the 30s to 50s. Picked a number that was not prime and not a multiple of a single digit integer on the theory that such a number was somewhat less likely to be chosen by math nerds."} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"because it is prime"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"Pure guess."} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"Added 100 to my lucky number"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"I got HIgh and forgot not to get high"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"random"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"Just because"} {"your_number":"112","show_your_work":"Gut feeling that based on my guess of how many people will participate, it has to be a 3-digit number."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"Basically, I assume there will be a fight for the smallest digits and then give myself some leeway."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"It's my house number."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"Probably has to be over 100 to win and I thought adding a two-digit prime number added to 100 would be lucky."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"I figure someone will troll and submit each of 1-100, so the number will be at least that"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"I'm clairvoyant"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"I imagine any 2 digit number has high odds of not being unique"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"seems low but high enough?"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"It felt right"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"Its totally a gut feeling."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"guess work"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"Like prime numbers, get it up into the three digits a bit for a better chance of uniqueness."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"I assume that there will be ~1,000 respondents and most of them will go with numbers between 30-100."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"shot in the dark"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"I tried to think of a number that is high enough to be unique, low enough to be the lowest unique choice, and prime, which strikes me as less likely to be chosen by someone else."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"If there were reasoning behind it, it'd be a bad answer :)"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"A fairly low prime number (hopefully doesn't come to mind as often as even, or highly factorable numbers) and the highway number that goes through my town."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"A relatively random guess based on the numbers less than 100 all guessed."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"Errrrr"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"cool number"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"divine inspiration"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"No idea!"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"I figured anything less than 100 would have too high a risk of collision so I decided to start at 100. I then picked 13 as sudo random number (it's the first number in the Fibonacci sequence that doesn't seem too common)."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"this is a difficult question because I have no idea how many people visit this website a week but I'm going to estimate 20,000 so probably 4,000 submit this."} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"113","show_your_work":"just a guess :)"} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"Seems like good a guess as any"} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"I like the number 14, and guess that any integer lower than 100 will be chosen."} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"You always have to eliminate the first couple dozen numbers on this problem because someone's going to have taken them. The question is how high up do you need to go, given 538's readership and how many of those people specifically go to Riddler articles. I'm also making sure to stay away from round numbers- really anything ending in 5 or 0 or anything else that might be someone's 'favorite' number'. The question is, is this going to be the time that one of them manages to sneak through."} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"Just taking a stab in the dark, really"} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"It came to me in a dream"} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"Seems kind of low, but not super common"} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"A nonzero amount of people are likely to submit 69, and so I wanted a respectable amount of distance away from that."} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"Someone is going to waste a whole day submitting every number from 1-100 to throw off the results."} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"It seems to me like a number no one would choose"} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"I imagine others not choosing that number, and I imagine there will be enough submissions to cover all of the numbers from 1-99"} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"intuition"} {"your_number":"114","show_your_work":"just an educated guess (I like guessing games) based on your readership size, social media stats, etc."} {"your_number":"115","show_your_work":"Over a thousand people will submit. Most will do random numbers (ie not divisible by 5)"} {"your_number":"115","show_your_work":"lucky guess"} {"your_number":"116","show_your_work":"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-popular-numbers-grapes-of-math/\n\nBut I assume someone else read this. So I added +6."} {"your_number":"116","show_your_work":"I think it's likely that numbers less than 100 will be taken, so I selected a number somewhat larger than 100."} {"your_number":"116","show_your_work":"The Riddler from a couple of weeks ago on the coffee consumption had 1,538 entries. Assuming a similar number of entries, the lowest unique integer will be below this number."} {"your_number":"116","show_your_work":"I'm guessing numbers under 100 will be popular, and I like the number 16, so I added that to 100."} {"your_number":"116","show_your_work":"First I ran some simulations and concluded the winning number would almost certainly be lower than 300, likely lower than 200, and quite possibly lower than 100. I would have felt very optimistic about the chances of the winning number being lower than 100, except that a) such numbers have a high chance of being populated by trolls and b) some people might submit personally important numbers, like ages or birth years, which would usually be lower than 100. \n\nOn the assumption that the winner might be lower than 100 anyway, I challenged myself to intuitively pick two-digit numbers that other people wouldn't think of. My answers were a) 94 and b) 76.\n\nNext I looked at the English Wikipedia's page view stats, running from April through July this year, for all numbers from 38 through 140, for both [X] and [X (number)], for objective data on which numbers people really didn't think about. The results for these two data sets were somewhat different; the X set suggested 38, 46, 57, 59, 82, 83, 84, 92 and 94 as little-viewed compared to neighbors (my first intuitive pick, 94, led the whole field) and implied that numbers higher than 100 would be bad, while the X (number) set was much better for three-digit numbers and offered 106, 116, 104 and (below 100) 54, 68, 71, 74, 76 and 94. I was not surprised that even numbers (other than those ending in 0) were generally less popular in both data sets; odd numbers, by their very oddness, have a certain appeal.\n\nCombining the two data sets, I \"should\" have picked one of my two intuitive picks, 94 or 76, because they both fared really well in the combined test. But I rejected them precisely because they were my intuitive picks, and might therefore be other people's intuitive picks as well. I rejected 74 (another number that survived both tests well) because I use it so much otherwise that it seemed way too fitting to be my answer. I rejected numbers lower than 70 as too low, 82/83/84 due to bad X (number) scores, and 104 and 106 as being too close to 100; which left 116 as the overall winner. (I never seriously considered any number higher than 116; it's certainly possible, perhaps even likely, that such a number will win; but no one number suggested itself, and with so many candidates it would be a total crapshoot.) I am almost certainly overthinking, but what else could I do? The choice of 116 shows my high level of confidence in trolls; if I thought all answers would come from good-faith contestants I would probably have picked a two-digit number."} {"your_number":"116","show_your_work":"16 is my favorite number, so why not add 100 to it and hope for the best!"} {"your_number":"116","show_your_work":"A hunch"} {"your_number":"116","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"116","show_your_work":"There's really no strategy here"} {"your_number":"116","show_your_work":"My initials' placement in the alphabet: A=1, P=16"} {"your_number":"116","show_your_work":"it's a guess!"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"Outside of the range of people's ages, but not very large"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"A hunch"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"A fairly large but not-so uninteresting number"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"it's a good number"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"A guess?"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"seemed unique enough. We'll see"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"aribitrary chosen"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"Yes"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"Hoping all two digits numbers are not unique"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"Best guess of a number that wouldn't be guessed"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"it is small, but not super small"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"any # not too low as to be chosen by others - get on the tail of the curve"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"I figured from the hundreds of individuals that submit an answer, the majority would try to stick to the double digits, however there would also be those who try to jump out into the hundreds place. Knowing they'd likely stick to numbers that sound good to the ear, and look good on paper, I picked the number 117 because 7 is far from 1 when counting to ten, and often just thinking about numbers in the 100's, people like to make them gradually go up, like 135, or 124, but they usually don't repeat themselves. 117 is also a number that is not very easily divisible, only a vast amount of numbers people greatly dislike, including\n\n3, 9, 13, and 39, each number of which people do not enjoy working with (at least I don't)"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"I'm sure that several will spam the first 100. So, I'm trying just a little higher."} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"Completely random guess"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"High enough that people might not consider it, but low enough to beat most numbers"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"First 100 probably covered by \"low guessers\" banking on a number that just gets missed or hoping they are just lucky getting one nobody else submits. The frequency of duplicates probably drops off around 100 except for \"significant\" numbers (like 100, 101, 144, etc). I picked 117 because it's close to that drop off but not special in any way."} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"watching UFC"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"I assumed most numbers below 100 would be selected, so I chose what I felt was an unlikely number."} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"random"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"Basically a guess"} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"The lower, the more likely that others will choose the same number, and the higher, the less likely I will be the lowest."} {"your_number":"117","show_your_work":"I remember seeing over 1500 people submit to one of these, and I would expect a lot of answers to cluster in the 20-50 area. Probably will be way off, but this seems like a far out enough answer where answer density below it will still be fairly high!"} {"your_number":"118","show_your_work":"I thought about it for a minute but then I just picked a number. My guess is that there are ~10000 submissions, and the lower number the more choices."} {"your_number":"118","show_your_work":"Low-ish, seems like a number not too many people will pick"} {"your_number":"118","show_your_work":"Randomly - Can you please do a graphic showing the results you get from this? I think it would be pretty cool, especially if there were any surprisingly high numbers chosen twice."} {"your_number":"118","show_your_work":"Seems right"} {"your_number":"118","show_your_work":"Figured it would have to be three digits. Went for low three digits."} {"your_number":"118","show_your_work":"Not 17"} {"your_number":"118","show_your_work":"I figured a random three digit number is the least likely to be picked."} {"your_number":"118","show_your_work":"Feeling it."} {"your_number":"118","show_your_work":"This is a second guess, following the same principles as the first, that odd and relatively high numbers will be the normal guess, but with the opportunity to guess multiple times, I believe a slightly higher guess is needed."} {"your_number":"118","show_your_work":"cover more UFC"} {"your_number":"118","show_your_work":"No"} {"your_number":"119","show_your_work":"Because it's lower than 120."} {"your_number":"119","show_your_work":"It's more or less out of the air. It's big enough where I don't think anyone's going to repeat it, but not unreasonably big. I suppose I could have gone into trying to figure out how many viewers there are of the 538 site and how many people typically answer one of these questions, but that's too much work for a Friday. So I'm ballparking in it. To be sure, there's going to be a whole lot of luck in being correct anyway. \n\nIt's a little like a prisoner's dilemma game with a heck of a lot of prisoners, yes? I was also considering choosing the number 7."} {"your_number":"119","show_your_work":"Honestly, just a complete guess"} {"your_number":"119","show_your_work":"Up until today, I didn't even know numbers could get as high as 119"} {"your_number":"119","show_your_work":"McCain said so"} {"your_number":"119","show_your_work":"I figured that in a popular contest like this, all numbers 1-100 would be chosen by other people. After determining that my number would start with a \"1\" in the hundreds position, I picked a random number to follow. \"19\" is prime, and generally felt uncommon enough to me. Hence, 119."} {"your_number":"119","show_your_work":"who else would pick 119?"} {"your_number":"119","show_your_work":"Mostly a hunch, but a rough guess on how many people would submit (a few hundred to a few thousand likely, assuming one entry per person) so unlikely the answer will be a single or double digit number as most unique numbers will probably be chosen. Then if likely that a 3-4 digit number will the correct answer, And knowing that to get a lower number the leading digits need to be lower than average (1 is lower than 5 is lower than 9). Guess I can try for a low 3 digit number (aggressive strategy) so 1XX, with the second number not the lowest (slightly less aggressive) (not 0) so 11X , and last number high (conservative) in an attepmt to try and out maneuver similar strategies with 110-118,...so i pick 119. \n\nPS - this is probably properly defined by \"positive integer\" , but I consider an answer such as 007 the same as 7, and therefore would not be unique. Or, to put int another way, no amount of leading zeros would change the uniqueness of the answer."} {"your_number":"119","show_your_work":"all the numbers between 1 and 100 will most likely be guessed, this is an odd number, just over that threshold."} {"your_number":"120","show_your_work":"Guess!"} {"your_number":"120","show_your_work":"This is obvious"} {"your_number":"120","show_your_work":"12*10"} {"your_number":"120","show_your_work":"Relying on people's avoidance of round numbers, but accounting for others taking the same approach with lower rounder numbers."} {"your_number":"121","show_your_work":"random choice"} {"your_number":"121","show_your_work":"My guess is that it's going to be at least 100, and I was born on the 21st of April."} {"your_number":"121","show_your_work":"11^2"} {"your_number":"121","show_your_work":"Gut"} {"your_number":"121","show_your_work":"It feels right. All two-digit numbers will be taken."} {"your_number":"121","show_your_work":"Picking any double-digit number wouldn't make much sense as the chances of it being unique is too low, people are statistically slightly favored to like and choose even numbers all other information equal so only an odd number should be chosen, and even with tens of thousands of submissions it is still likely enough that a number lower than 200 will be unique."} {"your_number":"121","show_your_work":"my age"} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"Approximately 10,000 people respond to these posts. Assuming some vaguely geometric distribution of responses, the point at which numbers start getting approximately 1 response is somewhere between 50 and 200. Other than that, random guessing is the best I can do."} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"122 doesn't appeal to me as an answer, so it may not to others as well"} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"Truly a guess"} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"I will win"} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"Randomly."} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"Mostly a random guess"} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"It was a guess. I would like to throw a more educated guess out there which I would base off of the expected number of entries, which I would base of past contests. Seeing as I don't have that, I went with this."} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"Seemed like a good number. I thought that 1-100 would be chosen already, and I stayed away from 100-120 for similar reasons."} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"I wanted a number between 100 and 200, and I've climbed 22 Adirondack high peaks."} {"your_number":"122","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"123","show_your_work":"hmmm"} {"your_number":"123","show_your_work":"My husband is a mathematician but I have always been better at just guessing. We're married 55 years."} {"your_number":"123","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"124","show_your_work":"People are more likely to pick a number under 100 and an odd number."} {"your_number":"124","show_your_work":"Childhood street number"} {"your_number":"124","show_your_work":"Assuming the variety of people will try to pick something between 0 and 100, namely in the 50-90 range, to try to find a low number not otherwise guessed. Also assuming that the same will play between about 100-115 as people try to outsmart those saturating below 100. Final assumption, majority of picks will be odd numbers given that odd numbers \"feel\" less likely to be picked."} {"your_number":"124","show_your_work":"When asked to choose a random number, people tend to go for prime numbers - so I went for an even number. I kind of suspect that the number will be much lower than this (possibly even 2, because who would assume no one else would pick 2?) but it's hard to know how high the number will be without knowing how many people typically respond to the Riddler. I guess I'm hoping it's a lot of people."} {"your_number":"124","show_your_work":"Totally random."} {"your_number":"124","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"124","show_your_work":"Hope and luck"} {"your_number":"124","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"124","show_your_work":"Wild assumptions of 300 total responses on a curve around #50. Guessed at when curve might contain zero responses."} {"your_number":"125","show_your_work":"luck"} {"your_number":"126","show_your_work":"I was going to go for 127, but then I thought that 7s were likely to be chosen, so I went one lower."} {"your_number":"126","show_your_work":"I win"} {"your_number":"126","show_your_work":"I wanted to choose 125, but figured that would be too popular so I added 1."} {"your_number":"126","show_your_work":"1382 readers submitted a response to The Battle For Riddler Nation. This gives a rough estimate for the number of individuals likely to respond to this riddle. Applying Zipf's law, a possible distribution of guesses for each number can be estimated. From this distribution, we can select the smallest number likely to be unique. This number can be adjusted slightly to increase likelihood of uniqueness (128->126 powers of two might be common guesses)."} {"your_number":"126","show_your_work":"Well it would've been a lot easier to guess a number if I knew how many replies there were going to be. That being said I have seen a few of your problems have had a bunch entries so I decided to go with a number that's reasonably small but not too small"} {"your_number":"126","show_your_work":"Cause it's a random guess"} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"Lol"} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"Definitely depends on how many people read and submit to the riddler. Since I have no idea how many people this is, it's a random guess."} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"A random shot in the dark"} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"I Like it"} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"It just came to me."} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"A prime number higher than 100, but not too high."} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"127"} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"127 = (Harry Kane)*(Eric Dier) - Christian Eriksen"} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"say who is your daddy"} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"I took a wild guess."} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":":"} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"I picked a random number between 1 and 1000."} {"your_number":"127","show_your_work":"Now that I see you can submit more than once, I need to go higher than my first pick."} {"your_number":"128","show_your_work":"So much calculating and careful thought... oh yeah, tons."} {"your_number":"128","show_your_work":"I won that coffee game"} {"your_number":"128","show_your_work":"There were about 1000 participants in riddler nation last time. Assuming about twice the number submit to this puzzle, I'd say 2,000 answers are likely. That's too many to consider common popular and unpopular numbers, because someone's bound to try them. On the other hand, it's also too few for a completely random model to be informative. If we assumed everyone guessed a random number between 1 and 500, the mean smallest guess is 4!\n\nI will assume that everything between 1 and 100 is a minefield - and that a small portion of people like myself are uncomfortable sitting too close to it as well. 128 seems to be the perfect combination of timidity (in avoiding the minefield and the area behind it) and boldness (in choosing a relatively popular number)."} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"Reasonably low. And I figure that there are probably at least two people willing to take the Price is Right approach and bid $1."} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"I guessed that you will have two camps: the cheeky (1 or 10), the safe (10,000 and up), and the \"inbetweeners\" (100-10000). I gambled low, betting that there aren't that many people who will choose my same \"random\" number in the mid 100's."} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"I imagine that all single and double-digit integers would be obvious risks by other users. Similarly, low-100 numbers are close enough to double-digit integers that more savvy users might try to pick one of those, but I believe there are enough users such that many will have the same thought. 129 seems distant enough that someone else might not guess it. I'll have to wait and see."} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"It's feels right"} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"I won the coffee"} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"I won the coffee"} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"The column is read nationwide, so there will probably be enough people that *someone* will take a gamble on any two-digit number. But that should run out somewhere in the low 100s. At a guess."} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"Figuring most low numbers will be picked by many people. I thought 129 might be just high enough to make the cut. Plus, it's my birthday."} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"My friend is planning on picking 130 and he did some math stuff."} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"Figured all numbers under 100 would be used. Tried to guess an unassuming number just above that"} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"Big fan of the number 129. Big fan"} {"your_number":"129","show_your_work":"From the graph on the \"who drinks the most coffee\" puzzle I know there's going to be around 1,000 submissions... So I think it's likely that every number from 1 to 100 will be picked twice.\n\nI can't expect a uniform distribution, as people will lean toward the lower numbers, but in simulating a uniform distribution with 1000 picks from 1 to 200, I regularly get a few unique numbers, so I think the winning number will be in the low 100's, or high double digits.\n\nI generated a random number between 100 and 150 and got 129. Fingers crossed!"} {"your_number":"130","show_your_work":"Figured all single and double digits would be submitted multiple times. This makes it a constest of lowest three digit number. From there, pure guess."} {"your_number":"130","show_your_work":"Say I won the coffee"} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"Wild-ass guess that most people would choose lower numbers"} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"pure guesswork"} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"Guessing there will be a lot of submissions."} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"The higher you pick, the less likely it is that someone else will. That being said, surely someone else will pick the lowest positive integers (<100). So, I decided to split my odds and go not too low and not too high."} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"Just going off of a gut feeling as one would in a Keynesian beauty contest."} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"lucky number, not too low"} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"Hunch"} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"\"show your work\" this aint a math problem, you sound like my teacher\n131 is good enough"} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"I am the best at game theory"} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"it's a prime"} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"Random guess, relatively low prime"} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"131","show_your_work":"Uhhh..."} {"your_number":"132","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"132","show_your_work":"It's a guess"} {"your_number":"132","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"132","show_your_work":"Just a wild guess"} {"your_number":"132","show_your_work":"It's low, but not too low. I figure everything under 100 will be taken."} {"your_number":"132","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"132","show_your_work":"Who knows? Maybe it will even be a one digit number because nobody will believe that any such number will be unique."} {"your_number":"132","show_your_work":"I am God"} {"your_number":"132","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"132","show_your_work":"Truly a random guess. I can't think of a good piece of work."} {"your_number":"132","show_your_work":"Lowest three digit number that cannot be associated with a month-day birthday"} {"your_number":"133","show_your_work":"I am the best"} {"your_number":"133","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"134","show_your_work":"It feels right."} {"your_number":"134","show_your_work":"I don't think a number under 100 is likely to win. The winner is likely between 110 and 200 and I chose one arbitrarily that wasn't very interesting."} {"your_number":"134","show_your_work":"Semper ubi sub ubi"} {"your_number":"134","show_your_work":"favorite number plus 100"} {"your_number":"135","show_your_work":"Primes are out. Numbers under 100 are out. Numbers that are a potential birthdate + 100 are out. I am gambling that participants will shy away from multiples of five or ten."} {"your_number":"135","show_your_work":"Jewish swag"} {"your_number":"136","show_your_work":"I'm predicting around 1,000 responses. Any number under 100 is likely to already be chosen. I'm picking 136 because it isn't an obvious number; people are more likely to choose odd/prime numbers."} {"your_number":"136","show_your_work":"Swasian power"} {"your_number":"136","show_your_work":"lucky"} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"It's the inverse of the fine-structure constant."} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"I like the number. It's prime. It's low enough to possibly win be low enough. Ha. And it's high enough to possibly be unique, though I doubt it. Knowing an approximate number of entries would help."} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"Random guess."} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"random guess"} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"It seemed likely that all 1- and 2-digit numbers would be taken. I went for a lowish 3-digit prime. I would love it if 1 won."} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"First number that came to mind"} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"its an ugly number"} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"Skipped past the ages of people submitting, but then we got too close to 100. So I skipped the first 20 past that. Then we were around 12x, so that's no good. 137 seems pretty boring."} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"Anything under 100 is going to get picked a lot. probably under 200 too. this feels good."} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"Random, essentially. I thought any less of a number would have more than 1 person, I suppose."} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"I guess about 3,000 entries will be submitted, and at least 100 hopefuls will try the numbers 100 and below. It's still quite a bit guessy, this process."} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"Me win"} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"It is unlikely that any of the first one hundred integers will be unique answers so I chose a number greater than one hundred. I chose 137 because it is greater than 100 and my lacrosse number was 37."} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"expect 1000 responses. 50% in the first 100, diminishing distribution after that"} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"it's a prime number - even other numbers don't like this number."} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"A prime number higher than 100 but lower than 150"} {"your_number":"137","show_your_work":"Chose a prime number that felt right."} {"your_number":"138","show_your_work":"figure all the two digit numbers will get taken, go a bit higher with a number not associated with anything"} {"your_number":"138","show_your_work":"I win the coffee. Learn to code PLEASE!!!!!"} {"your_number":"138","show_your_work":"I figure a few thousand people read this page, so the lowest answer will be in the hundreds. People find 13 superstitious, and may want to avoid using it in their answer."} {"your_number":"138","show_your_work":"Just a wild guess, nothing more."} {"your_number":"138","show_your_work":"I figured 1-100 would be out, and surely at least one physicist would accidentally choose the inverse of the fine structure constant as their \"random\" number. Similarly, I figured I needed a composite number as number theorists might have a subconscious affinity for primes."} {"your_number":"139","show_your_work":"Random guess."} {"your_number":"139","show_your_work":"idk?"} {"your_number":"139","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"139","show_your_work":"Not too small. But just small enough."} {"your_number":"139","show_your_work":"Use extra long floats for these contests PLEAE"} {"your_number":"140","show_your_work":"Say my name"} {"your_number":"140","show_your_work":"strategically unrandom"} {"your_number":"141","show_your_work":"I figured every two digit number would be chosen, so I tried to submit an innocuous thee digit number, one that isn't prime or composed of consecutive digits."} {"your_number":"141","show_your_work":"Didn't want to align with any readers likely age (< 100 to be safe). Didn't want to align with anyones abbreviated birth year (e.g., 1987 --> 87). Didn't want a prime number (3*47=141). Voila!"} {"your_number":"141","show_your_work":"Why not"} {"your_number":"141","show_your_work":"I am god"} {"your_number":"141","show_your_work":"No good reason, really."} {"your_number":"141","show_your_work":"I'm assuming there is an individual with about 140 spam accounts who is trying to win the game by submitting 141. This is an attempt to stop that."} {"your_number":"141","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"142","show_your_work":"random.org pick a number from 1 to 200 :)"} {"your_number":"142","show_your_work":"I used a computer to choose a random number between 18 and 180. There will certainly be people who will submit low numbers hoping that others don't. I also believe that there will be some number below 180 that will only have one submission."} {"your_number":"142","show_your_work":"No idea. Just popped up in my head."} {"your_number":"142","show_your_work":"My brain is like that of a smart person"} {"your_number":"142","show_your_work":"Experience with Tanga.com that ran that daily competition for years"} {"your_number":"142","show_your_work":"I went even, as I think most people will have chosen an odd number, due to somehow thinking it more 'random'"} {"your_number":"143","show_your_work":"Not too high, not too low?"} {"your_number":"143","show_your_work":"It felt right."} {"your_number":"143","show_your_work":"Three digits, semi-random"} {"your_number":"143","show_your_work":"No idea, but you gotta play to win boiiiii"} {"your_number":"143","show_your_work":"lucky number"} {"your_number":"143","show_your_work":"guessed"} {"your_number":"143","show_your_work":"I be me smart"} {"your_number":"143","show_your_work":"Random Generation"} {"your_number":"143","show_your_work":"143, I was going to choose 43 because it was 42 +1, but I thought someone would have chosen it already, so I added a one to the front"} {"your_number":"144","show_your_work":"Obey me, GROSS"} {"your_number":"145","show_your_work":"lucky guess"} {"your_number":"145","show_your_work":"Odd number, huh"} {"your_number":"145","show_your_work":"Pure guess"} {"your_number":"146","show_your_work":"146 will be the average points per game for the Knicks once Porzingoat starts flourishing and Kyrie comes home"} {"your_number":"146","show_your_work":"Not knowing how many people are participating, it's hard to guess what range is best; I decided anything under 100 was probably too low to find a unique number, while going over 200 would probably be too high to be the lowest. I also avoided ending with a 0, 3, 5, or 7, as these tend to be the numbers people choose when they are (3/7) or aren't (0/5) trying to choose an random looking number. Other than that, it's pretty much entirely arbitrary."} {"your_number":"146","show_your_work":"Of all the digits, all three of the ones in my answer are in my top 10."} {"your_number":"146","show_your_work":"Random number generator"} {"your_number":"146","show_your_work":"luck"} {"your_number":"147","show_your_work":"Just popped into my mind"} {"your_number":"147","show_your_work":"?????"} {"your_number":"147","show_your_work":"Low, but not too low. I don't have data on how many people respond to Riddlers, so have to go with intuition!"} {"your_number":"147","show_your_work":"146 seemed too low"} {"your_number":"147","show_your_work":"luck me"} {"your_number":"147","show_your_work":"Has to be a triple digit number to avoid the spam bots, but not too high. I like the number 47 so it works!"} {"your_number":"147","show_your_work":"its extremely random"} {"your_number":"148","show_your_work":"148"} {"your_number":"148","show_your_work":"I used google to generate a random number between 1 and 200."} {"your_number":"148","show_your_work":"There was a lot of thought here and I'm not sure I followed through on the logic - if 1,000,000 people submit numbers but none of them know what the other submitted, nor can submit more than one, that makes it really interesting... As what are the chances that every number from 1 - 100 is taken? Actually, probably high because of baseball or other sports, right? So it has to be above 100 and no too unique, but not too not unique. 148 is high, granted, but it's not special. It doesn't really have a big Google identity, so I'm guessing it's not on the tip of anyone's brain (unless it's in their address). I originally like 162 for this reason, but baseball..."} {"your_number":"148","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"148","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"149","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"149","show_your_work":"hnmm"} {"your_number":"150","show_your_work":"no chance for this number"} {"your_number":"151","show_your_work":"...Lucky guess?"} {"your_number":"151","show_your_work":"next"} {"your_number":"152","show_your_work":"Used a random number generator between 150 and 200"} {"your_number":"152","show_your_work":"I wanted a number high enough that it wouldn't get chosen by people trying to get lucky, and without much in the way of features (prime, palindrome, etc)."} {"your_number":"152","show_your_work":"hmm"} {"your_number":"153","show_your_work":"low, but not too low"} {"your_number":"153","show_your_work":"Random guess."} {"your_number":"153","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"153","show_your_work":"No working to show!"} {"your_number":"153","show_your_work":"Honestly just want to see what the winning number will be and submitting something will remind me to check when it's over"} {"your_number":"153","show_your_work":"Did I win?"} {"your_number":"154","show_your_work":"figured 1-100 would surely be covered, but 101-200 might get spotty. This is more of a question of users guessing the Riddler's popularity (ballpark # of avg submissions), then anything else."} {"your_number":"154","show_your_work":"I guessed 10,000 people would submit an answer. Then I used my gut."} {"your_number":"154","show_your_work":"Numbers up to 100 and soon after probably disappear pretty quickly"} {"your_number":"154","show_your_work":"Not too big, not too small. Not too round and not too prime."} {"your_number":"154","show_your_work":"no cheating"} {"your_number":"154","show_your_work":"gut"} {"your_number":"154","show_your_work":"Well, assuming the average person uses approximately 2 to 3 levels of knowledge, and that people often work in increments of 10, the average guess is likely around 30. so the next range of guesses should be around 50-100. thus, knowing someone is thinking the same way I am, there are likely a few people thinking the way i am, thus a number above 100 is a good choice. I chose 154 to be slightly more risk averse"} {"your_number":"155","show_your_work":"What is my name"} {"your_number":"155","show_your_work":"Used a random number generator between 0 and 1000"} {"your_number":"155","show_your_work":"Multiples of 5's and 10's are probably more likely to be avoided. So a multiple of 5 is more likely to be unique. Lower numbers like 25 or 50 (and multiples of 10) will probably be picked by people on \"Level 2\" (i.e. Picking those numbers because they assume no one will pick them) but 155 is probably large enough that it's reasonably unlikely to be selected while still being low enough to beat out people who choose numbers in the 200-1000 range. \n\nTl;dr no science just guessing people's tendencies"} {"your_number":"155","show_your_work":"Did a rng between 1 and 1000 and this is what I got"} {"your_number":"156","show_your_work":"I win"} {"your_number":"157","show_your_work":"In the coffee puzzle, someone put in just shy of 150 spammed responses, so I expect someone to do the same here. This eliminates the first 150 or so numbers from being something i can guess and win with. Given that, 157 feels right."} {"your_number":"157","show_your_work":"In the coffee puzzle, someone put in just shy of 150 spammed responses, so I expect someone to do the same here. This eliminates the first 150 or so numbers from being something i can guess and win with. Given that, 157 feels right."} {"your_number":"157","show_your_work":"Pure luck"} {"your_number":"157","show_your_work":"random guess :)"} {"your_number":"157","show_your_work":"Seemed good."} {"your_number":"157","show_your_work":"climb 14ers"} {"your_number":"157","show_your_work":"a;asldfj"} {"your_number":"157","show_your_work":"It seemed high enough to get around the inevitable duplicates before that."} {"your_number":"158","show_your_work":"blah blah blah"} {"your_number":"159","show_your_work":"Figured all double digit numbers would be taken and most numbers just over 100. So I went between 100 and 200, but 150 seemed too obvious so went a little higher"} {"your_number":"159","show_your_work":"getting bigg"} {"your_number":"159","show_your_work":"Assume all numbers 1-100 will be guessed by nature of volume of responses\n\nThen I assumed that there would be some unique numbers in the 200s. I eliminated all prime numbers in this range guessing 538 nerds would use them as part of a predictable \"weird number strategy\". \n\nThe rest is luck"} {"your_number":"160","show_your_work":"Bigggggg"} {"your_number":"161","show_your_work":"I'm guessing 2000 respondents. I took 2000 random numbers from a normal distribution with mean 0 and variance 100, rounded and took the absolute value, then picked the lowest value that was unique."} {"your_number":"161","show_your_work":"Randomly"} {"your_number":"161","show_your_work":"prime"} {"your_number":"162","show_your_work":"Random number generator between 0 and 250"} {"your_number":"162","show_your_work":"aaaa"} {"your_number":"162","show_your_work":"ierieri"} {"your_number":"162","show_your_work":"163-1"} {"your_number":"162","show_your_work":"🤷🏼‍♂️"} {"your_number":"162","show_your_work":"No work was put in"} {"your_number":"163","show_your_work":"Top"} {"your_number":"164","show_your_work":"So many people will choose numbers that are less."} {"your_number":"164","show_your_work":"I believe that there will be sufficient participation that positive integers 1-100 will be taken. I used a random number integer to select a positive integer between 101 and 150."} {"your_number":"164","show_your_work":"\nsay my name"} {"your_number":"165","show_your_work":"go Bones"} {"your_number":"166","show_your_work":"Not a date, people don't like multiple 6's, anything under 100 will probably be taken, no one's age, other than a possible highway connection not really significant."} {"your_number":"166","show_your_work":"I feel like people subconsciously hate seeing sixes next to each other (two sixes is only one away from that dreaded number of the man downstairs), though I also feel like all integers 1-100 will be taken due to sheer probability. So with 66 not being available by my logic, I'm choosing the next available option."} {"your_number":"166","show_your_work":"Skimmed a couple articles on detecting fake random numbers to get a sense of what people tend to pick when thinking of random numbers"} {"your_number":"166","show_your_work":"hi mom"} {"your_number":"166","show_your_work":"Assumed that 1-150 would all be taken, and that there would be substantial openings from 190+. People may see prime numbers as more \"random\" so I avoided those."} {"your_number":"167","show_your_work":"It has a nice ring to it. :) No idea how many people will play so really no way to figure out a good range."} {"your_number":"167","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"167","show_your_work":"No idea"} {"your_number":"168","show_your_work":"got it"} {"your_number":"168","show_your_work":"my birthday"} {"your_number":"168","show_your_work":"Underrated number"} {"your_number":"168","show_your_work":"Shot in the dark."} {"your_number":"168","show_your_work":"it just came to me!"} {"your_number":"168","show_your_work":"hi"} {"your_number":"168","show_your_work":"Guessed the answer would be in 100-200 range and used random number generator to pick one."} {"your_number":"168","show_your_work":"The order of the second nonabelian finite simple group."} {"your_number":"169","show_your_work":"Random selection from a range that seemed likely based on how many submissions I think you would get. I suppose I could automate a bot to pick each of the first few hundred integers and generate email addresses for each of them to pretend to be unique guessers....but that seems against the spirit of the exercise."} {"your_number":"169","show_your_work":"So high"} {"your_number":"170","show_your_work":"next decade"} {"your_number":"171","show_your_work":"No special method, just trying to get high enough to avoid others but lowest enough to be the lowest, based on the number of people I think respond to these"} {"your_number":"171","show_your_work":"I assume at least two people will choose all of the numbers below 100. After that it is a matter of avoiding popular numbers (multiples of ten, primes, etc.)."} {"your_number":"171","show_your_work":"112"} {"your_number":"172","show_your_work":"complete guess"} {"your_number":"172","show_your_work":"Boats n hoes"} {"your_number":"172","show_your_work":"It's not too small and it's a boring number, so I hope nobody else picks it."} {"your_number":"172","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"173","show_your_work":"Roughly 1000 people submit answers. Most of them will probably guess under 100. To reduce changes of collision, I went with something closer to 200, that has no repeating digits and doesn't look like a date. 173 seemed like a prime choice."} {"your_number":"173","show_your_work":"Odd number mixed with an assumption of number of participants."} {"your_number":"173","show_your_work":"1-100 are too obvious!"} {"your_number":"173","show_your_work":"Sounded about right"} {"your_number":"173","show_your_work":"totally random"} {"your_number":"173","show_your_work":"prime?"} {"your_number":"173","show_your_work":"Battle for Riddler nation had 1.3k submissions, I figure something like the 40th prime number will be the lowest non-unique one at a slightly lower rate of submission"} {"your_number":"173","show_your_work":"Why not? \n"} {"your_number":"174","show_your_work":"Just because.\n"} {"your_number":"174","show_your_work":"bow to my amazingness"} {"your_number":"175","show_your_work":"I win"} {"your_number":"176","show_your_work":"hacked"} {"your_number":"177","show_your_work":"Seemed right"} {"your_number":"177","show_your_work":"Date of birth"} {"your_number":"177","show_your_work":"Factor of 3"} {"your_number":"177","show_your_work":"There is likely to be a fairly low number that everyone else has not submitted as they think that someone else has already submitted it."} {"your_number":"177","show_your_work":"A bit over 1,500 people responded to the coffee submission a few weeks ago, which establishes a good baseline for response rate. I'd imagine all 1 & 2 digit numbers would be picked more than once for those who would want to \"snipe\" away a win. So I picked a low three-digit number, repeating ones and tens digits because I assume people are more likely trying to appear \"random\" with non-repeating digits."} {"your_number":"178","show_your_work":"Guessed"} {"your_number":"178","show_your_work":"even"} {"your_number":"178","show_your_work":"Trying to tow the line between too small and non-unique, but not so large that others could sneak in."} {"your_number":"179","show_your_work":"Elle Woods' LSAT score on Legally Blonde"} {"your_number":"179","show_your_work":"getting tired"} {"your_number":"179","show_your_work":"Number of unread emails"} {"your_number":"179","show_your_work":"I ultimately used Benford's Law to calculate probabilistic weights for a random sample of integers, and combined those weights with a few assumptions to run many simulations to see what number, on average, ends up as the lowest unique integer. First, I assumed nobody would guess a number above 1000, as there will likely be on the order of 1000-10000 participants which essentially guarantees that the winning number will be 3 digits at most. Second, I assumed there was no chance that a single digit number will end up being the lowest, so I did not considering those in my simulations. \n\nI also included a pair of adjustable parameters in my simulation: the total number of guesses, and the percentage of guesses that are 2 digit numbers. The percentage of 2 digit guesses can be inferred from Benford's Law, but I suspected that the fraction of 2 digit guesses will be somewhat higher than \"random\" given that everyone is trying to get the lowest unique integer. \n\nAfter running 1000 simulations for each pair of parameters (number of total guesses, ranging from 1000 to 5000, and fraction of guesses as 2 digit numbers, ranging from 10% to 99%), the average lowest unique integer ranges from 35 for 1000 participants, to 253 for 5000 participants.\n\nNot surprisingly, if over ~60% of the guesses are two digit numbers, the lowest unique integer quickly settles into a value in the low 100s, almost regardless of the number of guesses, as there are significantly fewer guesses over 100 in this case. Hence, my final guess was made by assuming that somewhere between the ~30% (as predicted by Benford's Law) and ~60% (the point at which the answer is in the always in the low 100s) will guess a two digit number - or 45%. I'm also guessing that around 4,000 people will participate, given that ~1,500 participated in the original \"Battle For Riddler Nation,\" and this one requires significantly less effort, hence more participants. The average lowest unique positive integer for 45% 2-digit guesses and 4,000 total participants, after 1000 simulations, comes out to be ~180, which I went down to 179 to have a slightly less \"neat\" answer.\n\nI would be curious, given the true number of 2-digit guesses and total number of participants, how close this strategy of using Benford's Law for choosing probabilistic weights comes to actually predicting the answer..."} {"your_number":"180","show_your_work":"next decade"} {"your_number":"181","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"181","show_your_work":"next"} {"your_number":"182","show_your_work":"Because, son."} {"your_number":"182","show_your_work":"Pure guesstimation"} {"your_number":"182","show_your_work":"whismy"} {"your_number":"182","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"182","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"182","show_your_work":"hmm"} {"your_number":"182","show_your_work":"Not sure."} {"your_number":"183","show_your_work":"Seemed like a nice odd number!"} {"your_number":"183","show_your_work":"I assume thousands are submitting numbers. Ones and teens will be taken. There will be a low number missed, but how low? I wavered between something less than 100 and less than 200. I made a random choose above 100 (to avoid favorite jersey numbers)."} {"your_number":"183","show_your_work":"For a pretty simple reason! It was the number of my favorite class at Stanford, ECON 183."} {"your_number":"183","show_your_work":"No real reason"} {"your_number":"183","show_your_work":"next"} {"your_number":"184","show_your_work":"blah"} {"your_number":"185","show_your_work":"getting big"} {"your_number":"186","show_your_work":"Hope that there aren't trolls"} {"your_number":"186","show_your_work":"Just a guess."} {"your_number":"186","show_your_work":"high"} {"your_number":"187","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"187","show_your_work":"I assume that all of the 1 and 2 digit numbers will be selected, but not all of the 3 digit numbers - that assumption is based on the number of expected participants. Of course, others will assume the same thing, but still some will go take the \"Devil's advocate\" approach and select a 1 or 2 digit integer anyway. So, among the 3 digit numbers, it is highly unlikely that all of them will be selected, so to me the question is - what is the smallest 3 digit number that won't be selected. It also seems likely that the number will likely be less than 500 as well. I think the best bet is in the 100-200 range, and I just simply picked a number in the upper part of that range - 187."} {"your_number":"187","show_your_work":"wild guess"} {"your_number":"187","show_your_work":"High enough to avoid others, weird enough to not be popular."} {"your_number":"187","show_your_work":"top"} {"your_number":"188","show_your_work":"I think I have future-sight"} {"your_number":"188","show_your_work":"huge"} {"your_number":"189","show_your_work":"win"} {"your_number":"190","show_your_work":"I win I win I win"} {"your_number":"191","show_your_work":"I used my super mind powers to influence everyone else to pick a different number. Maybe?"} {"your_number":"191","show_your_work":"Fave number is 91=7*13, but thought this was too small and conspicuous to be unique."} {"your_number":"191","show_your_work":"Say I win"} {"your_number":"192","show_your_work":"Nate is Great"} {"your_number":"192","show_your_work":"No good reason at all!"} {"your_number":"193","show_your_work":"TB12 4 ever"} {"your_number":"193","show_your_work":"\nAssuming 1500 entries, assuming a Zipf distribution, the number choosing 1 would be 1500/7.89 ~ 190.\nThe Zipf distribution is: n, n/2, n/3, n/4, n/5, n/6, ... (i.e the harmonic series).\nThe 7.89 is the sum of the harmonic series out to 1500.\nSo the expected value of the number choosing a particular interger drops to 1 at about 190.\nSo the lowest unused number is probably around there.\n\nIf we think of this as an n person zero sum game, then it depends on whether n is even or odd.\nIf n is odd (= 2*k + ), then any alliance of k + 1 players can force a win by choosing all the numbers from 1 to k + 1. At least 1 of them must be unique.\nIf n is even (= 2*k), then any alliance of k players can force a tie by choosing all the numbers from 1 to k. At least 1 of them must be unique, unless the other k players also choose all the numbers from 1 to k.\n"} {"your_number":"194","show_your_work":"I picked something less common."} {"your_number":"194","show_your_work":"I think one and two digit numbers will likely have 0 or 2+ submissions. So I typed in Excel =ROUND(RAND()*1000,0)"} {"your_number":"194","show_your_work":"Pats are the best"} {"your_number":"194","show_your_work":"Don't try to quantify my art, man!"} {"your_number":"195","show_your_work":"I win just like the coffee challenge"} {"your_number":"196","show_your_work":"Purely random 3 digit integer"} {"your_number":"196","show_your_work":"Game theory"} {"your_number":"197","show_your_work":"A prime high enough not to be quickly picked?"} {"your_number":"197","show_your_work":"Game theory"} {"your_number":"198","show_your_work":"It seemed like a small number but big enough that others might not pick it"} {"your_number":"198","show_your_work":"Game Theory"} {"your_number":"199","show_your_work":"Game theory"} {"your_number":"200","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"200","show_your_work":"I'm assuming a number in the low hundreds will win, because if we have around several thousand entries, it doesn't make sense to go above a thousand. In thinking of numbers other people won't think of, 200 was the last one I thought of. It's a nice even number, so it feels common. \n\nAlso, I'd feel less dumb if I went lower than the winner than if I went higher. I don't know why. So I went fairly low. I'm assuming every number under than 100 will get picked by."} {"your_number":"200","show_your_work":"Hiding in plain sight"} {"your_number":"200","show_your_work":"Game theory"} {"your_number":"201","show_your_work":"game theory"} {"your_number":"202","show_your_work":"game theory"} {"your_number":"203","show_your_work":"203 is the 7th Bell number."} {"your_number":"203","show_your_work":"I figure most people will submit numbers between 1 and 200, so none of those will be unique."} {"your_number":"203","show_your_work":"game theory"} {"your_number":"204","show_your_work":"game theory"} {"your_number":"205","show_your_work":"game theory"} {"your_number":"206","show_your_work":"..."} {"your_number":"206","show_your_work":"game theory"} {"your_number":"207","show_your_work":"game theory"} {"your_number":"208","show_your_work":"game theory"} {"your_number":"209","show_your_work":"Considered 1 since everybody will know it can't possibly win, so maybe no one would submit it. But there will be a handful of reverse psychologists out there. Ultimately, I just guessed."} {"your_number":"209","show_your_work":"A number with no charisma"} {"your_number":"209","show_your_work":"game theory"} {"your_number":"210","show_your_work":"game theory"} {"your_number":"211","show_your_work":"I figure it's weird enough."} {"your_number":"211","show_your_work":"next"} {"your_number":"211","show_your_work":"seemed reasonable"} {"your_number":"212","show_your_work":"I thought of it. (Thank you John Lennon)"} {"your_number":"212","show_your_work":"Simulated with responses randomly selected from a discretized rayleigh distribution, found answers near 200 across a range of parameters (including # of responses, I went with 2000 based on the coffee puzzle), chose an even number since brains think odd is random."} {"your_number":"212","show_your_work":"hmm"} {"your_number":"213","show_your_work":"Small in the scheme of positive integers, not even, not prime, not terribly special in any way"} {"your_number":"213","show_your_work":"I figured most people would attempt in the 1-200 range, and 13 is seen as \"unlucky\" so why not?"} {"your_number":"213","show_your_work":"win"} {"your_number":"214","show_your_work":"I win"} {"your_number":"215","show_your_work":"I win you lose"} {"your_number":"216","show_your_work":"Game theory"} {"your_number":"217","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"217","show_your_work":"Because it's the winner."} {"your_number":"217","show_your_work":"Its gotta be larger than 1"} {"your_number":"217","show_your_work":"I wish I had a methodology here..."} {"your_number":"217","show_your_work":"Complete guess!!"} {"your_number":"217","show_your_work":"Just felt right"} {"your_number":"217","show_your_work":"Mostly a guess"} {"your_number":"217","show_your_work":"I don't know"} {"your_number":"217","show_your_work":"I win, just like the coffee game"} {"your_number":"218","show_your_work":"I looked up how many people participated in the coffee problem, then guessed how many numbers would be completely taken up by a submission. I'm worried this is a little too high."} {"your_number":"218","show_your_work":"I figure almost anything under 200 will be taken already; I'll be shocked if the winner is under 100. I also don't think it will be a prime number, because that was my first instinct to look when choosing a number. I think people will favor odd numbers over even numbers, so I chose an even number. And I chose 218 because 281 - an area code from my birthplace of Houston, TX - was just too large."} {"your_number":"218","show_your_work":"I had to fight the temptation to choose something really low as most people wouldn't; however I figured a small number would choose very low numbers anyway. Most others would choose double digit numbers or low triple digit numbers, I think. Of course, this is all contingent on how many people answer these questions, and I have no idea, so it's mostly a WAG."} {"your_number":"218","show_your_work":"I win"} {"your_number":"219","show_your_work":"rng"} {"your_number":"219","show_your_work":"Mostly guess work, I gathered from a few solutions to previous riddles that the number of answers submitted is usually around 1500. I figuered that the first 200 or so numbers will probably be submitted, and went for a non-intuitive integer (i.e 200) from there."} {"your_number":"220","show_your_work":"Gotta choose something"} {"your_number":"220","show_your_work":"i felt like it"} {"your_number":"221","show_your_work":"It seems to me given the way this competition is set up, the ideal strategy would be to submit multiple responses with every value up to an arbitrarily large number (say, 221) and then attaching your real name and info to the final value. \n\nBut, that really seems against the spirit of the competition (and is a lot of work to boot!) I think I will just stick with my one bid. \n\nHere's hoping you have a way to filter submissions from readers with less scruples! (And of course, the trolls)\n\nThomas"} {"your_number":"221","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"222","show_your_work":"People are more likely to pick odd numbers in general... and it seemed high enough that maybe nobody else had picked it."} {"your_number":"223","show_your_work":"Not too big, not too small"} {"your_number":"223","show_your_work":"223 decimal is DF in hexadecimal, and also my initials."} {"your_number":"224","show_your_work":"I suspect some trolls will select all the 1 and 2 digit integers, even knowing they won't win. Estimating a few thousand people submit other 3 digit integers, hopefully they will use up all the 100's. leaving a low number in the 200's available."} {"your_number":"224","show_your_work":"Pure hunch"} {"your_number":"224","show_your_work":"I decided to go with an even number that's low but not super low and also \"looks\" less random. Since people typically don't want to pick numbers that seem less random since that's what everyone would pick, I'm trying some psychological trickery and then jumping what I feel is high enough to avoid others thinking like me."} {"your_number":"226","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"227","show_your_work":"I took a risk by going lower than I thought I should, but I chose a \"weird\" number. If submission are in the 500 to 1500 range, I have a chance. However, there is a fairly good chance someone will choose the same number as me or a unique number is lower. But if I went much higher I would probably guarantee my loss."} {"your_number":"228","show_your_work":"First I figured that the number of submissions for similar riddles would mean that the first two hundred or so would be out of play. Next, humans who are instructed to choose randomly are particularly averse to patterns - people trying to choose randomly will try hard to *not* put in multiple numbers of the same pattern, especially with the first two numbers. Lastly, I chose an even number for the ones place because a) people like to choose primes and b) again, three even numbers is too much of a \"pattern\" for many people to consider truly random."} {"your_number":"228","show_your_work":"Pure gut feel."} {"your_number":"229","show_your_work":"Unfortunately, I don't have a great method. I've read in the past that during \"pick a number, any number\" carnival games, people tend to go for either numbers less than 20 or multiples of 10 above 20, so I usually choose this number in those types of games and often win. But I look forward to reading the better answers next week!"} {"your_number":"229","show_your_work":"None really"} {"your_number":"230","show_your_work":"Randomly selected."} {"your_number":"231","show_your_work":"think that others will choose all the numbers below 231- ha just a guess"} {"your_number":"231","show_your_work":"Depends a lot on what kind of anti-spam techniques are used. If none, this number is small enough to possibly win, yet big enough not to certainly lose."} {"your_number":"231","show_your_work":"It just came to me"} {"your_number":"232","show_your_work":"Every sub100 integer will be taken by probability and number of submissions. Above 200 is a safe guess for being unique but might be too high."} {"your_number":"232","show_your_work":"a wholly unremarkable number within acceptable range"} {"your_number":"233","show_your_work":"Part guess at riddler readership, part guess about numbers ppl think are random, purposely avoided variations on birthdays"} {"your_number":"233","show_your_work":"Pure guesswork"} {"your_number":"236","show_your_work":"Estimated the rough number of entries expected and guessed a unique/random number greater than 150"} {"your_number":"237","show_your_work":"15 k followers I estimate the number will be 3 digits"} {"your_number":"237","show_your_work":"It was the Year of the Consulship of Perpetuus and Felix"} {"your_number":"238","show_your_work":"It's an number that is unlikely to have much significance - it's not a birthday in any format and it's a relatively high number. I figure a lot of people will choose a number ending in 32 for that reason, a lot of people will pick something ending in 33 to game them, at least one will pick an inner ending in 34 to game those people, 235 is too round, 236 is too \"nice\" (2x3=6) and people like sevens so no 237"} {"your_number":"238","show_your_work":"I like 8, and though other integers with 8 would be claimed."} {"your_number":"239","show_your_work":"239 is prime, which might be less thought of in comparison to others.\nAll the numbers from 1 to 200 are probably guessed (putting my faith in chance)\n239 also does not repeat any numbers."} {"your_number":"239","show_your_work":"Intuition"} {"your_number":"241","show_your_work":"Good at estimating"} {"your_number":"241","show_your_work":"Just felt right."} {"your_number":"241","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"242","show_your_work":"Figured most folks would choose primes. So, chose a low composite."} {"your_number":"242","show_your_work":"Total guesswork. I imagine 1-100 will be undoubtedly used by others, and I tried to pick a semi-random number that wasn't too much greater than that."} {"your_number":"243","show_your_work":"magic."} {"your_number":"244","show_your_work":"for fun"} {"your_number":"244","show_your_work":"Start with X = 1000\nIterate three times: Random three-digit number under X, ending in one of these digits: 1, 4, 6, 8, 9.\nGuess X\n\nModeling players as randomly picking numbers in \"buckets\" of strategies (ex. some people will settle on a random number by number of digits, last digit, primality, etc). \nAssuming too many people will attempt two-digit numbers for any to be unique. \nAssuming too many people will restrict themselves to picking \"random-looking\" numbers that end in 3 or 7, and also too many people counter-picking particularly \"nonrandom looking\" numbers ending in 2, 5, and 0. \nAssume superrationality among unique guesses (potential winners were chosen with the same procedure). \nSelect a procedure that biases the guess low (assuming a unique guess, probability of being the *smallest* guess should fall exponentially with the size of the guess)."} {"your_number":"244","show_your_work":"Was my husband's gut was 244. Then he wrote a computer program that suggested 268, but I like the straight gut number better"} {"your_number":"246","show_your_work":"People have an aversion to even numbers when picking at random."} {"your_number":"246","show_your_work":"It's just a lucky number"} {"your_number":"246","show_your_work":"Random Guess"} {"your_number":"247","show_your_work":"A man never revels in reveals"} {"your_number":"247","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"248","show_your_work":"I tried to find a digit that was small enough to still qualify as a winner, but large enough that it was still going to be unique."} {"your_number":"253","show_your_work":"Assume a few thousand people will probably participate. Lots of people will probably think 'nobody will pick 1, so I'll pick 1' for the lowest numbers, so I picked a fairly nondescript middling-range number with nothing special about it."} {"your_number":"253","show_your_work":"Felt like it"} {"your_number":"253","show_your_work":"Your coffee based riddler from a couple weeks ago got 1538 responses. In a very short search, I didn't see any other figures for response numbers so I assumed that this is roughly near the amount of responses that the Riddler and Riddler Express get.\n\nThe possible valid numbers to chose are all integers [1,infinity).\n\nThis looks like a form of the Birthday Problem, but instead of determining the number of people needed to get a match, I need to figure out how high the integers would need to be to avoid a match with a known group of people.\n\nThe problem with that, however, is there won't be an equal distribution since the goal is to be the lowest unique integer. People will avoid the lowest numbers (1-20?) because they will assume a large group will select the lowest. However, there will also be a large group that will assume that since everyone else is avoiding the lowest numbers, they will choose those low numbers in hopes that they are the only one to do so.\n\nWhile some will chose their \"lucky\" numbers, others will guess numbers that feel \"off\" or \"unbalanced.\" The idea being that numbers that people ascribe with those unpleasant feelings are numbers that people don't normally pick when asked to choose a number at random. Without taking the time to look up research or data on the subject, I would hypothesize that often those \"uncomfortable\" numbers are more likely to be prime numbers.\n\nSo I need to find a number as low as I can go whose probability to be chosen by someone else in a group of 1500-1600 is hopefully less than 0.5, but also isn't a prime number, and I probably want to avoid numbers that feel too \"balanced\" which I'll guess are numbers that end in 5, 0, or have repeating values (22,33,44).\n\nI'm sure somewhere there is an optimum game theory method to try that I don't know, but maybe the whole point of this is to get data for a game theory experiment.\n\nIn the end, I chose 253. I don't know exactly how to figure the probability of a match, but 253 is high, but the number of entrants means I might have to guess kind of high. It's a composite number to avoid anyone guessing on the primes, but its factors are none of the single digit primes so it still has a slight feel of being \"off.\""} {"your_number":"254","show_your_work":"254 is a candidate for the lowest boring number (see the interesting number paradox) because it is the lowest number to not have its own Wikipedia entry. The number's inherit boringness raises its odds of being unique, and among this set of boring numbers, it has the lowest value."} {"your_number":"254","show_your_work":"According to the Wikipedia page \"Interesting number paradox\", 254 is the lowest number to not have its own Wikipedia page."} {"your_number":"256","show_your_work":"Nobody else will pick 256"} {"your_number":"256","show_your_work":"16 is my lucky number so I squared it"} {"your_number":"257","show_your_work":"Thought about how committed the most committed person would be. Then added 1. This is my only submission."} {"your_number":"257","show_your_work":"Felt right"} {"your_number":"257","show_your_work":"Im just thinking I'll go one higher than 2^8."} {"your_number":"258","show_your_work":"2+5=7, 8-7 = 1. i am number 1"} {"your_number":"259","show_your_work":"intuition"} {"your_number":"259","show_your_work":"I don't have a great justification for this. I ran simulations on 1538 submissions (the same number as the last time you ran a submit-a-number contest) and at 259 the odds of every number being taken <= 259 were about 50/50. This assumes that everyone picking is using a uniform distribution between 0 and 259. Picking 259 specifically doesn't make a lot of sense frankly, but I had to pick something."} {"your_number":"259","show_your_work":"It feels lucky!"} {"your_number":"259","show_your_work":"assuming 1,000 or so submissions, and i like this number"} {"your_number":"259","show_your_work":"random number generator"} {"your_number":"260","show_your_work":"Assuming the riddler receives 1000 submissions on average, in an ideal case each person knows what the lowest number submitted was. Thus the first person would submit a 1, second person knowing a 1 had already been submitted would submit a 2 and so on. If everyone is assuming 1-100 has been submitted in duplicate then 800 guesses are left. I think it is reasonable that numbers 1-100 may be guessed more than two times. This could leave 700 people. Assuming people are aware of the likelihood of double guesses I am airing on people starting to aim lower and lower. My gut left me with something in the 200-300 range."} {"your_number":"260","show_your_work":"I thought about trying to do an analysis, but so much depends on human behavior that I figured it's better (and takes a lot less effort) to just throw out a pseudo-random number."} {"your_number":"261","show_your_work":"No real reason! No way to even guess at the number of participants which would certainly help, so this is just a wild guess!"} {"your_number":"261","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"261","show_your_work":"I like that number"} {"your_number":"264","show_your_work":"When asked to pick a random number, most people go odd. They also pick numbers which seem to not have many divisors. A number with 3 even digits, and which seems like it would divide easily (but doesn't) should be more rarely picked."} {"your_number":"264","show_your_work":"Why not"} {"your_number":"266","show_your_work":"It is a strange fact of reality that 37, 73 etc will be chosen oddly much. My strategy is to thus to avoid 3s and 7s. I estimate that ~3-5k will participate (based on the castle thing I looked back on - this is a lot easier so I imagine more guesses), but a lot of these will just clump up on gimmicky answers. Even among the few thousands trying to be random, a lot will pick numbers way too high/low. I imagine everything below 200 will be thoroughly peppered. My first instinct was to pick something in the 200s, but that is most certainly a bad idea, that being said whatever. Also I avoid 8s, 9s, ascending/descending sequences. I doubt 0s will to be popular, but repeating digits will be even less so."} {"your_number":"266","show_your_work":"..."} {"your_number":"267","show_your_work":"Decided randomly"} {"your_number":"267","show_your_work":"."} {"your_number":"267","show_your_work":"I'm guessing that if a few thousand people respond, the answer will be between 1 and 500"} {"your_number":"268","show_your_work":"my gut said 244, and I wrote a computer simulation based on my expectation of how many humans will submit an answer (~10,000) and what will their distribution of answers look like (lots of \"1\" answers!) and it the first few runs of the simulation contained two 268s (as chance would have it) and that's pretty darn close to my gut of 244, so I'm just going with the computer..."} {"your_number":"270","show_your_work":"detailed calclations"} {"your_number":"271","show_your_work":"Just a guess"} {"your_number":"271","show_your_work":"Nice number (first three digits of e!)"} {"your_number":"271","show_your_work":"Enough submissions will be received that the two-digit integers will probably have multiple submissions. My choice may be low enough to win, but high enough that the spread of submissions make it unique"} {"your_number":"271","show_your_work":"My birth date plus my wife's, minus our oldest child's, plus our two youngest. I figured it would have to be sufficiently high but not too high and couldn't contain an actual birth date because there's at least one person for every birth date that would do that."} {"your_number":"273","show_your_work":"0-99 will be someones favorite player's jersey number. 100-199 will be suffer from the same problem but with the person adding 100 to it to beat everyone else. So the first number will be in the 200's. 273 is not prime, not a square, not a cube, etc. The most distinct thing about it is that its the triple point of water in Kelvin and might be some 14 year old's birthday."} {"your_number":"273","show_your_work":"High enough for enough digits to mask a random number, considering your amount of followers"} {"your_number":"275","show_your_work":"Just a number personal to me"} {"your_number":"278","show_your_work":"Eh"} {"your_number":"279","show_your_work":"dumb guess"} {"your_number":"279","show_your_work":"Random, relatively low, maybe no one else will pick it"} {"your_number":"281","show_your_work":"Here's hoping guessing works!"} {"your_number":"283","show_your_work":"it looks devious"} {"your_number":"283","show_your_work":"Falcons blew a 28-3 lead."} {"your_number":"283","show_your_work":"It's kind of prime"} {"your_number":"284","show_your_work":"Some troll will individually submit 1-100, after that I picked a number at random"} {"your_number":"284","show_your_work":"The distribution of responses will be heavily right-skewed, people not quite understanding, taking a chance, underestimating the number of responses etc. Ergo, small integers are going to be selected a lot, but getting into the hundreds, and two-hundreds, it will thin out. Our \"random\" brains have a penchant for 3 and 7, and people may try to \"snipe\" guesses ending in a 0 by going \"xx9\", so I avoided those numbers, and finished it off with a guess."} {"your_number":"286","show_your_work":"People choose odd numbers and prime numbers more commonly. I expect many thousands of entries taking up all the low hundreds numbers"} {"your_number":"288","show_your_work":"I figured all numbers below 100 and possibly 200 would be chosen. Then picked a random number over 200."} {"your_number":"289","show_your_work":"QED"} {"your_number":"291","show_your_work":"random guess"} {"your_number":"291","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"294","show_your_work":"It was a number I had no connection to and couldn't connect anything else to as well. Not terribly high (I hope) and not anyone's go-to combo unless maybe they were born in February of '94."} {"your_number":"296","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"300","show_your_work":"People won't want to submit round numbers and this seemed as good an option as any."} {"your_number":"302","show_your_work":"I dunno. I seem to recall that you get ~1000 submissions, so I figure answers will begin to thin out around the 300s. I avoided round numbers and figure 302 is close enough to 300 that people might actively avoid it."} {"your_number":"302","show_your_work":"I'm not sure how many responses you'll get, but I'd guess you want to guess something like the square root of that number."} {"your_number":"304","show_your_work":"I've dreamed about this number for years, there is no way it could fail me"} {"your_number":"306","show_your_work":"Figured the number will be somewhere between 200 and 1000, chose a number somewhere in the lower end of that range."} {"your_number":"306","show_your_work":"guess"} {"your_number":"307","show_your_work":"Subjective, considering Ziff's law and the number of likely entries."} {"your_number":"307","show_your_work":"With hundreds, not to say thousands of entries it seemed likely to me that the smallest unique number would not be less than 100, and not greater than 1000. I thought a prime number better than a composite number because there is no smaller factor to suggest it. So I decided to choose the lowest prime greater than 300, which is 307. Greater than 400 seemed too high to me. I could not even begin to imagine a systematic or logical way to go about this."} {"your_number":"308","show_your_work":"Took the time of a YouTube vid I was watching."} {"your_number":"309","show_your_work":"I think it won't be too high."} {"your_number":"309","show_your_work":"It felt right"} {"your_number":"312","show_your_work":"I'm betting on there being a lot of respondents (I don't normally respond to these but I did here)"} {"your_number":"313","show_your_work":"I think more people will try to stay under 100. And fivethirtyeight has a large reader base. Favorite number is admittedly 3."} {"your_number":"315","show_your_work":"Area Code + Twin Peaks"} {"your_number":"316","show_your_work":"randomly generated number between 100 and 1000"} {"your_number":"317","show_your_work":"Picked it out of a hat"} {"your_number":"317","show_your_work":"chosen at random to be non culturally significant and between 1-538"} {"your_number":"317","show_your_work":"."} {"your_number":"317","show_your_work":"Educated guess..."} {"your_number":"323","show_your_work":"Seems randomly low and unique"} {"your_number":"323","show_your_work":"It randomly popped into my head."} {"your_number":"323","show_your_work":"???"} {"your_number":"326","show_your_work":"I tried to use the opposite of my conventional thinking on random number selection, and I figured 3 digits would be enough, if there are about a couple thousand applicants. I thought about how these numbers looked in the two common arrangements for them, and tried to make the motion of this number unnatural."} {"your_number":"327","show_your_work":"Pure luck!"} {"your_number":"329","show_your_work":"I picked one."} {"your_number":"329","show_your_work":"Bingo"} {"your_number":"331","show_your_work":"My locker # in high school & my anniversary"} {"your_number":"333","show_your_work":"because"} {"your_number":"333","show_your_work":"I like the number 3 and 333 has 3 of them"} {"your_number":"337","show_your_work":"I like it"} {"your_number":"337","show_your_work":"Not-too-low prime number"} {"your_number":"337","show_your_work":"Two digits too common. 100s and 200s common. 300s should be low enough to be unique. 300s, 310s and 320s should be common in 300s range. Final pick 337 to avoid 333 and numbers close to it."} {"your_number":"340","show_your_work":"Chose a randomly generated number between 300 and 400, which seemed anout right"} {"your_number":"341","show_your_work":"i wanted a number that wasn't too large but also large enough to possibly be unique"} {"your_number":"343","show_your_work":"it's a bettor number."} {"your_number":"343","show_your_work":"Most will guess low"} {"your_number":"346","show_your_work":"I plugged the number of people who responded to the war for riddler nation (1382) into my favorite asymtote formula (1/2x) to find the first integer x with a result less than 2."} {"your_number":"347","show_your_work":"Assumed all integers less than 300 would be chosen. Picked a prime above that."} {"your_number":"347","show_your_work":"I didn't think anyone else would pick it."} {"your_number":"347","show_your_work":"Relatively low, but higher than numbers that seem likely to be picked often."} {"your_number":"351","show_your_work":"n/a"} {"your_number":"352","show_your_work":"Random guess in brain"} {"your_number":"355","show_your_work":"seemed right"} {"your_number":"356","show_your_work":"Not particularly detailed reasoning, just picking a number that seems unspecial and is reasonably small."} {"your_number":"359","show_your_work":"Justin Turner's BA heading into 7/30"} {"your_number":"361","show_your_work":"Not too high, not too low."} {"your_number":"366","show_your_work":"three digits seems to be the right order of magnitude"} {"your_number":"367","show_your_work":"In the last, for the castle problem, there were about 1000 entries. I took the 1000 number and divided it by e, since x/e tends to be the solution to everything."} {"your_number":"371","show_your_work":"Not a date, higher than estimated 300 lower numbers likely guesed"} {"your_number":"372","show_your_work":"Lots of people guessing."} {"your_number":"373","show_your_work":"I figured all the lowest numbers would be taken. This is either because it is obvious to pick the a single digit number. I choose three digits because I figure fewer than 1000 people will enter. I choose odd numbers because people tend to prefer choosing even. The rest was just a guess."} {"your_number":"376","show_your_work":"Totally random"} {"your_number":"379","show_your_work":"Chose a number on the 3 digit due to the fact that all the two digits numbers have a fairly high chance of been selected, not using a number with any special connotation to diminish the chance of it been used. Picked a random number on the low 3 digits."} {"your_number":"379","show_your_work":"Seemed about right"} {"your_number":"380","show_your_work":"Not too big, not too small"} {"your_number":"381","show_your_work":"Arbitrarily"} {"your_number":"387","show_your_work":"Not a prime or square number - not in the first 300 (which i think would get taken)"} {"your_number":"387","show_your_work":"42 is too obvious, even though it's the answer to life, the universe and everything; anything else under around 300 seems highly unlikely to be unique; 387 has a good feeling about it. In other words, it's a random unsubstantiated guess..."} {"your_number":"393","show_your_work":"rng"} {"your_number":"400","show_your_work":"Something that felt not too high or too low. Anything I generated procedurally seemed more likely to get picked than something more random. I used a nice round number because it feels less random, and therefore less likely to get picked."} {"your_number":"400","show_your_work":"Going for the even hundred was an attempt at reverse psychology (the restaurant's so crowded that no one ever eats there). Any of the lower hundreds seemed unlikely to be unique, though."} {"your_number":"401","show_your_work":"It's prime too"} {"your_number":"403","show_your_work":"No particular reason"} {"your_number":"403","show_your_work":"N/A"} {"your_number":"407","show_your_work":"I started to search for what your readership is and do something with that. Then I gave up and chose this random number."} {"your_number":"411","show_your_work":"Just picked a number and hoped"} {"your_number":"413","show_your_work":"I suspect an answer in the 200-700 range is most likely to survive and win; the idiot quotient for these problems discourages me from going lower, and I expect 2000-3000 entries.\nSo I picked an arbitrary number in that range."} {"your_number":"414","show_your_work":"No particular reason"} {"your_number":"416","show_your_work":"416"} {"your_number":"417","show_your_work":"I don't know how many people usually participate, so ... random integer generated. I also wanted to say 1, because what if everyone believes that someone else would say 1 so nobody choses 1... But I can't be the only smart ass, so a bunch of other people will say 1 for that reason, right? Except maybe everyone will also think THAT way, so maybe I should say 1 afterall... Infinite regress."} {"your_number":"417","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"419","show_your_work":"Total guess, but gut says it will be lower than thought. I divided my original guess by about 10."} {"your_number":"419","show_your_work":"Lucky number"} {"your_number":"420","show_your_work":"Blaze it"} {"your_number":"422","show_your_work":"Based on guess on number of entries"} {"your_number":"424","show_your_work":"I assume that 500-1000 people will participate and that the majority of answers will be odd. Guesswork from there."} {"your_number":"425","show_your_work":"My birthday :D"} {"your_number":"426","show_your_work":"Any single or 2 digit number will be taken as will any number in the 100s and probably the 200s. Estimating the number of readers tells me that the winning number will probably be below 1000. 3 seems to be a popular number. That's why I went with a low 400 number with no significance, no 3s or 7s as they seem to be popular, as well as no multiple of 5."} {"your_number":"427","show_your_work":"I RNG'd a 3 digit number."} {"your_number":"432","show_your_work":"i guessed"} {"your_number":"435","show_your_work":"Just because"} {"your_number":"436","show_your_work":"Random # from 1 to 1400, the number of submissions to an earlier contest"} {"your_number":"438","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"441","show_your_work":"It's sufficiently high that it could be unique, and it's a US highway that goes through a couple places I used to live. Why not?"} {"your_number":"441","show_your_work":"Randomly"} {"your_number":"441","show_your_work":"I have to assume that practically every number from 1 to 100 will be chosen by at least one person, given the number of participants. It also seems quite unlikely that any number above 500 will be the smallest (that is purely intuitive, nothing more). I think there's a good shot the winning number is therefore between 100 and 500, and, although I could try to outsmart everyone and pick an \"uncommon\" number, I think it's more likely that I'd just arrive closer to everyone else. So I used a random number generator. The first one was 277, which I discarded because 7 is often considered to be the most \"random\" number and I have a suspicion that people will be predisposed to pick it. The next was 441, which seemed reasonable enough, so I went with it."} {"your_number":"441","show_your_work":"intuition, but it's 21^2"} {"your_number":"443","show_your_work":"because"} {"your_number":"443","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"444","show_your_work":"I was going to submit 444, but that would be too obvious"} {"your_number":"444","show_your_work":"Brett Favre"} {"your_number":"444","show_your_work":"Lowest repeating integer on probability distribution curve based on 2048 expected guesses."} {"your_number":"446","show_your_work":"I randomly generated a number between 250 and 750. I figured that if I came to any calculated answer, someone else would derive the same number."} {"your_number":"447","show_your_work":"it's a guess man"} {"your_number":"449","show_your_work":"Just a guess..."} {"your_number":"456","show_your_work":"Figure it would be in the hundreds, and then I just picked three of my favorite digits, and I didn't want it to end in 5."} {"your_number":"459","show_your_work":"Seems like the sweet spot"} {"your_number":"462","show_your_work":"I love the numbers 4 and 6, and figured a lot of people would be putting lower numbers. I'm taking my chances on a but larger number hoping no one else did!"} {"your_number":"463","show_your_work":"Random number"} {"your_number":"471","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"472","show_your_work":"I've always liked this one"} {"your_number":"473","show_your_work":"Random 3 digit number [using die rolls]."} {"your_number":"477","show_your_work":"People don't like odd numbers and will think that double digit sevens don't look random enough."} {"your_number":"478","show_your_work":"I figured that even numbers are better than odd, because \"random\" numbers are odd. I also thought that all numbers below 300 would be taken for sure. So, I generated a random even number between 300 and 500, and got 478"} {"your_number":"478","show_your_work":"I guessed that there would be about 1300 players, so I didn't want to pick a number that was larger than the number of players. I also figured that something in the 35-40 percent range would be the best hiding place, so I picked a number and went with it."} {"your_number":"481","show_your_work":"Tried to guess number of readers and pick a number that's not round"} {"your_number":"481","show_your_work":"I'm a police officer and this is my badge number."} {"your_number":"493","show_your_work":"Random!"} {"your_number":"499","show_your_work":"Expecting the smallest number to be below 1000, and considering the fact that randomly chosen numbers most often contain a 3 or a 7 (which I read somewhere online), I chose a prime number with no prime digits. Halfway between 1 and 1000 lies 499, which I am guessing is the smallest number not chosen."} {"your_number":"502","show_your_work":"I'm a slut for Random.org."} {"your_number":"512","show_your_work":"There were 1538 entries to the coffee contest. Assuming the same number or so of entries I went with about a third of that given past experiences with things like \"pick 1/2 of the average number\"."} {"your_number":"513","show_your_work":"The street address where I grew up."} {"your_number":"513","show_your_work":"We already saw people submitting multiple answer to try to win this kind of game. From there it depends on how smart and how lonely they are. But all in all, I expect the minimum single positive integer to be quite high"} {"your_number":"513","show_your_work":"It popped up in my head :)"} {"your_number":"513","show_your_work":"The number of submissions to the coffee puzzle divided by 3."} {"your_number":"514","show_your_work":"Seems like a good one."} {"your_number":"515","show_your_work":"Random number generator."} {"your_number":"523","show_your_work":"It is a positive integer."} {"your_number":"527","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"532","show_your_work":"Expecting ~10000 entries."} {"your_number":"533","show_your_work":"Why not?"} {"your_number":"534","show_your_work":"500+30+4=534"} {"your_number":"536","show_your_work":"Someone's gonna be cheeky and do 538. Someone else is gonna anticipate that and go 537. So I'm doing 536."} {"your_number":"537","show_your_work":"Increasing digit number decreases the probability of co-selection. For a sample size of 1,538 (last such riddler), high probability is not achieved until 4 digits if selected at random. If driver is to pick lowest number, a distribution may skew to lower numbers with in a digit count, so picking higher in the distribution for 3 digits may be advantageous to avoid co-selection."} {"your_number":"537","show_your_work":"The website is fivethirtyeight.com. I'll do one lower, like the Price Is Right."} {"your_number":"537","show_your_work":"Just in case nobody else thought of it."} {"your_number":"537","show_your_work":"538-1"} {"your_number":"537","show_your_work":"No reason, just the combination of my three least favorite numbers less than 10 (\"5\" \"3\" \"7\")"} {"your_number":"537","show_your_work":"beat all the nerds who pick 538"} {"your_number":"538","show_your_work":"Just because."} {"your_number":"539","show_your_work":"538+1"} {"your_number":"539","show_your_work":"A number that is not too high and not too low"} {"your_number":"540","show_your_work":"I think multiple people will pick 538 because... 538. And a few will pick 539. So I picked one more integer higher because... why not?"} {"your_number":"554","show_your_work":"My address number -1 due to 555 be more likely to be taken"} {"your_number":"557","show_your_work":"556+1"} {"your_number":"562","show_your_work":"Guessing based on the number of submissions"} {"your_number":"566","show_your_work":"1,538 people responded to who can drink the most coffee, so I assume around 1,538 people will submit answers to this riddle.\n\nI want to distribute their numbers logarithmically, with more people submitting low numbers. \n\nI chose the formula y = -ln(x/1538), with y being the number chosen and x being the number of people choosing that number. 566 is the lowest value for y with less than 1 people choosing it."} {"your_number":"571","show_your_work":"Someone said other riddles had ~2000 answers. Most will try lower in order to win. Too high and chance of being lowest is low"} {"your_number":"574","show_your_work":"i dont know"} {"your_number":"579","show_your_work":"My favourite number?"} {"your_number":"593","show_your_work":"Greater than 500 seems like it would be high enough to outpace the number of readers."} {"your_number":"597","show_your_work":"Random number."} {"your_number":"597","show_your_work":"It's not a particularly special number, and I figure the winning number will probably be mid to high three digits."} {"your_number":"607","show_your_work":"I used a random number generator to pick a number from 100 to a 1000. 1-100 seemed like a good chance of being selected by more than one person."} {"your_number":"609","show_your_work":"I used a random number generator to generate a random number between 1 and 1000."} {"your_number":"616","show_your_work":"random guess"} {"your_number":"618","show_your_work":"I assumed relatively low numbers would be picked often, so I generated a random number between 500 and 1500. I rerolled numbers with repeated digits or other \"think of a random number\" seeming patterns (852, for example, is straight down the keypad)."} {"your_number":"619","show_your_work":"More or less random-the departure time of the flight on my boarding pass on front of me as I read this. Also it's odd and looks like a prime ( haven't checked, so I could easily be wrong about that)."} {"your_number":"619","show_your_work":"I could just feel it."} {"your_number":"622","show_your_work":"It felt good."} {"your_number":"624","show_your_work":"Figured there's a decent chance a 3-digit number might work, so picked a random one > 500"} {"your_number":"624","show_your_work":"My wife's age times my age"} {"your_number":"629","show_your_work":"I'm assuming that everything below 300 will be taken. Everything above that is a crapshoot. I'm guessing that ironically people trying to come up with \"random\" numbers in the 300-500 will cluster. So I went to the next series of 600s and picked 629"} {"your_number":"634","show_your_work":"Noticed that folks could submit multiple times, so I added this... I can't compete if a bot is just going through everything... but I can compete with those that try to game it."} {"your_number":"636","show_your_work":"Randomly generated between 600 and 900 (because the 500s and 900s are more likely to have clumps of guesses, and more than that is likely to be too big)."} {"your_number":"637","show_your_work":"Three digits is hopefully enough to get above numbers that will be duplicated. Other than that, I tried to pick something \"random\" with hopes of not hitting a duplicate."} {"your_number":"637","show_your_work":"Just a random guess."} {"your_number":"639","show_your_work":"Random number generator"} {"your_number":"640","show_your_work":"If 1600 people pick a random number say between 1 and 640 there should be a (639/640)^1600 = 8.2% chance of 640 being unique. Granted it's not uniform probability and that's probably not the right math; more people are likely picking among some numbers lower than 640. With that in mind along with some bold assumptions (read: guesses), I'll assume numbers around 640 have some 3-5% chance of being unique. From this pool I picked a number evenly divisible by 10 in hopes that when people think \"random\" they usually avoid 0s."} {"your_number":"643","show_your_work":"There were about double this many submissions to the castle battle, and this takes much less effort to answer, so I figured there would be enough answers to cover the bottom 500 numbers, including duplicates. I know from reading about PIN number frequency that people tend to not pick numbers that start with 6 (other than 6969), so I went with an odd 600 number that doesn't have a 1, 2, or 7."} {"your_number":"647","show_your_work":"Lucky guess!"} {"your_number":"662","show_your_work":"Hit generate on random.org a couple of times, and typed in one of the numbers I \"remembered\"."} {"your_number":"666","show_your_work":"Just because"} {"your_number":"667","show_your_work":"Guesswork"} {"your_number":"669","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"671","show_your_work":"just guessing"} {"your_number":"672","show_your_work":"guess and check"} {"your_number":"680","show_your_work":"Random number between 1 and 1000"} {"your_number":"683","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"689","show_your_work":"1,382 readers submitted responses to the original Riddler Castle problem. As this is a simple answer to give, the response rate should be higher than 1,382, however I will assume 1,382. Assuming a non-even distribution of responses, weighted to the lower half, selecting a number which is half of the estimated responses should be a good chance of being both low and unique. To ensure that the number is unique, the number is reduced by 2."} {"your_number":"691","show_your_work":"1,538 people (an appropriate number, given this website's name) submitted an answer to the coffee question. I'm presuming a similar amount submitting for this. Rather than simply putting 1500 or so, I figure there will be a decent amount of repeats and of numbers too high, so I'm ballparking a number a hair under half of the total number of submissions, then somewhat randomized; 691 is prime."} {"your_number":"707","show_your_work":"I am assuming that the lucky number is going to be something between 1 and 1000, and I wanted a number with less than 50% probability that two people would choose that number or smaller. I have no idea if I did the math right but that was my logic."} {"your_number":"714","show_your_work":"just felt it"} {"your_number":"718","show_your_work":"Guessing for the win"} {"your_number":"719","show_your_work":"720 traverse Wilshire every day but one lower to preempt it"} {"your_number":"721","show_your_work":"N/A"} {"your_number":"722","show_your_work":"I like this number"} {"your_number":"723","show_your_work":"It felt right :)"} {"your_number":"727","show_your_work":"airplane desigination"} {"your_number":"728","show_your_work":"JULY 28"} {"your_number":"733","show_your_work":"random guess"} {"your_number":"733","show_your_work":"It seemed like it might be a good number."} {"your_number":"734","show_your_work":"It's a guess really. It's low enough that someone might miss it."} {"your_number":"734","show_your_work":"Because why not."} {"your_number":"738","show_your_work":"I bet that most readers (which I assumed to be around 4000-5000) will opt for something low in the hundreds"} {"your_number":"739","show_your_work":"Its low but not too low, and it seems \"random\" so it wouldn't be guessed twice."} {"your_number":"742","show_your_work":"Lower numbers will not be unique. This number came to me, and I chose to use it."} {"your_number":"742","show_your_work":"It's a solid number"} {"your_number":"744","show_your_work":"Sounds like a good number!"} {"your_number":"755","show_your_work":"Excel Randbetween(1,1000) seems reasonable."} {"your_number":"755","show_your_work":"I knew that quite a few people would participate in this, so all the very small numbers would be taken. Trolls will try to take numbers other people will take, so their strategy won't be too different from real players' strategy, at least not in practice. I chose a large random number between 700 and 800 because that seemed to be about how large I should go."} {"your_number":"758","show_your_work":"big enough but not too big. Large number to start should do ok, more likely a few over 1000 than under."} {"your_number":"758","show_your_work":"randbetween(200,1000)"} {"your_number":"762","show_your_work":"I'm guessing many people will make many submissions, so I'm basing this on the assumption that they won't make more than several hundred submissions"} {"your_number":"768","show_your_work":"Taking advantage of bias against #s beginning with 7,8,9"} {"your_number":"772","show_your_work":"Katie F"} {"your_number":"776","show_your_work":"Wild guess?"} {"your_number":"783","show_your_work":"I like it, 420 and 69 will definitely already be submitted."} {"your_number":"783","show_your_work":"Pure luck"} {"your_number":"791","show_your_work":"Because it is neat"} {"your_number":"791","show_your_work":"I assume, for no particular reason, a number between 750 and 1250 should be adequate. I shot on the low end. Also, more things should be doable by 7."} {"your_number":"797","show_your_work":"I chose a random number between 100 and 1000: I figure that all the numbers between 1 and 100 will be chosen, but maybe the region from 100 to 1000 is sparse enough, and few enough people will think to pick a random number in this region, that it's worth a shot."} {"your_number":"800","show_your_work":"It popped into my head. Its positive and even. I don't know"} {"your_number":"812","show_your_work":"I set up a randomization in Excel that would produce a number at random between 1 and 3,162, heavily weighted toward three-digit numbers. Specifically, I generated four random numbers between 0 and 1, 1 and 2, 2 and 3, and 2.5 and 3.5, which served as four different exponents for the number 10. Those four random numbers of different orders of magnitude were chosen between at frequencies 0.4%, 2.0%, 96.4%, and 1.2%. My reasoning for including any chance of a low number is the others are also likely to avoid picking a low number. If everyone else held back, then the one person who boldly picked one would take the cake. Of course it's hard to imagine everyone else actually holding back, so I targeted that as a low probability. Exactly how low is just a guess. It would be helpful in modeling this to know how many submissions come in per week, and that may have been mentioned in an earlier puzzle but I don't remember that number. Finally, we were asked to make integer submissions, so I rounded to the nearest integer."} {"your_number":"822","show_your_work":"Luck"} {"your_number":"834","show_your_work":"Trick is to be low without too low."} {"your_number":"835","show_your_work":"538 backwards"} {"your_number":"841","show_your_work":"Favorite time"} {"your_number":"841","show_your_work":"because"} {"your_number":"842","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"842","show_your_work":"It was the first integer that popped into my head after reading the prompt."} {"your_number":"844","show_your_work":"Random generated from 1-1000. Why not ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"846","show_your_work":"First positive integer I could think of"} {"your_number":"854","show_your_work":"Seems likely enough to be unique"} {"your_number":"863","show_your_work":"The Battle for the Riddler had around 1300 submissions. That should tell us about the number of submissions you will receive. Based on that...its a hunch that more people will pick low numbers, so I am guessing the winning number will be around 5/8 of the total number of submissions."} {"your_number":"867","show_your_work":"Used a random number generator to choose a number between 1 and 2500."} {"your_number":"871","show_your_work":"Even though you will get thousands of submissions, I feel that this number could be low enough"} {"your_number":"877","show_your_work":"idk man"} {"your_number":"912","show_your_work":"9/11 Was an Inside Job"} {"your_number":"936","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"949","show_your_work":"First one that popped into my head"} {"your_number":"966","show_your_work":"Step 1: review # of submissions to coffee pot riddle a couple weeks ago (1538)\nStep 2: in excel: =round(1538*rand(),0)"} {"your_number":"966","show_your_work":"Technical support consultant"} {"your_number":"967","show_your_work":"Arbitrarily large number I guess."} {"your_number":"997","show_your_work":"Random guess."} {"your_number":"1001","show_your_work":"1001 is an integer"} {"your_number":"1001","show_your_work":"538 gets about 100,000 viewer's day. The 1% rule states that only 1% of viewer's participate on the website (so ~1,000 submissions)."} {"your_number":"1002","show_your_work":"shrug emoticon"} {"your_number":"1002","show_your_work":"Its 10:02pm ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"1003","show_your_work":"it's the internet, so I'm guessing somebody spams the first 1001, then guesses 1002 to win. I'm hoping that's taken and I win with 1003. Very specific circumstances but who knows?"} {"your_number":"1003","show_your_work":"Honestly I just ballparked it"} {"your_number":"1006","show_your_work":"We realized that a troll will win by submitting as many consecutive numbers as possible. That means two trolls are needed to cancel each other out and we tried to guess when they would both get tired, hopefully at the same time, then guess a little higher."} {"your_number":"1009","show_your_work":"Smallest prime > 1000"} {"your_number":"1009","show_your_work":"I though most people would pick a number less than 1000. I also thought people may be less likely to submit a prime number, so I picked the smallest prime greater than a thousand. That, of course, goes against what David Hand provides in the Improbability Principle."} {"your_number":"1021","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"1023","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"1023","show_your_work":"Just a gut response"} {"your_number":"1025","show_your_work":"Big enough to give room for lower collisions, not obviously interesting."} {"your_number":"1034","show_your_work":"1-1000 feels like bots may get it +34 feels like a number unlikely to be picked"} {"your_number":"1055","show_your_work":"All of the numbers under 1000 are likely to be taken"} {"your_number":"1063","show_your_work":"Just guessed."} {"your_number":"1066","show_your_work":"See previous submission."} {"your_number":"1068","show_your_work":"Estimated that there are probably 10000 entries."} {"your_number":"1072","show_your_work":"It seems like a good guess"} {"your_number":"1073","show_your_work":"Random number"} {"your_number":"1107","show_your_work":"I assumed around 8,000 people would respond, and hoped nobody else would say this."} {"your_number":"1112","show_your_work":"1111 + 1"} {"your_number":"1121","show_your_work":"I like the number."} {"your_number":"1122","show_your_work":"random number generator"} {"your_number":"1152","show_your_work":"Something fairly large, randomly chosen by computer between 500 and 1500, since rounded numbers probably would be chosen more often."} {"your_number":"1154","show_your_work":"felt like it"} {"your_number":"1215","show_your_work":"Mashing the keyboard"} {"your_number":"1217","show_your_work":"Thought about number of people who read and their strategy."} {"your_number":"1220","show_your_work":"just because"} {"your_number":"1237","show_your_work":"I asked WolframAlpha for a random integer between 1000 and 2000."} {"your_number":"1238","show_your_work":"I did a bunch of work on the other puzzle and just decided to throw a number out."} {"your_number":"1247","show_your_work":"If 100,000 people submit numbers, a large fraction of people just focus on small numbers, say 50 percent just try it for fun and pick a number like one for example, there will be a large amount of numbers 100 and below down to one (assuming nobody makes the mistake of putting a fraction or a negative number) that are chosen several hundred times or even more. Later on as you get into the triple digits, I theorize that numbers will be picked a lot less often, possibly around 30 times per number in that range. If you multiply 30 times 900, (the amount of triple digit numbers there are) you'll get 27,000 which leaves us with 23,000 more estimates. Since there are a lot more four digit numbers than there are numbers that are triple digits and below down to one, one should assume the numbers will be spread out by a factor of. Without getting into the nitty gritty of it, the numbers are approximately 33.48 times more spread out if about 90 percent of the people who aren't choosing a number between one and 999 are choosing a four digit number which has the potential of being a very high estimate in regards of people picking four digit numbers in comparison to five digit numbers six digit number, etc. Another important factor to consider is \"lucky\" and trendy numbers. In order to pick a right number, it makes sense to avoid numbers that have only even digits or only odd digits. It also makes sense to avoid numbers such as 1492 which was the year Columbus \"discovered\" America or 1945 when WWII ended. It also doesn't make sense to pick a \"birthday\" number such as 1267 which can translate to 1/2/67. I start to disregard this if it's not a common birthday such as a number that ends with a 19 due to the fact that I highly doubt many people of an age that can be considered as \"elderly\" are trying to complete this riddle. It's logical as a result to pick a number that ends with 11 to 57. I would include 07 to 10 but I won't use an even number for reasons stated later and I won't use a zero as my third digit for reasons also stated later. That leaves the door open for picking a number in the 1000s though I wouldn't recommend that for reasons mentioned later. I also want to avoid numbers like 1411 or 1333 because they may be tempting to choose due to human psychology as a result of there repetitiveness. Other highly compelling numbers that may be tempting to choose are numbers in the 1000-1199 area because it sits right in the early 1000s and it makes a ton of sense that people will try to game the system and choose an integer in this range. After all, what most people are likely thinking in this range is that mostpeople are picking triple digit numbers, why not pick a relatively small four digit number. The reason to not pick something in the 1100s though is that it has two ones slot start. That, I believe, is a recipe for disaster due to the fact that is begins with two ones. I don't like even numbers because I believe they are much more likely to be chosen over odds and I also don't want a zero as my third digit as mentioned earlier because I believe those numbers are at risk of the same fate as numbers in the 1000s. This leads to a logical idea that my number will be an odd number between 1 and 1257. Another consideration is to avoid numbers that you can count forward or backward next to each other such as 1219 which violates this rule twice. The same rule goes for consecutive numbers which is precisely why I ruled out numbers in the 1100s before. I will start with 12 though because I believe there is a solid chance people don't chose a number that starts with 12 anyway. One of my final considerations thing I want to avoid before picking my magical number is to avoid anything that is a \"special\" number. This could mean and it gets picked 5 times for that very reason. There aren't any numbers that violate this rule that don't violate at least one of the other rules and frankly, there are probably many rules that I have listed here that are irrelevant to this problem because at least one of the other rules rules a number out every time that rule takes effect. The very final criteria I have is for the very few people who have thought about this riddle and have gotten number ranges, no matter how they got there, that are very similar to mine. We now know that my range must be 1241-1257 ruling out the numbers 1243, 1245, and 1255. This effectively gives me the options 1241, 1247, 1249, 1253, and 1257. If four people including myself have zeroed it down to options that are freakishly similar to mine out of the 100,000 people doing this they might feel compelled to pick the lowest but be aware that the other three theoretical members in this group are thinking the same thing. I believe one of these guys go for it and takes the win but I can't go for it as well or I wouldn't be solving the riddle either. The best thing to hope for here is somebody to randomly write 1241 here and I'm not sure how likely that is to happen. The more likely scenario is two or more in this group of four people like this number too and take it as a result of the other thinking it's free to take. If I strategisize long enough , I might be thought of as forced to pick the higher number as not to pick the same at 1247 but for the sake of getting the lower number, I'm just going to take it and call it my answer."} {"your_number":"1249","show_your_work":"A random guess"} {"your_number":"1262","show_your_work":"Assumptions: The \"winning\" number will be a low four-digit number. More submissions will be odd than even. More submissions will contain odd numbers because they \"feel more random\". Nothing of note historically assuming this is a \"year\" number, i.e. 1492 or 1776 will not be a unique submission."} {"your_number":"1268","show_your_work":"Not too low, not too high."} {"your_number":"1297","show_your_work":"estimated number of answers 5000 - 10000, most answers are not random, people are biased to select number below 1000, there are holes above 1000."} {"your_number":"1311","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"1312","show_your_work":"Guess"} {"your_number":"1313","show_your_work":"13 is a bad luck number, so I guess less people will pick it. Still, a bare 13 has too many chances to be picked. 666 was also an option."} {"your_number":"1315","show_your_work":"This problem has a 'Princess Bride' feel (the poison scene) where you assume someone will choose 1, but they will assume the same. But then that will assume that everyone believes someone else chose 1 and no one chooses 1, etc. I'm the end I tried a different tact, I figured most people will choose a low number, in an exponential distribution. I assumed at least half the people would choose a number under 100. Assuming 10,000 people submit an answer, the first answer no one chose is 1315."} {"your_number":"1318","show_your_work":"based on my birthday"} {"your_number":"1318","show_your_work":"House number"} {"your_number":"1335","show_your_work":"Pure guess."} {"your_number":"1338","show_your_work":"It is a pure guess based on no knowledge or methodology."} {"your_number":"1346","show_your_work":"It seems low enough without having anything exotic about it."} {"your_number":"1361","show_your_work":"I figured trolls would submit everything small, up to at least a few hundred. Further assumed that the total number of submissions would be at least a couple thousand or more. So it makes sense the lowest unique would be 4 digits long. Then I asked Excel for a random number between 1000 and 2000, and went with what it gave me."} {"your_number":"1365","show_your_work":"It's an arbitrary number that I've had stuck in my head since I was a kid."} {"your_number":"1386","show_your_work":"Random. The winner will be based on luck. As integers increase, the chance of them not being unique will decrease (at a guess) as an exponential decay. Where the lowest unique one appears will be random noise so I may as well guess one."} {"your_number":"1428","show_your_work":"random guess"} {"your_number":"1553","show_your_work":"No idea"} {"your_number":"1579","show_your_work":"Because I felt like it"} {"your_number":"1593","show_your_work":"3M users a day, half of whom will select 1-100, half again between 101-200 and so on. 1593 feels low and lucky enough."} {"your_number":"1609","show_your_work":"4 digits in a weird order on keyboard."} {"your_number":"1627","show_your_work":"Tried to find an estimation of your web traffic online(2.5m/week-ish), estimated how many of those would fill out this survey(1%?). Decided how high I needed to go to still be out of the numbers everyone has guessed and into the area where there are a few numbers nobody has guessed."} {"your_number":"1640","show_your_work":"Random integer between 1 and 2000 (estimated number of entries)"} {"your_number":"1642","show_your_work":"Pure guess?"} {"your_number":"1724","show_your_work":"5 less than Ramanujan's number"} {"your_number":"1727","show_your_work":"I really dislike both numbers"} {"your_number":"1728","show_your_work":"A favorite \"cool number\" of mine is Ramanujan's taxi-cab number, 1729. I'm sure I'm not alone, so I subtracted one just to be safe. Hopefully I'm not alone in that too!"} {"your_number":"1728","show_your_work":"I expect that as numbers have additional digits, e.g., three digits instead of two, people will be less likely to select them. I assume that approximately 10,000 people will submit numbers. Together, those led me to think that a winning number would be between 1000-2000. To reduce the chance of picking a \"likely\" number, I used a random-number generator to choose 1728."} {"your_number":"1729","show_your_work":"It's a very dull number."} {"your_number":"1730","show_your_work":"Taxicab number 1729 plus 1."} {"your_number":"1730","show_your_work":"Taxi Cab Number +1...just picked it by trying to guess what numbers might be guessed by all of the people in Riddler Nation. Probably there'll be a number in the 3-digit range that doesn't get picked, but what the heck."} {"your_number":"1733","show_your_work":"Just a guess."} {"your_number":"1799","show_your_work":"Combination of my birth day and birth year"} {"your_number":"1961","show_your_work":"Because it's same number upside down."} {"your_number":"2005","show_your_work":"Completely at random"} {"your_number":"2007","show_your_work":"It was a very good year."} {"your_number":"2017","show_your_work":"I'm not sure if many people will think of the current year. Or, it could seem ~too~ obvious."} {"your_number":"2052","show_your_work":"A lot of people read the riddler. All numbers in the first thousand are definitely going to be chosen. There aren't going to be 5000 submissions, so people who choose numbers above 5000 are going too high. 2052 is a happy medium."} {"your_number":"2168","show_your_work":"So obvious it barely needs explaining"} {"your_number":"2187","show_your_work":"why not?"} {"your_number":"2237","show_your_work":"It felt right"} {"your_number":"2323","show_your_work":"good number"} {"your_number":"2342","show_your_work":"It was the first one above 1000 that popped into my head! I reckon 1 to 1000 will all be taken or, at least, I thought I should go big or go home!"} {"your_number":"2381","show_your_work":"Wild guess"} {"your_number":"2394","show_your_work":"Its the first number that came to mind."} {"your_number":"2480","show_your_work":"Random number."} {"your_number":"2531","show_your_work":"I like the number and think it's big enough to be unique."} {"your_number":"2647","show_your_work":"I've tried to type in a four digit number without looking at the keyboard... :)"} {"your_number":"2859","show_your_work":"Complete guess!!"} {"your_number":"3001","show_your_work":"I generated a random number between 1 and 10,000, figuring that more than 1000 but less than 10,000 people would be likely to submit numbers. I suspect my number will be a bad choice because it's so close to a round number but I'm sticking with it..."} {"your_number":"3012","show_your_work":"YOLO"} {"your_number":"3043","show_your_work":"Random?"} {"your_number":"3084","show_your_work":"Trolls, maybe?"} {"your_number":"3111","show_your_work":"Guessed. Sorry if I win."} {"your_number":"3375","show_your_work":"Favorite number!!"} {"your_number":"3422","show_your_work":"Rng"} {"your_number":"3562","show_your_work":"I let random.org choose a random 4 digit number."} {"your_number":"3586","show_your_work":"about your Twitter followers / 4"} {"your_number":"3672","show_your_work":"I think lots of low numbers will be chosen so I chose a random higher number."} {"your_number":"3714","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"3751","show_your_work":"Lucky guess?"} {"your_number":"3988","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"4113","show_your_work":"Aiming for unique more than low!"} {"your_number":"4147","show_your_work":"I typed the number 4147"} {"your_number":"4,214","show_your_work":"42 is Jackie Robinson's number, 14 is Larry Doby's number"} {"your_number":"4326","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"4359","show_your_work":"Wild Assed Guess"} {"your_number":"4432","show_your_work":"Gut feeling"} {"your_number":"5642","show_your_work":"A guess"} {"your_number":"5749","show_your_work":"Stag in numbers"} {"your_number":"6148","show_your_work":"Though about writing a bot to spam the numbers 1-n in the form."} {"your_number":"6149","show_your_work":"submitted numbers 1 through N...\n"} {"your_number":"6193","show_your_work":"I choose a random number between 5000-7000 using random.org. Mostly a shot in the dark"} {"your_number":"6377","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"6771","show_your_work":"¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"} {"your_number":"6881","show_your_work":"I have not done this before. I am estimating 2300 entries. I wanted a number approximately three times the number of entries and not prime or \"interesting\". 6833 and 6917 are prime. Average is 6875. That is divisible by '25' and too 'interesting'. So, add 6."} {"your_number":"6,969","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"6969","show_your_work":"Nice"} {"your_number":"7541","show_your_work":"At random"} {"your_number":"7903","show_your_work":"I went to random.org, put the range from 1000 to 10000 and submitted my first result."} {"your_number":"8032","show_your_work":"It's a number"} {"your_number":"8068","show_your_work":"randomly selected"} {"your_number":"8136","show_your_work":"Asked excel to pick a random 4-digit number, figuring there are enough responses that all 3-digits will likely be picked"} {"your_number":"8267","show_your_work":"Smallest number that appears only once in the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences."} {"your_number":"8411","show_your_work":"I guessed..."} {"your_number":"9476","show_your_work":"It was random"} {"your_number":"9627","show_your_work":"randomly selected one starting with 9"} {"your_number":"10001","show_your_work":"Totally random"} {"your_number":"10002","show_your_work":"I'm predicting that some person is going to use a bot to make multiple submissions for every number below their \"real\" submission. My hope is that this number is large enough to be bigger than that number, and that that person picked a number someone else will give as well."} {"your_number":"11629","show_your_work":"According to the Wikipedia about \"full\" numbers, the smallest integer that does not appear in an entry of the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences was originally found to be 11630 on 12 June 2009. So I picked the previous one."} {"your_number":"12853","show_your_work":"I supposed that the traffic to the site is on the order 10^6 and the share of traffic to the puzzles is in the single digits of the percentile. I therefore chose a number on the lower end of the order 10^4. I chose a prime number because, well, prime numbers are the best numbers."} {"your_number":"14381","show_your_work":"I wished to write a 5-digit integer and chose one at random."} {"your_number":"17322","show_your_work":"$echo $RANDOM"} {"your_number":"19683","show_your_work":"(3^3)^3"} {"your_number":"20403","show_your_work":"Any number with four or fewer digits feels like too obvious a choice. And I think many people will submit a number that starts with a 1, so I tried to next level with a 2. I then skewed toward the lower end of the 20,000 range, basically trying to pick a number by feel that was low, but not too low."} {"your_number":"22908","show_your_work":"(2*3*23+2+3+23)*2*3*23"} {"your_number":"32754","show_your_work":"I looked at the typical WAU of fivethirtyeight across a few sources, and estimated a number around 1/300th of that, on the assumption that only about 20% of your WAU will submit a solution to this riddler, and that of them, they would probably cluster around 60 responses/number. None of that has any basis in any fact."} {"your_number":"37927","show_your_work":"I used a RNG to choose it. It is unlikely that anyone chose the same number."} {"your_number":"54312","show_your_work":"Completely random"} {"your_number":"62881","show_your_work":"my zip code is relatively low, no one else from my zip code can read so it's probably unique"} {"your_number":"71083","show_your_work":"It's a date."} {"your_number":"83649","show_your_work":"Just felt right."} {"your_number":"103429","show_your_work":"I guess it depends on how many people slammed with bots 😂"} {"your_number":"111112","show_your_work":"Cause"} {"your_number":"119752","show_your_work":"I expect you'll get millions of responses. If the responses follow a zipf distribution and you get around 2.45 million responses, the first number that is chosen once would be somewhere around here."} {"your_number":"126,121","show_your_work":"Felt like it"} {"your_number":"193419","show_your_work":"19 and 34 were my jersey numbers when I played sports"} {"your_number":"289737","show_your_work":"Intuition."} {"your_number":"696969","show_your_work":"3 are better than 1"} {"your_number":"696,969","show_your_work":"Random guess"} {"your_number":"737373","show_your_work":"The number is an inside joke and large enough and non random enough to where I believe no one else will pick it"} {"your_number":"755782","show_your_work":"?"} {"your_number":"1000005","show_your_work":"My husband just submitted 1000006. This has a chance of beating that."} {"your_number":"1000006","show_your_work":"People are going to program bots to submit a bunch of answers for them. 1 million seems like a good place for the bots to put on the breaks, so I went just above that."} {"your_number":"1248632","show_your_work":"Random"} {"your_number":"11907536","show_your_work":"Maths"} {"your_number":"262464195387","show_your_work":"I took the last 12 digits of Graham's number"} {"your_number":"-1.05686798621 * 10 ^ 105636585589","show_your_work":"Lowest doesn't imply closest to zero. Assuming -1 is lower than 0. Above is a really big negative number. The arbitrary decimal points and exponent make it more likely to be unique."} {"your_number":"-999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999996999999999999999999999999996999999999988888988888888869999999999999999999999999999999999999999999969999999999999999999999989988889999999999999999999999999999999999989999999999999999999999999999999999999199999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999899999999999999999999969999999999999995999999999999999999999999999999969999999999999999999999999999999999699996999959999999959999999996999999999999999599999999999996999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999969999999999999999999599999999999999999999999999999999699999999999999969999999999999999999999999999999999999599999999999999999996999999999999999999999999999699999999999999999999999999999999999999999959999996999999999999999999999999999999999999959999999999988889999999999999999999999999999499999999999999999999999999919999999999999999699695995959595959595595959595959559595959595858585858585858585858585585858585858585858585858585585858585858585858585858585858558585858485848484847458585869686858585688658685858585858585858585858585858585885585858585858585858585855585858585858585858585858585858585858585858585858585858585858585758585858585858585858585757575757585747474747475757475858585959595959595958585858585858585858595959595959595959595959595959699696966969696696969696969696969696969696969699696996969696886985858585885858585858585959696969696969696968859696969696969696969696969696969696969696968696969696969696869696968685869968888888888888888888888888888888777777777777777777777777777777777666666666666766666666666555555555555555555544444444444445455554555444444444444444444444444445444455544443333333333333333333999999988888888888888888888888889999999999909999999999999999999999999999999999999999999919191818181818191919191919796696969696969696968695958586869696969696969696969696969696969696696969969696969696969696969696969596968596969696969696969696969969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969699696699696966995966996968696969686696886688668696969696959588558686885588585855858585858585858585858585885855858588596969696969669696969595969595959695969696959595958585959959595989999999999999889899999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999887789999999999999996969696969696966969696969595968559585858585585858585859595959595959595959595595995966969696969696969696969696969696969696969696869696969696969696969696969696969696969696969585858585868685858585858886969596969969695969696959596995959599999999999999999988899999999999999999999999999999999999999988888899999999998889999999889889999988888888898888888899999999999999996855585858585858585899999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999998888899898988998998989989989989988998999866668655558585858585585858585855558558586696696666666669999999999999999999999999999999999999998998999999999999999999999999888998998898898999999999999999999999988888999999999999999999999999989999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999988899889889989889998998998998899899899898998998988988889888899887779888999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999989999989999999999999999999999999999999998899999999988779978978998777777777777777777787778999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999669696969696969696696858685858585969596969696969696969696969696969696969696969659659969695959595959595959595959595959595959559595595955559595959595958595959595959595959595959595959595959595959595955959595959595959595959595959595959585858585858585859585955555959999999999595959595959595959595959595959595959595959595959595959999999999959595959595959559585","show_your_work":"I pressed the minus button and then a bunch of numbers until the Buffalo Wild Wings waitress showed up with my check"} {"your_number":"$-(8{\\uparrow}^{9{\\uparrow}^{9{\\uparrow}^{9{\\uparrow}^{9{\\uparrow}^{9{\\uparrow}^{9{\\uparrow}^9}}}}}})$","show_your_work":"Anything positive immediately loses, so it's now a game of making the largest unique number negative.\n\nMy number is written using LaTeX, and can be properly rendered that way.\n\nI started with an 8 for making it different. I also decided to not just keep adding even more, even though there's not a text limit in the field. It's already pretty damn low."} {"your_number":"0.999...","show_your_work":"The number above, affectionately known as Infininine, is exactly equal to 1, the lowest positive integer. But it *is* a unique number, it *is* an integer, and it *isn't* 1 . It just happens to equal to 1, the way something like j**4 also = 1; however, j**4 isn't a number, but an expression, so it would be disqualified. I'm also betting that no one else will submit Infininine as an answer, of course.\n\n See Also:\n\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999...#Skepticism_in_education\n"} {"your_number":"10^16","show_your_work":"Might just be crazy enough to work"} {"your_number":"18446744073709551616","show_your_work":"Depending on your analysis approach this number may wrap-around and appear to be low again."} {"your_number":"2 (this is my second answer, ignore if only one is allowed.)","show_your_work":"Some people will think of 1 and then realize that others will too, and go thru the same process so will raise their answer but once they get into raising they won't stop at 2."} {"your_number":"BB(9999999)","show_your_work":"Second order Ackermann sequence. http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html"} {"your_number":"epsilon/(Googolplex)","show_your_work":"two of the most identifiable numbers, the machine bit epsilon over an entire Googolplex of Google searches"} {"your_number":"no","show_your_work":"37, rng"} {"your_number":"Point nine repeating = .999999... = 1","show_your_work":"It is a unique expression of the number 1"} {"your_number":"Seven","show_your_work":"Seven has mystical significance in a series I read. So seven."} {"your_number":"W, where W is equal to the lowest legal answer from the set of all answers not submitted by me, minus six.","show_your_work":"Unless someone else submits a conditional answer, W will always be lower than any other answer. And if they do, I'll have to hope that someone else submitted it using the same name."}