A half century ago when I was doing TSD rallying many rallies had a kind of "participation prize". you got to pick a number and the person with the lowest *unique* number got the prize. It struck me back then as an interesting mathematical problem -- the optimal strategy for "N" players. I had one idea: which if N was small, one of us would simply become the team captain and be the only person to pick 1 and then split the prize. Clearly not an optimal strategy [since the non-captain players could collaborate to have one of them cancel the captain's 1 and then one of them would win with 2 -- and so on with everyone sorta cheating]. For no good reason I got to thinking about this again recently and I wonder: is there a game theory analysis of the optimal strategy for N players? I'm guessing it might be something like "everyone picks a random number from 1 to N" but I haven't a clue.. /Bernie\ Bernie Cosell bernie@fantasyfarm.com -- Too many people; too few sheep --