It is now clear that I've lost essentially all of my math skills... sigh. My wife asked what seemed to me to be a simple problem but I couldn't see a way to approach it... I kept going down what felt like blind alleys that just got more complicated rather than leading toward a solution: You have a jar with N *each* of C colors of marbles [that is, you start with the same number of each color, N*C marbles in the jar]. You start removing marbles [without replacement]. What is the expected number of marbles you have to remove to have a 50% chance of having at least one of each color. Is there some easy/obvious way to approach/analyze this? THANKS! /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--