UK National Lottery Wheeling Challenge

• verify.c Version 1.20 (13th August 1996)
  C source code for a program written by myself to verify that a set of tickets cover enough combinations to ensure that any 6 (by default) numbers drawn will match against at least 3 (by default) numbers on at least one of the tickets.

  This latest release now has better formatting of long numbers, allows the user to specify the maximum number of losing combinations that are reported ("-l" option: default 10), when to cut off progress reports ("-c" option: default 30 seconds) and also supports lotteries containing up to 54 balls. Compiles OK on UNIX systems.

• PC users only:
  If your C compiler doesn't have support for getopt(), the source code to it (taken from GNU gzip) is available as getopt.c, getopt.h and tailor.h. I have included the GNU licence here as well.

• verify.zip Version 1.20 (16th August 1996)
  67K zip file for PC's containing source code, both data files, DOS4GW executable (386 or above required) and docs. Requires WinZip or PKUNZIP to unpack of course, plus DOS4GW.EXE in your PATH.

• verify.bin Version 1.20 (13th August 1996)
  HP UNIX (HP-UX) Series 700 executable. No, I won't be compiling it for other UNIX platforms - the source should build fine !

• wheel163.txt
  Data file for the current 3-match 163-ticket record holder - save that page as a text file and feed it into the verify software. Supplied courtesy of Peter Rosendahl <[email protected]>.

• out163.txt
  Output from the following UNIX command:

  verify.bin <wheel163.txt >out163.txt 2>&1
  

• wheel19.txt
  Data file for the current 2-match 19-ticket record holder. Courtesy of Stefan Vandevelde <[email protected]>.

• out19.txt
  Output from following UNIX command:

  verify.bin -m 2 <wheel19.txt >out19.txt 2>&1
  

Note that there is now a tie-breaker rule:

If two or more wheels equal the record (i.e. use the same number of tickets to guarantee a 2-match or a 3-match), the one that will be used will be the one that covers the most number of 2-match or 3-match combinations (the verifier program outputs that figure so it can be confirmed).

If you beat the record, then please e-mail your wheel file (i.e. your equivalent of wheel163.txt or wheel19.txt) to me and, if verified, you will become the new record holder ! Note that whoever holds the current record will not only get credit here, but their wheel will be used as the basis of the "at least 1 three-match" option or "at least 1 two-match" option of the Lottery Perms page.

Of course, if someone has written software to actually generate an optimal wheel, then I'd be very interested indeed (it's a bit too complex for me to easily work out - has anyone got the theory behind the optimal solution for this problem ?).

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