538data/riddler-pick-lowest/low_numbers.csv

1	Your Number	Show Your Work
2	-1E+131	negative numbers are allowed?
3	-1E+37	lowest minimum integer
4	-999,999,999,999,999,000,000,000,000	No idea
5	-1E+21	is this even allowed???
6	-9999999999	whole positive numbers and their opposites
7	0	0 is the lowest possible integer that is not negative.
8	0	It is not negative.
9	0	Its the first one that isn't negative
10	0	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.
11	0	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.
12	0	Positive zero is the smallest positive integer, but just tricky enough that no one else will guess it.
13	0	Low interger
14	0	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.
15	0	A whole number that does not have a decimal or fractional part
16	0	Zero is the lowest positive integer, but many people don't think of it.
17	0	figure my best chance is that moderator treats 0 as acceptable, but most submitters do not.
18	0	People may not think it's positive
19	0	I hope no one else thinks about that one ^^
20	0	Lowest possible integer?
21	0	Cuz copy and paste is a thing :)
22	0	Smallest positive integer
23	0	Fuck it.
24	0.001	Low number to the right of zero
25	1	Someone (probably lots of someones) had to pick it
26	1	d
27	1	Lowest positive integer. Fingers crossed everybody else thinks it's too obvious and doesn't meet second criteria
28	1	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.
29	1	Maybe no one else will be this clever....
30	1	go big or go home babyyyyyy
31	1	It's a risk but one I'm willing to take
32	1	somebody's got to do it....
33	1	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.
34	1	Someone's gotta try it.
35	1	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?
36	1	Mostly a spoiler. I assume I wont be the only one to choose 1, but if everyone has that mindset maybe I will!
37	1	Just in case everyone else assumes no one would be dumb enough to put in 1--here I am, just dumb enough.
38	1	Hey, it was the lowest number available, I'll take my chances everyone else overthinks it
39	1	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.
40	1	Because I'm betting on the long shot that noone else is dumb enough to choose 1
41	1	I don't think anyone else has the balls to go this low
42	1	What if no one else picks it?
43	1	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. Also, this is not a new idea. The puzzle website Nikoli has been doing this for over a decade, it's called the Nikoli Derby.
44	1	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.
45	1	I'm a high-school math teacher and have played this game with students. It's surprising how many times 1 wins.
46	1	because someone has to
47	1	Trying the obvious
48	1	Maybe I'm the only one stupid enough to pick this number.
49	1	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.
50	1	Someone has to.
51	1	if no one else picks it, its the winner.
52	1	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!!!!
53	1	Just in case someone else doesn't guess 1
54	1	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
55	1	No one else would be so stupid to pick the lowest number, that everyone else will pick.
56	1	Guessed no one else would be bold enough to choose the lowest number
57	1	Just doing my part making sure #1 is accounted for!
58	1	I've done with this classes of 30, generally the 1 gambit seems to be the best choice.
59	1	It's the lowest
60	1	Worth a shot. Maybe nobody else goes that low.
61	1	gotta go low
62	1	Everyone may assume that this is taken.
63	1	Can anybody be dumb enough to pick 1?
64	1	I thought it would be really funny if every single person overthought it, and no one chose 1.
65	1	Because wouldn't it be funny if it ends up being 1?
66	1	Just in case everyone else outthinks themselves and no one else takes the lowest possible positive integer!
67	1	Just in case
68	1	Worth a try, right?
69	1	Maybe I'll get lucky and everyone else will overthink it
70	1	Maybe everyone else will overthink this and I'll get really lucky.
71	1	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
72	1	I want to make sure no one else can win with this number
73	1	Maybe everyone will decide it's too obvious? Also zero isn't positive.
74	1	Somebody has to
75	1	No one is actually going to pick 1, right?
76	1	I think there's a high enough chance that no one else picks 1.
77	1	I'm hoping no one else was foolhardy enough to go for the easy win.
78	1	This is simply an investment in the glory of being the only person to guess "1".
79	1	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.
80	1	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.
81	1	Most people are going to assume low integers will get chosen and choose a higher number.
82	1	1 is an integer
83	1	because wouldn't it be awesome
84	1	I'm hopeful everyone will think no one will pick one.
85	1	Here's hoping literally everyone else is a hipster and assumes they need to go for a higher number!
86	1	It's unlikely this will be unique, but if everyone else thinks that way, then this will win
87	1	I'm counting on everyone else being too clever to pick 1 --- "go small or go home"
88	1	There is a good chance that no one dares to pick 1.
89	1	Let's see if anyone else has the guts to do it... :)
90	1	Who would choose the obvious answer?
91	1	I'm not going to win, but I'm making sure somebody else who thinks they're clever doesn't.
92	1	Eh, might as well try.
93	1	It is the lowest positive integer, and maybe no one else will pick it.
94	1	Just in case
95	1	Lowest positive integer
96	1	Why not?
97	1	Just a test to see if I can spam with a separate email.
98	1	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.
99	1	May be overlooked
100	1	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.
101	1	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.
102	1	risk vs reward
103	1	On the off chance...
104	1	Moxie
105	1	a
106	1	It's a lowest positive integer there is. I hope no one else realises this.
107	1	Who would choose 1?
108	1	Hoping others overthink it and I get lucky.
109	1	Get em all
110	1	just in case no one else picks it
111	1	worth a try ;)
112	1	I'm guessing that no one else is going to pick the smallest positive integer because it's too obvious.
113	1	An integer can only be a whole number, and since it has to be positive, the smallest number is one.
114	1	I am kind of just hoping everyone who responds overthinks this. Seems unlikely, and I probably should have gone with 31.
115	1	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.
116	1	I would feel really stupid if somebody else won with one.
117	1	Want to make sure that someone provides the lowest possible response.
118	1	i looked it up.
119	1	1 is a terrible pick, but everyone knows that and might avoid it.
120	1	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.
121	1	The extremely small chance no one else choose it.
122	1	Because if I can't have it, nobody can. :)
123	1	Just in case nobody else bothered to try it.
124	1	most people would assume that low numbers would be taken and therefor pick higher numbers to try to avoid competition.
125	1	1 is the smallest positive integer
126	1	23-22=1 (joke)
127	1	One. Just in case.
128	1	Someone has to.
129	1	1, 2, 3, 4...
130	1	On the off chance that everyone else in the world will decide that 1 can't possibly win.
131	1	My thinking is that the readers will overthink this one big time.
132	1	I mean it's not gonna win but it should help round out the dataset
133	1	An integer is a positive or negative whole number. The lowest positive integer is 1 (0 is neither positive or negative).
134	1	I'd hate to lose to somebody who picked 1.
135	1	Why not
136	1	To be contrarian, I wouldn't normally pick the lowest option but who would really, so maybe my crazy idea will work.
137	1	assumes everybody else wants to be clever
138	1	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.
139	1	1 is a unique number -- there is no other number like it!
140	1	Just to make sure nobody else wins with 1. If I win, great!
141	1	N
142	1	Figured everyone else might not choose one and try and overthink it
143	1	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.
144	1	I read "The Emperor Has No Clothes" to my nephew the other day so it seems like this is worth a shot.
145	1	Because no one will pick 1
146	1	I figure why not go with the lowest integer in the hopes that everyone else will assume someone will submit it.
147	1	The positive integer numbers are all the integer numbers to the right of zero in a number line. The lowest of them is 1.
148	1	1 is really low
149	1	lowest possible positive integer - taking my chances that no one else is submitting this lmao
150	1	NO reason.
151	1	Everybody thinks someone else will submit this number. I am someone else.
152	1	Just in case no one picks it
153	1	It's the lowest positive integer. I hope nobody else picks it.
154	1	There are two possibilities here: A: Everyone else is too afraid to pick the number 1 because they believe someone else will. In that case, I win. B: Someone else has the same idea, but I ruin their day. In that case, I win... in a different way.
155	1	Somebody had to.
156	1	The unparalleled sense of smugness I will feel if I'm the only one.
157	1	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!
158	1	Would feel silly if 1 was the winner and we did not select it
159	1	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.
160	1	It is the lowest positive integer.
161	1	?
162	1	Someone's got to pick one!
163	1	Felt like maybe no one else would be this brazen.
164	1	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.
165	1	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.
166	1	No one will choose it because they think everyone will choose it
167	1	i
168	1	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.
169	1	I think everyone else will try to be fancy and pick slightly higher numbers thinking everyone will be picking really low numbers.
170	1	Who else would pick 1? That's a ridiculous number to pick!
171	1	To stop anyone else submitting the lowest integer and winning
172	1	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.
173	1	Because I'll feel stupid of no one else enters it. 2 will probably win, though.
174	1	Hoping for luck
175	1	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.
176	1	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.
177	1	I chose 1 because I think others will not choose it thinking everyone else might choose it.
178	1	This type of challenge seems extremely vulnerable to answer spamming. I don't know if there is a good approach for honest submissions.
179	1	What if no one else does?
180	1	I'm calling everyone's bluff
181	1	No one will think of this
182	1	I assume this will fail, but i wanted to see if people would overthink it and go for something higher.
183	2	because everyone else will enter '1'
184	2	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 ...
185	2	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.
186	2	It's small
187	2	Just in case
188	2	Can't let anyone win with 2 because no one thinks to pick it.
189	2	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.
190	2	sportz
191	2	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).
192	2	Well I know that somebody else is inevitably going to pick 1, don't I?
193	2	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!" I'm confident there is at least 2 people who are type-2
194	2	It should be obvious based on the number that it is.
195	2	It's not 1
196	2	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.
197	2	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.
198	2	my son picked it. And based on the way people approach these problems it probably isn't a bad choice v
199	2	Can't have someone winning this competition with just a 2.
200	2	2
201	2	Let's choose a number that no one else would submit because everyone else is looking for a totally oddball number.
202	2	I assume that someone is submitting 1.
203	2	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.
204	2	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.
205	2	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.
206	2	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
207	2	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.
208	2	2 is an integer
209	2	Randomly drawn from an exponential distribution
210	2	Second test to see if its possible to spam guesses.
211	2	Everyone else who chooses a low number will choose 1.
212	2	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.
213	2	a
214	2	Lots of people not paying attention to the instructions could choose 1
215	2	get em all
216	2	Likely that someone will pick the number 1 and instinct for unique number is high so going against the odds
217	2	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!
218	2	It's the smallest number larger than 1.
219	2	Guessing
220	2	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.
221	2	I just thought that no one else would pick it since they would assume it was already chosen.
222	2	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.
223	2	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.
224	2	figured everybody would say 1 so i took the next lowest. price is right style
225	2	Most people will think 1 is clever or pick a random larger number hoping no one else picks it
226	2	It's too much of an obvious number that maybe no one else will pick it!
227	2	A lot of people will choose 1 to mess with it, but will forsake 2 for the same reason.
228	2	Somebody had to submit it
229	2	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.
230	2	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?
231	2	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.
232	2	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.
233	2	Using findings from World Scientific Article: http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/publications/FNL_zeng2007.pdf
234	2	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).
235	2	Funsies
236	2	no one will guess it - expecting others to have done so
237	2	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.
238	3	Premonition
239	3	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).
240	3	3
241	3	The higher you go the better chance of being unique, but the worse chance of winning. 3 is probably too low.
242	3	It's lower than 4.
243	3	It's lower than 4.
244	3	Well you said UNIQUE and I figured 1 would be taken, therefore, 3.
245	3	It seemed that 1 and 2 would be popular choices
246	3	A bunch of people will choose 1 assuming that everyone else will overthink it (they wont) A bunch of people will choose 2 trying to outsmart the 1s (They Won'T) 3 will take it (actually it won't...but oh well)
247	3	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.
248	3	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.
249	3	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.
250	3	Because 3...is a magic number
251	3	Seems reasonable
252	3	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
253	3	3 is an integer
254	3	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.
255	3	Why not? Go big, but not really...
256	3	Someone will pick 1 and 2 hoping all other pick random higher number. Probably 3 as well but who knows.
257	3	No real reason
258	3	a
259	3	get em all
260	3	-
261	3	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?
262	3	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.
263	3	Guessing
264	3	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.
265	3	Because why not?
266	3	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.
267	3	Figured many people would have picked 1 thinking that most others would go high. So I went just above 1
268	3	I'm just doing my part to make sure people who submit really small numbers don't win.
269	3	My wife said 2, I said 4; I averaged them. Guaranteed to work
270	3	It's low, but not too low
271	4	I expect a number of people to say 1-3, but 4 is viewed as more obscure
272	4	Everyone picks one, everyone who thinks that picks two. Three has got to be someone's favorite number, but no one likes 4
273	4	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.
274	4	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.
275	4	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)
276	4	who knows
277	4	The winning integer will be lower than most expect.
278	4	Seems more psychological than anything else.
279	4	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.
280	4	I've won this game in the past with 4
281	4	Data scientist
282	4	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.
283	4	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).
284	4	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...
285	4	4 is a good number.
286	4	Some one will inevitably pick 1 or 2, but maybe skip the next few for higher ones
287	4	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. Course, anything you can count on your fingers is a likely target, so but I can't think of a better criteria off hand.
288	4	It's one of the smallest positive integers.
289	4	Because it's gonna win!
290	4	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?
291	4	I picked 4.
292	4	it's the lowest number that no one else will pick.
293	4	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.
294	4	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.
295	4	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.
296	4	4 is an integer
297	4	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.
298	4	People will overlook low numbers because they are too obvious. I think 4 as an even number might get jumped by many people.
299	4	Trusting my gut
300	4	The first three numbers have already been selected ;) and no one will think of submitting 4.
301	4	It's my favorite
302	4	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.
303	4	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!
304	4	aa
305	4	aa
306	4	aa
307	4	cause no one else would?
308	4	My girlfriend liked it
309	4	Hmmm - wild guess
310	4	Chosen on the off chance that people avoid the single digits. 4 seems slightly more plausibly not chosen than 1, 2, or 3.
311	4	get em all
312	4	Just a random guess
313	4	Going for the gold.
314	4	I don't think anyone will pick 4.
315	4	Didn't feel right, a little too low and a little too high
316	4	Maybe people will skip it!
317	4	aa
318	4	It is an unlucky number in China.
319	4	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.
320	4	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.
321	4	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.
322	4	Guess
323	4	The lowest integers will likely have multiple submissions, but who picks 4? Me.
324	4	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.
325	4	I believe 4 will go unnoticed.
326	4	Seems solid to me.
327	4	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.
328	4	No reason.
329	4	Cause it's even
330	4	I sacrificed a virgin to a volcano, and my god instructed me to submit the number 4. My magic 8-ball concurred.
331	4	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.
332	4	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!
333	4	Trying to get lucky
334	4	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.
335	4	Honestly not really sure, figured that most people would go something higher as to be unique but first the numbers would still be taken.
336	4	Low :)
337	4	Rule of three. I thought people would be more likely to pick 1, 2, or 3, but perhaps not 4.
338	4	4 is the magic number
339	4	everyone's gonna overthink it
340	5	oh come on
341	5	N/A
342	5	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.
343	5	Most people choose 6 or 7 but nobody ever thinks of 5
344	5	You have to go for a low number and just hope no one else picks it.
345	5	No work. Just intuition.
346	5	My kids picked it.
347	5	Thinking nobody (else) in their right mind would pick such a low number. Plus I like 5.
348	5	I used a random number generator
349	5	I'm greedy
350	5	um...it's my lucky number
351	5	.
352	5	get em all
353	5	Guess!
354	5	They'll never see it coming
355	5	aa
356	5	aa
357	5	Hoping that the majority of people pick a high number, overlooking that people may leave some pretty low integers unpicked.
358	5	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.
359	5	No reason.
360	5	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.
361	5	Lowest possible number nobody will put here
362	5	It's a fairly common winner of the Nikoli Derby (http://www.nikoli.com/en/event/derby.html)
363	6	meh
364	6	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.
365	6	We'll see!
366	6	lucky guess
367	6	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.
368	6	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.
369	6	Hoping that other's overthink this and go too high
370	6	Someone has to ruin the low numbers for other people.
371	6	I hoped to get lucky
372	6	Who thinks of 6?
373	6	It's my favorite number
374	6	If figure people will avoid single-digit numbers on the assumption that they will all be taken.
375	6	yeah, it's a guess
376	6	some people will go much higher thinking all the lower numbers are picked, its a gamble.
377	6	It's low, but not too low, and people tend not to pick even numbers as much because they feel less random.
378	6	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.).
379	6	because somebody had to do it
380	6	lowballin
381	6	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.
382	6	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.
383	6	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.
384	6	I thought all the other numbers were taken. I could be wrong.
385	6	Most boring number between 1-10.
386	6	It sounded like the smallest "uninteresting" number. It's one less than lucky seven.
387	6	random guess
388	6	Why not?
389	6	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.
390	6	Guessing most people guess odd numbers, and choosing so low because hoping no one else will
391	6	I think most of the numbers will be lowish 2-digits. I think everyone else will miss this one.
392	6	6 it is
393	6	I figure 7 is going to be popular - so guessed one below that.
394	6	High enough but not to high
395	6	get em all
396	6	just a guess - relatively low given how many people will probably submit an answer, but high risk is required to win this game.
397	6	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.
398	6	I think the numbers 1-5 might be obvious and other people would choose larger numbers and overlook something like 6
399	6	6
400	6	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.
401	6	It seems low enough
402	6	Intuition
403	6	My first several ideas were all primes, so I'm going for a low but not too-low non-prime.
404	6	Guess something low that other people would think is too low
405	6	¯\_(ツ)_/¯
406	6	aa
407	6	6 is an unlucky, oft overlooked number.
408	6	It’s low, but hopefully still a unique submission
409	6	Dan Wilson... People like odd numbers. Figure many people will go higher.
410	6	2nd composite number
411	6	NO reason
412	6	It's my lucky number
413	6	I'm a genius
414	6	I assumed 1-5 would be covered
415	6	Counting on others to cover 1-5 multiple times.
416	6	Assuming most people will be afraid to use small numbers, but others will try to outsmart the rest by using the lowest few.
417	6	I like 6
418	7	*shrugs*
419	7	George Costanza
420	7	I think it might be a low number, but not too low to be unique
421	7	I feel like everyone will go for 1-5 or higher random numbers.
422	7	Low enough to reasonably win; high enough to hopefully avoid spoilers
423	7	Just a fun number. What the hell.
424	7	seems lucky
425	7	not to high, not too low, not too obvious
426	7	I believe that all smaller numbers were chosen by at least one person by now.
427	7	get em all
428	7	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
429	7	Obviously 1-5 is gone. 6 is questionable but 7 is perfect.
430	7	High enough to be unique, low enough to be low enough.
431	7	I am going for broke and guessing that few people will choose really low numbers & I like the number seven.
432	7	It's so obvious, no one else will think of it
433	7	Chose 7 because I think people will go very low hoping nobody else will go low.
434	7	aa
435	7	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.
436	7	Cause nobody will ever pick 7.
437	8	Just 'cause...
438	8	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?
439	8	Have you ever heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons!
440	8	It's pretty low. I originally thought to do 133, but let's live a little, ya know.
441	8	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.
442	8	intuition?
443	8	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*
444	8	Gotta makes sure no one wins with a single digit number. But hey if I win I win.
445	8	...
446	8	Because it's luckier than 7.
447	8	Random
448	8	My professor for game theory was Mark David Ward, who literally wrote the pa[er on inverse auction theory.
449	8	It's my favorite number
450	8	Because 8.
451	8	1-5 will get selected and the likely hood of someone selecting 6,7,8 is probably close to the same
452	8	There are two large unknowns: 1) 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. 2) How other people will answer. I'm going to assume that the distribution is bi-modal: - Greedy participants that'll choose some distribution near 1 - Conservative participants that'll choose a number avoiding the greedy participants clustered at 1 With 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. We'll see how unique my thinking is. (Can't wait to see the distribution peak between 5-15, lol)
453	8	High single to low double digit may slip through.
454	8	It's less than 9.
455	8	Random!
456	8	Someone has to pick the low numbers :-)
457	8	it's gonna be low
458	8	Seems like a good spot
459	8	Seems pretty obvious that at least someone would pick 7.
460	8	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.
461	8	0 - 7 might be non-unique..
462	8	So I dont feel foolish if someone else wins with 8.
463	8	This number just doesn't seem like many people would pick it.
464	8	My wife says 8. Gotta pick your battles. ;-)
465	8	get em all
466	8	Common number but not the most common.
467	8	why not?
468	8	Crazy Eights
469	8	Balance
470	8	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.
471	8	It felt right
472	8	dunno, I like 8
473	8	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
474	8	idk man, 8's too predictable i guess
475	8	Low, even.
476	8	aa
477	8	It felt right
478	8	Favorite number
479	8	8
480	8	Snowman for good luck.
481	8	Eight is a popular satisfying number. I think people will tend to pick numbers that feel obscure and that tend to be too high.
482	8	i have no idea
483	8	It's the lowest unique number of all responses you'll receive.
484	8	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.
485	9	Hope no one else picks it
486	9	It came to me in a dream.
487	9	There is no work. 9, because why the fuck not? Who would be stupid enough to answer 9 to this question?
488	9	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.
489	9	I think everyone else will mindgame themself off of picking a 1-digit number
490	9	Birth Date. Usually this number chase me
491	9	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.
492	9	it's a good number
493	9	You have to pick something. I picked a very low number, but figured that other people would pick the few numbers below mine.
494	9	4+5=9
495	9	Because 7 8 9
496	9	Pretty arbitrary, to be honest
497	9	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.
498	9	It all comes back to 9.
499	9	I think nine might be lower than the actual answer, but maybe everyone else will think that too.
500	9	The optimal answer depends on the (unknown) number of participants and their (unknown) strategies.
501	9	Seemed like a good number.
502	9	intuition
503	9	It's my favorite number, low, and I'm guessing that people will go mostly higher to try to be unique.
504	9	If you flip it upside down its a 6
505	9	Its my habit to think of 9 when I'm asked to pick a number
506	9	Why would anyone pick 9?
507	9	Random guess
508	9	get em all
509	9	get em all
510	9	Favorite number
511	9	Lucky number
512	9	Benfords law/hoping ppl overthink and go too high
513	9	When I described the task to a friend's very bright four-year-old, she suggested it.
514	9	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...?
515	9	Nine, nine nie nine. Nine nine: nine.
516	9	aa
517	9	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!"
518	9	Guess
519	9	N/A
520	9	People will overlook a random low figure attempting to accurately predict a higher figure; discounting the linear nature of the problem.
521	9	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.
522	9	guessing that others will go much higher, expecting all lower numbers to be guessed
523	10	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.
524	10	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.
525	10	Applying some reverse psychology. People will probably go for more "unique" numbers, so I'll pick a nice round number.
526	10	It "looks" less random than odds, primes, etc. So perhaps nobody will choose it, because it seems less obvious.
527	10	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.
528	10	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.
529	10	Just a feeling it might be overlooked. This is so volatile I thought people might neglect picking a "normal" or "base" number
530	10	Someone will forget about the lowest 2-digit number
531	10	¯\_(ツ)_/¯
532	10	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.
533	10	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.
534	10	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.
535	10	Seems like a number many people would skip because it is too obvious.
536	10	How many fingers do you have? Yeah, 10. That's what I thought.
537	10	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.
538	10	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/
539	10	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.
540	10	I chose this answer for shits and for gigs
541	10	Champion of the most recent Nikoli Derby
542	10	Critical information seems to be the expected number of submissions which I really have no idea on, so this is a wild guess.
543	10	Nobody's favourite number. Lowest non single-digit. Depends on response volume - unknown.
544	10	get em all
545	10	Others may avoid round numbers
546	10	idk
547	10	Fav
548	10	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. :)
549	10	aa
550	10	aa
551	10	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.
552	10	I picked something that seemed like a popular nimbler hoping people would avoid it.
553	10	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?
554	10	Meh
555	10	Everybody is going to think 10 will be taken!
556	10	Too round to be common
557	10	I expect others will overthink it. Or will cheat by making many many submissions
558	10	Because it's a common, but not common, number.
559	10	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.
560	10	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.
561	10	God
562	10	Guess
563	10	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.
564	10	round numbers may be too obvious to select
565	10	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.
566	10	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.
567	10	https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-popular-numbers-grapes-of-math/ On 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...
568	10	"ten is a stupid number to pick, pick a weird number that nobody else will"
569	10	Seems like a number that is too common to be common
570	11	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. People will continue to pick either low of high (3 digit) numbers leaving a gap of 2 digit numbers. I'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)
571	11	Because
572	11	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. Eventually, 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.
573	11	Seems like a nice enough number to choose
574	11	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? The 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).
575	11	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.
576	11	The density will decrease rapidly as the integers get larger; I think there is a psychological anchor at double digits
577	11	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.
578	11	Born on the 11th
579	11	It felt right.
580	11	Mine goes to 11
581	11	S.W.A.G.: A scientific wild-ass guess.
582	11	No real reason
583	11	completely arbitrary
584	11	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.
585	11	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.
586	11	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!
587	11	Most people will choose a number 10 or lower or a common number. I chose the lowest prime above 10.
588	11	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.).
589	11	Restating the challenge, we are to pick a number that is sufficiently low, and sufficiently unpopular. The 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. So 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.
590	11	It is my favorite number
591	11	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.
592	11	pretty much chosen at random
593	11	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.
594	11	It's kind of low?
595	11	Just going with my gut.
596	11	get em all
597	11	I have no idea how many people submit here...
598	11	Well...
599	11	11 is my favorite number!
600	11	It's my second favourite number, I thought my favourite (6) was too low:)
601	11	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.
602	11	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
603	11	My reasons are my own.
604	11	It's a prime number and it's lowish. I think people don't often think about the number 11.
605	11	First Prime number above 10
606	11	aa
607	11	Low but not too low plus a prime. Hoping people will over think this
608	11	Gotta risk it.
609	11	-
610	11	N/A -
611	11	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.
612	11	Perhaps people will exhaust the counting numbers, but not touch the teens?
613	11	It is the best number, even if it is wrong.
614	11	Its just a guess
615	11	guess
616	12	the largest monosyllabic number (in English)
617	12	it's a low double digit, non-prime, non-square that hopefully people won't spam up to
618	12	I have no clue.
619	12	it's a dozen
620	12	Most counter-intuitive answer above 10
621	12	It's a good number, Brent.
622	12	Why not 12?
623	12	Lucky guess
624	12	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.
625	12	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.
626	12	Bots are going to make me wrong :(
627	12	Because 1 + 2 = 12
628	12	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.
629	12	Random number generator
630	12	Gut.
631	12	It is high enough to be out of 1-10 and not too common of a number.
632	12	1-10 has a large probability of being chosen. 11 also has a high chance.
633	12	It "feels" right
634	12	Just guessing
635	12	i chose 12
636	12	12
637	12	Was chosen by a random number generator
638	12	why not?
639	12	Not so low that anyone will pick it
640	12	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.
641	12	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.
642	12	Lucky Guess
643	12	Classic gut instinct. Great problem.
644	12	Thinking
645	12	Many people will choose small numbers. Many people will pick odd numbers like 3,5, 11,17 etc. So 12 seemed about right. 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.
646	12	Favorite number
647	12	Not a single digit + not 11?
648	12	get em all
649	12	Because
650	12	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.
651	12	because twelve is the twelviest
652	12	Someone will pick 1 through 10. So an unlikely number above 10 I guess 12
653	12	I figure a lot of people are going to choose relatively high numbers, so I'm just trying to undercut them.
654	12	Assume all single digit numbers will be selected.
655	12	I hope that people are attracted to prime numbers. 12 is the opposite of that.
656	12	Relying on luck.
657	12	Birthday
658	12	Gut feeling
659	12	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.
660	12	aa
661	12	I assume others will overestimate the risk of choosing numbers with many dividers.
662	12	Pure guesswork :)
663	12	My birthday
664	12	whim
665	12	Seems legit
666	12	Wild guess
667	12	12 is an ugly number.
668	12	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.
669	12	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.
670	12	So obvious it has to be it.
671	12	deep thoughts.
672	12	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
673	13	my birthdate
674	13	It's unlucky.
675	13	Its a guess.
676	13	Guess
677	13	"I'm not superstitious, but I'm a little stitious"
678	13	Betting on the superstitions of others
679	13	triskaidekaphilia
680	13	No real reason.
681	13	Lucky number
682	13	13
683	13	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.
684	13	I figured some luck was needed, so let's go unlucky and prime. Probably not...
685	13	Everyone will aim very high or very low, and no one seems to like the number 13
686	13	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 :)
687	13	1 + 3 = 13
688	13	People's subconscious fear of the number 13.
689	13	It's pretty low, but the type of unlucky number I'm hopeful others will avoid.
690	13	Simple guess due to trolls and Nash equilibrium
691	13	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.
692	13	Unlucky, maybe that will make people avoid it.
693	13	I've really got nothing to go on other than dumb luck.
694	13	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.
695	13	get em all
696	13	Balance between to low and not low enough. People also have an irrational fear of 13.
697	13	I assumed fewer people would go for unlucky 13. "Fewer" as in no-one else, hopefully.
698	13	Luck
699	13	27
700	13	It is my lucky number
701	13	Favourite number
702	13	13 needs some love.
703	13	Intuitive
704	13	It's unlucky. Nobody else wants to pick it.
705	13	I figured the lowest number will be lower than most anticipate, but the trolls will make sure 1-10 are off the board
706	13	aa
707	13	aa
708	13	13 seems low, and I think there might be a psychological barrier to picking an "unlucky" number.
709	13	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.
710	13	Because it's prime, it's in the Fibonacci sequence, and Triskadecaphobes won't choose it.
711	13	It is unlucky. ;)
712	14	Hopefully no one else picks it!
713	14	Least obvious number after 7.
714	14	Pete Rose
715	14	I figure most people will pick odd numbers.
716	14	random
717	14	Largely at random
718	14	I figure all the numbers 1-12 will be chosen more than once and 13 is unlucky.
719	14	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.
720	14	It's my birthday today
721	14	14
722	14	feelin good abt it
723	14	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.
724	14	I picked a number.
725	14	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
726	14	My jersey number for hockey - it has to be lucky one of these days!
727	14	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).
728	14	it is the most overlooked of the teens
729	14	Even numbers less popular than odd numbers, trying to sneak in with a low one
730	14	I'm bold, but pragmatic.
731	14	14 is lower than numbers higher than it, but also higher than numbers lower than it. That is very common for numbers.
732	14	Let's do some game theory
733	14	Hoping 1-13 will all have duplicates
734	14	Just a random number
735	14	*shrug*
736	14	Seemed good
737	14	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.
738	14	It seems like a nice numebr
739	14	why not
740	14	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.
741	14	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!
742	14	guesswork
743	14	first number above 13
744	14	Have to pick a low-ish number to win. I figure all single digits will be chosen. So why not 14???
745	14	I was winging it, though I think an even number is safer than an odd one.
746	14	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?
747	14	Just a guess.
748	14	Why not?
749	14	Think most will go up to 13...lucky number for most.
750	14	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...
751	14	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.
752	14	Most people will chose single digit or odd numbers
753	14	Most people will chose single digit or odd numbers
754	14	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.
755	14	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
756	14	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.
757	14	Because crowsmilk
758	14	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..
759	14	no one likes 14
760	14	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.
761	14	Why not?
762	14	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.
763	14	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
764	14	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).
765	14	get em all
766	14	13 seems too low. 15 is way too high.
767	14	HA!
768	14	SWAG
769	14	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.
770	14	I really don't know. 14 feels boring, and I didn't think of it at first so it's probably an okish pick.
771	14	it's my lucky number
772	14	Guess
773	14	Odd number, near the start.
774	14	It's the number I wear in sports
775	14	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.
776	14	I like it.
777	14	Favourite number
778	14	because
779	14	A simple guess to help the site get a good number of guesses and assess the probability density function of user guesses better.
780	14	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.
781	14	aa
782	14	Just a guess
783	14	Not too high, probably too low, but maybe I'll get lucky
784	14	It seemed like a number few people would pick!
785	14	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.
786	14	Lucky number
787	14	14 is an unassuming number.
788	14	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!
789	14	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.
790	14	Just looking for low but inconspicuous number.
791	14	Pure Guess
792	14	no one thinks of 14 bro
793	14	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.
794	14	guess
795	14	Here goes nothing.
796	14	First number that I didn't think would be an obvious choice
797	15	Nobody likes 15.
798	15	I looked for the smallest number not on this list: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-popular-numbers-grapes-of-math/
799	15	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.
800	15	Aiming low and kinda round because I think others won't do that.
801	15	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
802	15	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.
803	15	.
804	15	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. This 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. Therefore, 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.
805	15	Just hoping
806	15	Seemed about right
807	15	A shot in the dark
808	15	get em all
809	15	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." the 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. what 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. so... 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/ and 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.
810	15	I'm not sure of readership on this column, so I picked a random number 6-20.
811	15	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)
812	15	aa
813	15	Math
814	15	maybe that's way too low.
815	16	Hopefully everyone else picks higher numbers hoping to avoid matches, so my low number will sneak through.
816	16	No reason :)
817	16	A good feeling.
818	16	Random number sub 20.
819	16	Someone's gotta take it
820	16	It's non-prime, not too low, but fairly low.
821	16	Seems like a good choice
822	16	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.)
823	16	I feel like the sweet 16 doesn't get enough respect
824	16	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.
825	16	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. Sixteen is even, and less than 17. 18 would be a good choice if there were two of me.
826	16	Because I'm feeling it
827	16	Random choice!
828	16	get em all
829	16	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. Never 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. On 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. But 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. We 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. But 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. We 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. It 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. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them! The 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. They 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. They 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. The 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. He 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. We 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. Mr. 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. They 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. . . . Let 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. I 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. Now, 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. Why 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. But 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. Why 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. . . . We 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. I 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? Here 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. Mr. 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. There 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. You 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. My 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. I 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. If 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.
830	16	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)
831	16	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.
832	16	Testing to find out how quickly user fatigue will prevent continued guesses
833	16	aa
834	16	The first non-trivial power of 4! Surely no one else would be so bold.
835	16	It seems too obvious.
836	16	Watching Bos, KC. End of the 3rd. R+H+E+LOB+Inning
837	16	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.
838	16	Cause it's a cool number.
839	16	This is one of those games where the optimal strategy is to pick 1
840	16	2*2*2*2
841	16	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."
842	16	N/A
843	16	Intuition
844	17	complete guess
845	17	Kind of a random one, right?
846	17	Lucky number. High enough that it stands a chance of being unique
847	17	Shot in the dark.
848	17	Something makes me think people are less likely to chose a prime number
849	17	--
850	17	My best guess as to the lowest number no one else would pick
851	17	I like prime numbers
852	17	just picked a number
853	17	Chose a number people dont really think about much
854	17	Relatively small, positive, and prime number. Figured it would be thought of relatively less than other integers between 0 and 20.
855	17	NA
856	17	nobody likes the number 17
857	17	because 18 is to high
858	17	Don't know
859	17	1. 7.
860	17	dumb luck
861	17	Intuition.
862	17	Completely wild guess to be honest
863	17	Seems logical
864	17	Everyone is going to go for 13.
865	17	17
866	17	Nice low prime number, just a guess though
867	17	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
868	17	Good a guess as any.
869	17	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. with maybe, idk, 100,000 submissions, log base 2 (100,000) = 16.6 ish. That seems way too low but wahtever.
870	17	16+1=17
871	17	I think the number will be between 17-100.
872	17	Hoping to get lucky?
873	17	It was my jersey number
874	17	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.
875	17	Just had to pick a positive integer
876	17	I did not want to choose any number 1-10, so I randomly chose a number in the next bracket.
877	17	It was either 17 or 31
878	17	It's prime right
879	17	Pure guess
880	17	Just a guess no real logic behind it
881	17	Seems like a pretty low prime number that might not get picked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
882	17	I guessed!
883	17	Just a hunch
884	17	Fermat prime!
885	17	cuz
886	17	who thinks of 17?
887	17	Very low numbers will be said a lot so I don't want to pick those and 17 is my favorite number.
888	17	It's my favorite
889	17	I enjoy the number
890	17	I feel lucky
891	17	get em all
892	17	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.
893	17	Just a guess
894	17	Wild guess.
895	17	¯\_(ツ)_/¯
896	17	Prime
897	17	Guess
898	17	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.
899	17	Blind guess
900	17	17!
901	17	:)
902	17	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.
903	17	aa
904	17	Guessed.
905	17	:)
906	17	Wetware fuzzy logic
907	17	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...
908	17	Smallest integer I thought had a chance of being unique.
909	17	Randomly, or did I?!
910	17	Doesn't seem like a number anyone else would take.
911	17	guess
912	17	It's a good number that is not to close to 1.
913	17	I have a good feeling about 17.
914	17	It's my fav positive integer
915	17	The yellow pigs told me to pick it.
916	17	Guess
917	17	Prime numbers are not generally chosen
918	17	Guess
919	17	relatively low prime number
920	17	Random guess
921	17	I assumed most people would choose a number under 15, so I chose 17 in case someone else chose 16.
922	18	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.
923	18	Seems like a good one
924	18	It's low... but not too low. ;-)
925	18	Seems like a nice number.
926	18	Random Guess!
927	18	High enough to avoid the trolls but low enough to win.
928	18	just a guess
929	18	17 is prime, so I thought some might choose that. Otherwise, just random - I'm probably too low.
930	18	Pure guess
931	18	Pure Guess
932	18	wild guess
933	18	Birthday, why not
934	18	No reason
935	18	Beats me. I just picked a number.
936	18	No good reason whatsoever.
937	18	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.
938	18	???
939	18	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. Basically 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.
940	18	Who the heck is going to say 18
941	18	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.
942	18	it's the number i feel like fits in the worst in the 1-20 range
943	18	Not too high, not too low.
944	18	July 18 is my birthday
945	18	Seemed about right
946	18	get em all
947	18	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.
948	18	I think many people will over think this puzzle and choose solutions that are too high or too low
949	18	Is a complete crap-shoot. Seemed about right.
950	18	This one is a guess.
951	18	aa
952	18	Favorite number
953	18	Small, but not too small, also not a "human-random" number
954	18	It was my soccer jersey number.
955	18	No logic, or math here. Just a random guess.
956	18	It is
957	18	giving it a shot
958	18	Just because
959	19	no 3s or 7s (most used random numbers). Not too high, but not too low
960	19	My birthday is on the 19th:)
961	19	Really?
962	19	Psychic powers
963	19	Just because
964	19	I'm partial to 19
965	19	I just like 19
966	19	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.
967	19	it seemed like a good number
968	19	My jersey number in hockey.
969	19	Really hoping no one chooses this number.
970	19	Lucky guess!
971	19	Not much thought - just picked a prime number which perhaps aren't as popular in coming to others' minds.
972	19	¯\_(ツ)_/¯
973	19	19 is the lowest number that cannot be the score of a hand in cribbage.
974	19	Low number which does not match the jersey number of a famous athlete.
975	19	low but unique
976	19	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.
977	19	It's my favorite number and it's semi unusual for people to pick
978	19	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.
979	19	Low, but not too low. I like primes.
980	19	Look, someone's got to pick a bit lower.
981	19	Random Man
982	19	It's my favorite number
983	19	It felt right
984	19	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.
985	19	Idk
986	19	Who can say really
987	19	get em all
988	19	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
989	19	Hopefully a forgotten number.
990	19	Just guessed one of the lowest "high" numbers that others maybe wouldn't think
991	19	It's my favorite number and I know no one else will pick it
992	19	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.
993	19	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.
994	19	my favorite number :-)
995	19	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
996	19	Not too big. Not too small.
997	19	.
998	19	aa
999	19	While still very low I think 19 is an "odd" number that will be overlooked.
1000	19	Just a stab in the dark, also my lucky number.
1001	19	Because I feel like other people will pick most of the numbers before 19
1002	19	Sounded Nice
1003	19	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.
1004	19	It seems like a number people will forget about choosing.
1005	19	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.
1006	19	18 seemed to low, 20 seemed to high...
1007	19	Did not want one too low as more people would take it try to find one maybe no one else would take.
1008	19	Not too low. A favorite number
1009	19	Steve Yzerman
1010	19	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).
1011	19	Dumb Luck
1012	19	Because no one ever chooses 19. Except me, this one time.
1013	19	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.
1014	19	Nobody thinks of nineteen
1015	19	I like primes.
1016	19	Just low enough that it could win, just high enough that nobody is going to pick it.
1017	19	I guessed!
1018	20	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.
1019	20	To win.
1020	20	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.
1021	20	No real reason. Maybe people don't like numbers divisible by 10 because they're too obvious.
1022	20	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.
1023	20	It's a guess. Might be a better estimate if I knew how many people were participating.
1024	20	Why not?
1025	20	Suckers!
1026	20	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 #.
1027	20	Choice of least chosen lotto numbers
1028	20	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.
1029	20	Gut feeling! :)
1030	20	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.
1031	20	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.
1032	20	Feeling that people will stay away from 'round' numbers in favor of 'unique' numbers (like primes).
1033	20	It is a round number, not too low, which perhaps people will steer away from in favor of a seemingly more uncommon number.
1034	20	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!
1035	20	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. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if a really small number wins, like 4.
1036	20	Statistically unlikely number to be picked by humans.
1037	20	*shrug*
1038	20	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).
1039	20	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.
1040	20	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.
1041	20	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.
1042	20	20 is a very unassuming number. Low enough to win and enough factors to not be chosen.
1043	20	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.
1044	20	Lol
1045	20	Who would pick 20?
1046	20	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.
1047	20	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.)
1048	20	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.
1049	20	get em all
1050	20	It's just a guess.
1051	20	guess
1052	20	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.
1053	20	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.
1054	20	Just intuition :)
1055	20	I wanted to pick something small but not too small that didn't look human random.
1056	20	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
1057	20	aa
1058	20	Just taking a shot at a low number.
1059	20	I think people will try hard to select "uncommon" number. 20 is pretty common.
1060	20	?
1061	20	Its the best number
1062	20	Maybe people won't pick a round even number
1063	20	no one ever picks 20
1064	21	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.
1065	21	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.
1066	21	uh I forget why it is 21, but basically to assume other people are also ssmart
1067	21	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.
1068	21	why not?
1069	21	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!
1070	21	Go small or go home - and this is a number which is neither interesting nor boring
1071	21	I like the number
1072	21	It seemed like a good number.
1073	21	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.
1074	21	Sean Taylor #RIP21
1075	21	Guessed
1076	21	get em all
1077	21	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.
1078	21	Picked randomly
1079	21	aa
1080	21	Assuming a lot of people will pick numbers 1-20.
1081	21	gut feeling
1082	22	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?
1083	22	asdf
1084	22	Low enough to be close to zero without getting to close to everyone else's guess.
1085	22	?
1086	22	Single digits seems ukulele to work, and 22 is low, but not as likely to be chosen. Kinda a random guess
1087	22	I'm turning 22 next week.. why not?
1088	22	Why not
1089	22	I hit the 2 and then the 2 again.
1090	22	22
1091	22	It's lucky
1092	22	22 is my favorite number
1093	22	It's low enough where it might be unique, and 21 and 23 seem more popular.
1094	22	Lucky number
1095	22	hoping that this number is too high... its been my number of choice for years.
1096	22	Random Guessing
1097	22	Not too big, not too small!
1098	22	I slammed my head into the wall as many times as I could. That was 22 times...
1099	22	Total guess
1100	22	Instinct.
1101	22	???
1102	22	Seems reasonably low, most people will probably choose pretty low numbers but you never know which one might fall through the cracks!
1103	22	It felt right. Hard to guess because I have no idea how many people will enter
1104	22	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
1105	22	Few others would choose such a non-random looking number, surely?
1106	22	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. Am 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. But you must have suspected I would have guessed the submission's origin, so I can clearly not choose a number less than 50. Therefore, I choooooose....58. What'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...
1107	22	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.
1108	22	No
1109	22	lol
1110	22	Why not?
1111	22	No real logic here. I wanted to go high enough to be unique while trying to stay pretty low.
1112	22	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. From 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!
1113	22	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.
1114	22	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.
1115	22	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.
1116	22	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.
1117	22	It's not a very special number, and it's low enough to win but not low enough to be submitted by other entrants!
1118	22	get em all
1119	22	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
1120	22	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.
1121	22	Figures bunch of people will say other stuff below this
1122	22	Seems about right.
1123	22	Based on the poll here: http://web.mit.edu/thinkBIG/challenge/popular.htm This is the first number to not show up on the left. I hope no one else thought to do this.
1124	22	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.
1125	22	It's just a guess
1126	22	1-20 Are too common. 23 is prime and likely to be chosen. 21 is blackjack.
1127	22	I felt people would look too far out and miss an early number like this.
1128	22	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.
1129	22	MJ-1
1130	22	Semi-but-seemingly-not-random low-ish number
1131	22	1-10 is too obvious. 11-21 is too obvious. 22 is a rare number to chose.
1132	22	aa
1133	22	wil guess
1134	22	I started counting up until I hit a number I thought not many people would take...
1135	22	Mindgaming the f out of everybody
1136	22	Guess
1137	22	Because 22 is the loneliest number, not 1
1138	22	I assume everyone will overestimate
1139	22	Just because
1140	22	I'm feeling twenty-twoooo
1141	22	It's my age
1142	22	No work needed. Pure guess.
1143	22	My favourite number
1144	22	This weeks question doesn't really have a 'why'. Why not?
1145	23	Not too big, not too small. It's an ugly prime number if you ask me.
1146	23	Random guess!
1147	23	First thing that came to my mind.
1148	23	Seams obscurely low enough
1149	23	I feel like it is the lowest unique number anyone will pick
1150	23	meh
1151	23	No one likes 23, its such a clunky number, no one else will pick it
1152	23	My lucky number
1153	23	I went to random.org and found a number I liked after randomly generating 10 integers.
1154	23	Random Guess
1155	23	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.
1156	23	Prime and high enough so that maybe others won't guess it?
1157	23	Above teens, but a prime number
1158	23	Nobody likes you when you're 23
1159	23	Pure guess!
1160	23	Nobody likes you when you're 23!
1161	23	It seems like a number that others would forget about.
1162	23	The Illuminati will it so.... (I'm just guessing)
1163	23	-
1164	23	Wanted a low number, but not too low, as most may be taken. 23 jumped out (from 23 enigma).
1165	23	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).
1166	23	Jordan
1167	23	I chose this number because it is a low prime number
1168	23	I like this number
1169	23	Prime number, my birthday, low but not too low that others will pick it.
1170	23	Guess
1171	23	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. ;)
1172	23	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.
1173	23	None
1174	23	-
1175	23	get em all
1176	23	It's fairly low, and it's an unpopular prime.
1177	23	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?
1178	23	My lucky number.
1179	23	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.
1180	23	My birthday
1181	23	Hail Eris!
1182	23	Lucky number!
1183	23	It's prime
1184	23	Picking the lowest obscure number I can find. No one really thinks of 23 as a number.
1185	23	Purely a guess. Not many associations with 23, seemed reasonably low.
1186	23	aa
1187	23	Honestly, with no reasonable estimate of how many people are doing this, just guessed
1188	23	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).
1189	23	23
1190	23	Kinda high but not too high and also prime
1191	23	Just a guess
1192	23	Why not? Nice smallish prime number. My favorite number, actually.
1193	23	It was the first number that popped into my head.
1194	23	Random number generator
1195	23	seems reasonable
1196	23	Just a intuitive guess
1197	23	It's small-ish a prime.
1198	23	It satisfies the Law of Fives
1199	24	Why not?
1200	24	It feels right
1201	24	*shrug*
1202	24	Picked a low number.
1203	24	It's my favorite number.
1204	24	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.
1205	24	Random Number Generator between 1 and 200.
1206	24	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.
1207	24	Feel like it's high enough things will have started to spread out a little
1208	24	It's a nice number.
1209	24	More defense than offense here. I expect the actual answer to be in the low hundreds.
1210	24	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.
1211	24	Nobody picks composite numbers
1212	24	I feel like the number is going to be lower than everyone expects
1213	24	1 is going to be trolled. I expect prime numbers to be heavily submitted. So a prime plus 1 doesn't seem too daft.
1214	24	¿Porqué no?
1215	24	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.
1216	24	get em all
1217	24	This number is so mundane it has to work
1218	24	aa
1219	24	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
1220	24	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.
1221	24	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.
1222	24	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.
1223	25	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.
1224	25	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.
1225	25	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.
1226	25	it's the winning number
1227	25	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).
1228	25	Random walk
1229	25	Painfully obvious number should scare people off that's not too low to trigger too much greed
1230	25	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.
1231	25	just a guess based on maybe 200 submissions and pick a round number because people might avoid them
1232	25	It's my favorite number.
1233	25	get em all
1234	25	Best guess
1235	25	Not too low; I'm thinking people will choose primes, so I want to pick a more common number.
1236	25	I hope this reasonably high enough so as to be unique, but low enough to win the challenge.
1237	25	It's obvious, so no one will pick it.
1238	25	Why not
1239	25	Fav
1240	25	AA
1241	25	n/a
1242	25	People will gravitate towards weird primes and numbers they think are unlikely. No one would be so foolish to pick the very square 25.
1243	25	Am sure some speculators will choose numbers ≤ 10. Picked a 'boring' number above 10.
1244	25	I decided sneaking in a very number was unlikely to work, so picked a nice round number that I hope will scare others away.
1245	25	small-ish, round number
1246	25	Went for something "obvious"
1247	25	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.
1248	25	Not too small, and not too “unusual.” I think people might expect primes to be somehow less likely to be chosen.
1249	26	-
1250	26	26
1251	26	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.
1252	26	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.
1253	26	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. ...Yeah, I just picked a relatively bland smallish number.
1254	26	It's my favorite number
1255	26	¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1256	26	I'm taking a chance.
1257	26	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.
1258	26	Didn't want to go too low, randomly picked a number
1259	26	No work needed
1260	26	20 + 6
1261	26	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.
1262	26	I guessed randomly. 26 seems nonchalant and with ~1000 responses, I won't win statistically no matter what.
1263	26	This is a guess haha
1264	26	Some people will pick high. Some people will know that, so will take a chance and pick low. A low-medium pick seems best.
1265	26	Not too high and not too low
1266	26	I avoided prime numbers, squares, multiples of 10, and popular numbers in culture/sports. 26 seems like a pretty mundane number
1267	26	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.
1268	26	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
1269	26	It's the date of my birthday. I'm a simple man.
1270	26	The old hoping to get lucky strategy
1271	26	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.
1272	26	13*2
1273	26	50-24=26
1274	26	It's a bit of an unnoticeable number, neither prime, square or palindrome. Low amount of factors.
1275	26	No one chooses 26
1276	26	I guessed
1277	26	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.
1278	26	I'm turning 26 on Monday. It sounds lucky.
1279	26	It's my favorite number
1280	26	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
1281	26	get em all
1282	26	Wild guess
1283	26	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.
1284	26	Why not?
1285	26	It just felt right.
1286	26	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.
1287	26	Why not?
1288	26	First number >10 that came to mind.
1289	26	Just a guess
1290	26	I just want to mess up the other guy that picked 26
1291	26	Takin' a chance.
1292	26	aa
1293	26	Just a guess.
1294	26	<20 is too low, 26 is about right (and not prime or square)
1295	26	Random
1296	26	just a guess
1297	27	Much like many players in this game, I'm just trying to find the balance between low numbers and second-guessing other players.
1298	27	Didn't want to go too low, otherwise random.
1299	27	It's obvious, isn't it? 27!
1300	27	20+7
1301	27	guess
1302	27	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.
1303	27	I tried the math. I failed the math. I went with intuition.
1304	27	27 is my go-to number
1305	27	First number I thought of after 1.
1306	27	Lucky Number
1307	27	pourquoi pas?
1308	27	Looked about right :)
1309	27	Why 27? Why not?
1310	27	I thought about 7 first, but figured everything below 20 would be guessed by someone. 27 seemed far enough away to have a chance.
1311	27	God only knows. Maybe I'll get lucky?
1312	27	It's prime, not terribly popular, and the most famous athlete with that number was a pitcher back in the 60's.
1313	27	get em all
1314	27	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.
1315	27	Intuition
1316	27	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.
1317	27	Random guess
1318	27	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?
1319	27	Total and complete guess work.
1320	27	AA
1321	27	Random guess
1322	27	No reason.
1323	27	¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1324	27	It's my favorite number.
1325	27	Highest unbeatable score in cross country
1326	27	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.
1327	28	Perfect number
1328	28	I just like the number
1329	28	No real reason. Just hoping it's the lowest unique one. I'm hoping everyone forgot about 28.
1330	28	Chose an "unattractive" relatively low number
1331	28	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).
1332	28	Estimation of the number of submissions. Probability of perceived "number that no one will pick"
1333	28	28 is a pretty boring number
1334	28	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.
1335	28	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.
1336	28	It's medium-sized and not prime or a power of 2—less chance of collisions that way, if it's unremarkable.
1337	28	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.
1338	28	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.
1339	28	It's a funny number 😂
1340	28	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.
1341	28	Twenty eight.
1342	28	five plus thirty plus eight is 43. subtract the number of characters in fivethirtyeight (15) and you're left with 28. science!
1343	28	get em all
1344	28	Worth a shot...
1345	28	aa
1346	28	28 is a "perfect number" (no other reason) :)
1347	28	Generated random number between 22 and 40. Gf submitting under same process but she is going higher...
1348	28	I wanted to ignore primes and numbers I could readily associate with something while staying as low as possible
1349	28	My favorite number.
1350	28	It seemed like a good choice.
1351	29	It's a good number
1352	29	thought I'd just pick a low ish prime number
1353	29	Random Guess
1354	29	Hopefully big enough to not have duplicates and small enough that no smaller number is unique.
1355	29	2. 9.
1356	29	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)
1357	29	Maybe it is weird and common enough to get overlooked...maybe
1358	29	?
1359	29	it is prime
1360	29	High risk, high reward. 29 is a very low number, but if it works, it works!
1361	29	Just thought about it in my head.
1362	29	Seems potentially high enough
1363	29	The perfect crib hand
1364	29	My birthday
1365	29	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.
1366	29	29
1367	29	get em all
1368	29	Seems legit.
1369	29	Lucky number
1370	29	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.
1371	29	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.
1372	29	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
1373	29	Just a guess but thought a prime number might be less likely to be chosen by others.
1374	29	AA
1375	29	A prime. All sub-20 will be taken...
1376	29	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.
1377	29	It's a nice number.
1378	29	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.
1379	29	got married on the 29th
1380	30	It's the best
1381	30	No method to my madness
1382	30	It's pretty low.
1383	30	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.)
1384	30	Gut that people wouldn't choose such a low, round number
1385	30	It's a nice number.
1386	30	Not too low not too high.
1387	30	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.
1388	30	Cuz Ima boss
1389	30	It seemed right
1390	30	get em all
1391	30	Just a guess
1392	30	It's round
1393	30	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).
1394	30	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.
1395	30	print(random.randint(1,100))
1396	30	aa
1397	30	Multiples of 10 hopefully seem somehow 'less unique', so hopefully people won't choose them as often (?)
1398	30	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.
1399	30	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.
1400	30	My favorite number
1401	30	It seemed high enough that other people might not choose it, while simultaneously low
1402	30	Why not?
1403	30	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.
1404	30	Intuition
1405	31	I was going to choose 17 but that might be too random.
1406	31	Guessing that people will choose lower, knocking each other out.
1407	31	Random shot in the dark
1408	31	Why the hell not!
1409	31	not too big, not too small
1410	31	Small but not too small
1411	31	no particular reason
1412	31	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. Actual reason: 31 was my football jersey number in high school.
1413	31	Seems like a good number
1414	31	No Reason
1415	31	No work that just seems like a safe bet
1416	31	Blind Faith
1417	31	I picked a number. Any number.
1418	31	idk maybe no one will pick this one
1419	31	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.
1420	31	Because people might forget about 31.
1421	31	I just knew
1422	31	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.
1423	31	it's prime
1424	31	Shrug
1425	31	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.
1426	31	Adonal Foyle's number, duh!
1427	31	People forget about the 30s and Prime numbers. At least I hope they do.
1428	31	Just a number I lik, I guess. Prime numbers are probably less popular.
1429	31	Dumb guesd
1430	31	?
1431	31	I saw it in my dreams. (I don't think that many people will participate)
1432	31	Why not
1433	31	Trying to find a number people may overlook.
1434	31	pick em all
1435	31	https://www.google.com/search?q=random+number+between+0+and+100
1436	31	Idk
1437	31	prime number
1438	31	Not math based.
1439	31	Lowest prime of relatively little interest.
1440	31	random.org
1441	31	Random guess
1442	31	Random guess!
1443	31	aa
1444	31	Random guess
1445	31	A small prime.
1446	31	Used a RNG to pick a number between 1-100
1447	31	random number generated between 10 and 50 - I figured that's about the range of solutions
1448	31	No one likes that number.
1449	31	hmm
1450	31	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.
1451	31	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.
1452	31	It was a guess
1453	32	Nobody can have this as the day of the month of their birthday.
1454	32	You had 1538 submissions for the coffee riddle. I 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. I also think many will pick prime numbers thinking those are less likely to be picked.
1455	32	Today is my 32nd birthday.
1456	32	Felt right
1457	32	Just felt right.
1458	32	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).
1459	32	Nobody picks 32 as a lucky number.
1460	32	I figured people would gravitate to prime numbers or perhaps their birth date so I picked the first number that avoided these traps.
1461	32	because you probably won't accept "bleven" (see "Nineteen Fifty-Bleven" in "Hollywood Said No!" by Bob Odenkirk & David Cross)
1462	32	seems like a good number
1463	32	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.
1464	32	Just a guess, went with a even number as I feel people in general will pick more odd numbers
1465	32	Not a birth date
1466	32	Number of my favorite baseball player growing up
1467	32	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.
1468	32	Because there aren't any birthdays on the 32nd.
1469	32	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.
1470	32	Guess
1471	32	Even, greater than 20
1472	32	all
1473	32	It's underappreciated.
1474	32	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! ;-))
1475	32	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.
1476	32	AA
1477	32	It's an educated guess based on my estimate of participants
1478	32	.
1479	32	Feeling really lucky
1480	32	I smashed the numbers on my keyboard
1481	32	Seemed like a low # that might go overlooked. Also my daddy's baseball #.
1482	33	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. That 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 :-)
1483	33	It's my favorite number, so why not
1484	33	Larry Bird
1485	33	Yup.
1486	33	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...
1487	33	Aeluromancy
1488	33	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.
1489	33	Just guessing!
1490	33	My jersey number in basketball
1491	33	Why not?
1492	33	My age, low enough to win
1493	33	I like it
1494	33	all
1495	33	Random
1496	33	aa
1497	33	I'm hoping it gets overlooked.
1498	33	a random integer between 1 and 50
1499	33	Larry Bird's Jersey Number
1500	33	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
1501	33	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
1502	33	Feels low enough to win, high enough not to be chosen by others.
1503	34	I would submit my lucky number, 17, but I think that's too low, so I'm doubling it.
1504	34	2x 17... not a real reason, I know.
1505	34	http://www.gettyimages.com/event/finals-game-6-los-angeles-lakers-v-bos-80398146?esource=SEO_GIS_CDN_Redirect#-picture-id81611994
1506	34	34
1507	34	No idea, just guessing.
1508	34	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.
1509	34	It's just an uninteresting number.
1510	34	Its a lowish number
1511	34	¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1512	34	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.
1513	34	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.
1514	34	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.
1515	34	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.
1516	34	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.
1517	34	Just trying to get lucky! ;)
1518	34	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.
1519	34	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.
1520	34	Half numerology, half inspired by the gamma distribution
1521	34	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.
1522	34	It's my lucky number.
1523	34	It is a good number.
1524	34	Because
1525	34	Took a random guess in the late 20s early 30s
1526	34	It's my favorite
1527	34	My age and pure guesswork...
1528	34	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.
1529	34	Not too low, but hopefully unique enough to be low enough.
1530	34	It just feels right
1531	34	???
1532	34	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
1533	34	Because why not?
1534	34	all
1535	34	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.
1536	34	Random pick
1537	34	aa
1538	34	Hoping for the best!
1539	34	A random low-ish number that isn't a multiple of anything useful
1540	34	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).
1541	34	hopefully greedy but not enough to be detrimental.
1542	34	An unremarkable number which hopefully no one else will pick. I expect 1-30 to be highly populated.
1543	34	I expect no one will even bother with the first 30 or so
1544	34	Kirby Puckett, duh
1545	34	Just hoping. Seems like a fairly boring, fairly low number.
1546	34	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.
1547	34	Let 'w' be the winning number. - 'w' better not be an exciting number so primes, squares, cubes are out. Even the *rather* composite-y kinds like 12 are out. - Ah, how about trying my date of birth... that would be sooo lucky!? So w>31. - Hmm.... 32 is a wild one (highly composite, 2^5, 32 Fahrenheit = 0 deg Celsius etc. etc.) - 33 is cool, very cool. It is actually also rather sexy. So, the smallest number which also happens to be a listless and boring one in my viewpoint is 34.
1548	35	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.
1549	35	Low, but not too low, non-descript (no repeats, no pattern)
1550	35	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.
1551	35	guess; looks common so less likely to be chosen
1552	35	I figure most people will pick 1, 2 etc so 35 it is
1553	35	I'm guessing there will be at least one gap in 10-100. 35 is a low, round number and may be forgotten.
1554	35	Cause all I do is win win win no matter what
1555	35	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!
1556	35	cuz
1557	35	all
1558	35	aa
1559	35	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.
1560	35	yolo
1561	36	Pick a random low number hoping no one else does.
1562	36	random(20,50) and pray
1563	36	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.
1564	36	Just a guess I hope for the best!
1565	36	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.
1566	36	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.
1567	36	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.
1568	36	good luck
1569	36	Why not?
1570	36	Because it's one less than 37
1571	36	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.
1572	36	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.
1573	36	36 is seems high enough. IDK
1574	36	I figured a few hundred entries with about 10 people picking each of the lower numbers
1575	36	idk
1576	36	Why not
1577	36	all
1578	36	random guess
1579	36	aa
1580	36	Ran random number generator from 1 to 100, hoped to get lucky.
1581	36	I like multiples of 9
1582	36	How does one win the Swedish lottery (one name for this game) except by guessing a number and getting lucky? https://youtu.be/62P3mZBkb8E?t=4m10s
1583	36	Lucky(?) guess
1584	37	Luck
1585	37	I like 37
1586	37	Honestly, it was the lowest dis-interesting number I could think of.
1587	37	I'm just hoping for the best.
1588	37	Its a good number
1589	37	guess
1590	37	cause I like it
1591	37	I've always liked the number, and given the number of entries is likely around 500 or so, it might just win.
1592	37	It's a number I like that isn't too high or too common.
1593	37	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.
1594	37	A prime number comprised of prime numbers (3 & 7)
1595	37	zero reason other than love for the number 37.
1596	37	First prime after 1-31 (possible birthdays)
1597	37	Prime number
1598	37	My favourite number - first irregular prime
1599	37	random number generator popped this number out
1600	37	No reason
1601	37	Randomly selected number that hopefully no one else would choose to pick
1602	37	Lucky number
1603	37	Seemed like the most random number at the time
1604	37	First number that popped into my head
1605	37	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.
1606	37	Guess
1607	37	FTW!
1608	37	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.
1609	37	I chose 37 as the first prime number above the birthday numbers. Felt pretty good.
1610	37	it feels right!
1611	37	Very random guess that no one will pick 37
1612	37	random guess.
1613	37	guessed
1614	37	No reason, just felt like it.
1615	37	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.
1616	37	Random guess. Why not?
1617	37	expecting hundreds of responses and going with a prime number thinking it will be less likely to be a popular choice
1618	37	Optimism.
1619	37	why not
1620	37	Lucky number.
1621	37	It's my favorite number (love those primes)
1622	37	Random enough someone else might not choose it
1623	37	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. That said, maybe based on this smart audience outsmarting itself, it will be something like 2.
1624	37	It's ugly.
1625	37	Prime number
1626	37	¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1627	37	I guessed my favorite prime number
1628	37	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.
1629	37	Guessing there will be enough people to rule out single digits and the teens, I like prime numbers so what the heck: 37
1630	37	A wild guess, in the hope that 1-36 would either be chosen repeatedly or ignored.
1631	37	Monty Python
1632	37	I think a lot will load up under 30. I think higher than 40 will be too high.
1633	37	I guessed based on the only available information 1382 readers submitted to a previous riddle (battle for riddler nation)
1634	37	It just feels right (plus, it's prime, and I❤️primes)
1635	37	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.
1636	37	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 ...
1637	37	Lucky guess
1638	37	Expecting most people to pick much higher.
1639	37	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.
1640	37	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.
1641	37	I chose a relatively low prime number, because I don't think that prime numbers are as popular.
1642	37	Why would anyone pick 37
1643	37	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.
1644	37	37
1645	37	Because it's my favorite number.
1646	37	I guessed?
1647	37	Thousands may play but I'm hoping I'm one step ahead of them
1648	37	Whimsy
1649	37	Because it's not a number people will think of easily.
1650	37	Just seems like a low, random number.
1651	37	A prime number and also my age - as good a choice as any
1652	37	I like 37. Seems like a good choice
1653	37	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.
1654	37	3 and 7 are uncommon
1655	37	Riddler Nation has enough saboteurs to keep 1 from being an option. The singleton will be some anamoly in the 30s.
1656	37	all
1657	37	No one likes it
1658	37	Shot in the dark. Obviously 1-10 are unlikely to appear just once.
1659	37	Kind of an odd number.
1660	37	Thought about going higher but think the winning number will not be much higher than 30
1661	37	Riddler Nation has enough saboteurs to keep 1 from being an option. The singleton will be some anamoly in the 30s.
1662	37	Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it's prime I guess
1663	37	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
1664	37	It's a joke from my favorite movie
1665	37	big number
1666	37	high school football number
1667	37	There is no optimal selection so I picked a number and am hoping I'll get lucky
1668	37	Just a hunch.
1669	37	I don't know.
1670	37	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.
1671	37	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.
1672	37	I just guessed
1673	37	Feels right
1674	37	I figure all the numbers 1-20 will be taken, so I simply picked a random prime in the high to mid 30s
1675	37	Wanted to be out of the range of days in a month and commonly used sports Jersey numbers
1676	37	It's the lowest prime number that doesn't fall on a day of the month (birthdays and such)
1677	37	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.
1678	37	Lowest prime greater than 31
1679	37	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.
1680	37	Beyond the roulette table based lucky numbers people may have.
1681	37	37 is my favorite prime
1682	37	=)
1683	37	Prime numbers rule
1684	38	Lucky guess
1685	38	Optional stopping problems tell you to pick the next option after 37%, so I picked 38.
1686	38	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.
1687	38	.
1688	38	It just feels right
1689	38	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.
1690	38	Just a low number that isn't necessarily common.
1691	38	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.
1692	38	One more than 37 (the most random number between 1 and 100 ... :-)
1693	38	It's not that interesting
1694	38	just picked one.
1695	38	I picked a random number from 1 to 40 (expect it to be relatively low).
1696	38	no particular reason
1697	38	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.
1698	38	No reason
1699	38	shrug
1700	38	My goal was to pick a randomly low number that was also high enough that someone probably wouldn't guess it.
1701	38	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.
1702	38	People are gonna try and be too clever and 37 will be a popular flippant guess.
1703	38	intuition :)
1704	38	Common number but not the most common.
1705	38	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.
1706	38	37 is a commonly selected seemingly random number, reducing the odds of a 38
1707	38	Guesstimate of other answers and how many replies you get
1708	38	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
1709	38	It's a reasonable small number that isn't particularly notable
1710	38	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.
1711	38	Wild ass guess then plus 1 to make it even
1712	38	all
1713	38	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
1714	38	Total guess
1715	38	aa
1716	38	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.
1717	38	Perfect number
1718	38	Non-prime number, fairly low but not too low.
1719	38	No clue how many entries you get for something like this. Just a guess.
1720	38	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!
1721	38	No
1722	38	Instinct
1723	39	It felt good
1724	39	I wanted to pick a prime number that had a 9 in it.
1725	39	3 less than 42
1726	39	GIven some assumptions of the number of submissions, combined with a guessed distribution of said submissions
1727	39	My lucky number
1728	39	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!
1729	39	No reason
1730	39	Its just a guess
1731	39	Large dartboard.
1732	39	I just picked a random number from 1 to 50. I figured the smallest number wouldn't be that big.
1733	39	meh
1734	39	Random guess
1735	39	Random guess
1736	39	Probably too small but hoping it's a random enough number to work.
1737	39	Hasek
1738	39	💁🏻‍♂️
1739	39	all
1740	39	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.
1741	39	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.
1742	39	aa
1743	39	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.
1744	39	Because 40 is too high.
1745	39	Eh.
1746	39	seems random enough
1747	39	Semi-random
1748	39	Without knowing the amount of submissions with any accuracy, I had to go on my gut feeling.
1749	39	random
1750	40	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.
1751	40	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)
1752	40	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)
1753	40	Figure almost everyone is going guess an odd number, and there's probably going to be a lot of guesses. I dunno
1754	40	It seems large enough that it won't be drowned in a sea of other pickers, and it's anti-pseudo-random.
1755	40	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
1756	40	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.
1757	40	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.
1758	40	I don't know
1759	40	Not too high, not too low
1760	40	I assumed there will be about 1,000 submission, since that's how many people submitted for the battle a couple months ago. 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.
1761	40	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!
1762	40	Costless to submit an answer so I used a random number generator
1763	40	I think people will tend towards odd numbers so a nice round number like 40 might be avoided.
1764	40	all
1765	40	Guess.
1766	40	namaste
1767	40	...
1768	40	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.
1769	40	Irregular numbers are more popular.
1770	41	Because why not?
1771	41	one less than 42, the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
1772	41	n/a
1773	41	Some suppositions entirely unsupported by evidence: * All the very low numbers are likely to get taken, even if most people will avoid them. Anything less than 20 is clearly out. * Anything over 100 is, in my estimation, unlikely to be the lowest. * I believe the winning submission will be somewhere in the 40's or 50's. * 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. *Many of your readers are likely to be nerds (I count myself among them). * Nerds love Douglas Adams *Therefore, 42 will be very popular. *This will make 42 an "attractor" - most people guessing non-round numbers in the 40's will gravitate to 42. * 41 is both small enough to win and in the protective "shadow" of two nearby attractors. * I mean, why not?
1774	41	Just trying my favorite number. 41 starts a chain of 40 prime numbers: 41, 43, 47, 53, etc FORTY is the only number spelled alphabetical order, while ONE is the only number in reverse alphabetical order.
1775	41	No 0, 2, 3, 5, or 7
1776	41	just a hunch!
1777	41	cat chose 42
1778	41	It's a special number to me
1779	41	Who would pick 41?
1780	41	It just spoke to me
1781	41	High enough to avoid birth dates, no curving digits to lure people in to choosing it. Plus it's a prime.
1782	41	rare number to choose and elevated high enough to avoid simplistic answer choices
1783	41	its a stupid number, often overlooked. i bet a bunch of ppl choose 39 (which is a much better number).
1784	41	Seems like a good number
1785	41	42 is the answer but everyone knows that
1786	41	I chose 41 because it is one less than 42, which I predict might be some sort of strange attractor for this exercise.
1787	41	I don't know
1788	41	my favorite number
1789	41	41
1790	41	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.
1791	41	Everyone's gonna pick 42
1792	41	A guess!
1793	41	Lower than 42
1794	41	dirt bike racing number growing up
1795	41	Shot in the dark
1796	41	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.
1797	41	41 is one below the meaning of life, which I imagine many people will pick.
1798	41	all
1799	41	It seemed right.
1800	41	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.
1801	41	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.
1802	41	aa
1803	41	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.
1804	41	I like that number
1805	41	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.
1806	41	Arbitrary
1807	41	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.
1808	41	=42-1
1809	41	41
1810	41	Dave Matthews Band song from my childhood (i.e., the song is titled "#41"). Also, one digit short of the Universal Answer.
1811	41	Douglas Adams' over-popularized answer of 42 for everything makes me inclined to squeeze in under this without being too small to be popular.
1812	41	It is one less than 42
1813	41	Idk lolz
1814	42	Magic.
1815	42	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.
1816	42	Mo
1817	42	Just a guess
1818	42	I guessed?
1819	42	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.
1820	42	Meaning of life
1821	42	Pretty much random.
1822	42	It's the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
1823	42	That's the answer for life, the universe, and everything.
1824	42	I like the number 42
1825	42	It's the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
1826	42	why not
1827	42	Just a wild guess
1828	42	all
1829	42	It is the ultimate answer, after all. If this is not the ultimate question it still seems a good hedge
1830	42	Because Marlin found Nemo at 42 Wallaby Way.
1831	42	aa
1832	42	The Answer to life, the universe and everything
1833	43	One higher than the best number (42)
1834	43	odd prime number
1835	43	i have no doubt someone submitted 42, so I am employing "The Price is Right" asshole strategy
1836	43	I feel good about it
1837	43	I once had a conversation with my high school friend. "What's the most bring number between 1-100?" "43" he said. "Wow, that's weird. That's the exact number I was thinking of too."
1838	43	Random guess
1839	43	43 or 23 seemed good candidates. Though I was tempted to take 1.
1840	43	Not too low, not too high. With luck, it's just right.
1841	43	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).
1842	43	42 is the meaning of life.
1843	43	This was my jersey number in middle school basketball
1844	43	1,2,3,...,43
1845	43	Low but not too low assuming thousands of entries
1846	43	Random number generator
1847	43	random choice
1848	43	It's the first integer that occurred to me.
1849	43	Just because.
1850	43	Mostly intuition.
1851	43	Small enough to have a chance... large enough that I'm hoping there's no duplicates
1852	43	Just a guess. Probably too low
1853	43	Seems like a decently high enough number that the trolls won't spam up to this, and is not a multiple of 5.
1854	43	It's my favorite number and I'm hoping to get lucky!
1855	43	feels good
1856	43	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.
1857	43	im jackie robinson's +1
1858	43	Lucky number
1859	43	I figured lots of folks would submit 42, the ultimate answer. So, 1 more than that.
1860	43	Randomly selected 2 digit prime number
1861	43	I'm just trying to find the sweet spot and I think it's around 40-50
1862	43	Lucky #
1863	43	A little more than the answer.
1864	43	Seems weird
1865	43	Not too big, assuming people like even numbers more.
1866	43	Cause
1867	43	all
1868	43	It felt like the lowest common number people will select
1869	43	aa
1870	43	42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything and I knew some people would pick that so I went one higher
1871	43	42+1
1872	43	42+1
1873	43	Hail Mary! Better to have a chance of winning then a safe number like 319711 that will likely be unique but not low.
1874	43	prime-ish
1875	43	¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1876	43	No deep reasoning was used here. I just picked a prime that wasn't too small.
1877	44	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).
1878	44	No work
1879	44	Semirandom choice.
1880	44	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?!?
1881	44	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.
1882	44	Srsly?
1883	44	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
1884	44	Seems about right!
1885	44	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
1886	44	Game theory among nerds.
1887	44	Believe in the 4ce
1888	44	all
1889	44	all
1890	44	Guessed
1891	44	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. 2) 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. 3) Just to fudge a bit, I'll pick 44. (42 seems too cliche a pick. 38 might be a possibility.)
1892	44	aa
1893	44	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.
1894	44	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.
1895	44	I'm just a simple man who likes the number 44.
1896	44	Seemed unlikely to be chosen?
1897	44	It was the second-hand on my watch when I looked
1898	44	It's low but not too low. It repeats; perhaps people will avoid it.
1899	44	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.
1900	44	Um guess ed
1901	44	Cultural dislike of the number.
1902	44	Medium low number with no very special properties
1903	44	Out of a hat
1904	45	it's sorta low
1905	45	Donald Trump is the 45th president; I think readers of this website will have a natural aversion to that number.
1906	45	Just a guess.
1907	45	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.
1908	45	Multiples of 5 often aren't popular.
1909	45	I just chose it.
1910	45	all
1911	45	Guessed
1912	45	aa
1913	45	Intuition
1914	45	I wanted to contribute to the volume of answers so the results would be more interesting
1915	45	There is no strictly dominant strategy so I am just guessing
1916	45	Surprise motherfuckers
1917	45	Just guessed a number!
1918	46	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.
1919	46	47 is the most frequently occurring number in the universe, thus, people are unlikely to choice a number close to it.
1920	46	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. 😃
1921	46	Low side, but maybe less common?
1922	46	fairly low even number.
1923	46	It's a normal not too low not too high number.
1924	46	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.
1925	46	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. ...39 - Too low 40 - x10 41 - Prime 42 - That's in that movie 43 - Prime 44 - Twin digits 45 - x5 46 - Chromosomes, Japanese syllabaries, prime x2 47 - Prime 48 - 4 dozen 49 - Perfect square 50... - Too high
1926	46	I like the number 47, but 46 (47-1) has a better chance of winning.
1927	46	Pulled out of thin air.
1928	46	Not prime, not interesting and not 42.
1929	46	Im knitting a hat with that many stitches. It seems right.
1930	46	guesswork
1931	46	It's one less than 47
1932	46	46 is not too small, not to big & feels so bland that no one would pick it
1933	46	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)
1934	46	Felt right
1935	46	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.
1936	46	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.
1937	46	Good old fashioned guesswork
1938	46	Guessing
1939	46	all
1940	46	I don't know. It just came to me.
1941	46	Not too low, a little bit boring
1942	46	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.
1943	46	aa
1944	47	Lucky Number
1945	47	This is the number of the great Johnny Cueto, the most criminally underrated pitcher in baseball and master of the shimmy-pitch.
1946	47	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.
1947	47	random guess
1948	47	Because when my wife is doing a Sudoku I always say 47 to "annoy" her
1949	47	guessed
1950	47	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
1951	47	The answer to the universe
1952	47	not a whole lot of thought here
1953	47	Just kind of came up with a number. Thought about going a bit lower or higher and eventually settled on 47.
1954	47	Generated a random number between 1-150
1955	47	Complete Guesswork
1956	47	No real reason
1957	47	Sons birthday
1958	47	Low
1959	47	It's the winner
1960	47	No one likes prime numbers
1961	47	My son says that 47 is a cute number.
1962	47	It's an unassuming prime that deserves some attention
1963	47	Second guess
1964	47	*shrug*
1965	47	Careful consideration
1966	47	all
1967	47	aa
1968	47	Gotta just hope nobody else picks it
1969	47	This will be the lowest unique positive integer
1970	47	Figured twitch ~10,000 entries that 47 would be in the 6 sigma range.
1971	47	Prime, not birth day, less likely birth year than higher numbers
1972	47	There are only 46 other living human beings
1973	47	It's a prime number that's not too small. People are often averse to picking weird prime numbers like 47.
1974	47	Gotta just hope nobody else picks it
1975	48	There is no strategy to this problem besides choosing a relatively low problem, without knowing the number of participants in the problem.
1976	48	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.
1977	48	This is 1 more than the most commonly occurring random (non-random?) number, 47, and thus is more likely to be unique.
1978	48	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.
1979	48	all
1980	48	aa
1981	48	Random number selected between 15 and 80.
1982	48	Guess
1983	48	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. Below 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. I 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.
1984	49	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.
1985	49	It felt right.
1986	49	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.
1987	49	I consulted the tea leaves.
1988	49	No work, just my favorite number
1989	49	7^2
1990	49	Based on demographics of expected guessers
1991	49	high but not too high.
1992	49	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.
1993	49	all
1994	49	all
1995	49	aa
1996	49	just a guess
1997	49	seven squared
1998	50	Suspicion that people will avoid obvious and round numbers.
1999	50	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.
2000	50	An educated guess.
2001	50	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.
2002	50	all
2003	50	Why not?
2004	50	aa
2005	51	Feelin it
2006	51	Pure and unabashed guesswork.
2007	51	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.
2008	51	Nobody's going to choose Lofa Tatupu's number
2009	51	It's my favorite prime-looking non-prime number. And seemed about accurate for the number of people who respond.
2010	51	I always forget the 51 is divisible by 3
2011	51	49 is a number that I always forget about. Hopefully everybody else does, too.
2012	51	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 ;)
2013	51	3*17, figured it'd be worth a shot
2014	51	all
2015	51	aa
2016	51	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).
2017	51	seemed good
2018	51	Nothing special about this number
2019	52	I'm just hoping for the best.
2020	52	Just a guess!
2021	52	sounds like a good number?
2022	52	Well, I was going to say 53, but that seemed like 1 too many.
2023	52	It's one less than the first prime number greater than 50
2024	52	Just a number. No reason.
2025	52	felt good
2026	52	It's my favorite number.
2027	52	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.
2028	52	Third untouchable number
2029	52	Just a guess
2030	52	Who knows
2031	52	all
2032	52	guess
2033	52	Call it a hunch
2034	52	AA
2035	52	None in particular
2036	52	Just hoping everyone forgets about the boring numbers
2037	52	Random
2038	53	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.
2039	53	Assuming most people will be under 50, so I chose a random number between 50 and 60
2040	53	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.
2041	53	the number of seconds on the clock as I write this
2042	53	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.
2043	53	guess based on the expected number of submissions and general shape of the distribution of others' guesses
2044	53	It's a guess.
2045	53	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.
2046	53	53 is unsexy and has low chances of being picked if the number of participants is low enough.
2047	53	It feels high enough to be uncommon, but low enough that it still has a chance to win.
2048	53	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.
2049	53	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
2050	53	'Twas my basketball number at St. Norbert College
2051	53	n/a yolo
2052	53	x <-abs(rnorm(1))*500
2053	53	Randomly, plus odd number
2054	53	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.
2055	53	Prime number with an idea that at least the first 50 numbers will be covered.
2056	53	Fairly random
2057	53	It just feels right.
2058	53	all
2059	53	None
2060	53	AA
2061	53	People think in even numbers
2062	53	Tried to pick a number people don't like
2063	53	I doubt many people are submitting numbers so I figured it would be in double digits. Random number generator.
2064	53	Because
2065	53	Ducy
2066	53	Just hoping I can slip in something under 100 that won't also get picked.
2067	53	feeling lucky
2068	53	Odd number, can't be a birthday
2069	54	I chose 54 because I am certain it will be the correct answer. Unless it's not.
2070	54	Probably too low, but why not?
2071	54	I suspect that odd numbers will more popular and the 50s seem like a good range.
2072	54	Because
2073	54	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.
2074	54	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
2075	54	X
2076	54	hopefully i can be the lucky one who is the only one who picks this number!
2077	54	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.
2078	54	all
2079	54	Completely arbitrary guess
2080	54	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. x <- 0 y <- 0 sum <- 0 for(count in 1:5000) { x[count] = 1/count if(count > 1){ y[count] = y[count-1] + x[count] } else { y[count] = x[count] } sum = sum + x[count] } pick <- 0 for(numPeople in 1:2300) { rand <- runif(1,0,sum) pick[numPeople] <- min(which(y > rand)) } i <- 1 winner <- 1 while(1) { temp <- which(pick == winner) if(length(temp) == 1) { break } winner = winner + 1 } winner
2081	54	AA
2082	54	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.
2083	54	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. I couldn't think of an effective way to extrapolate this strategy to larger numbers, so I rolled a virtual 343-sided die.
2084	54	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). Pretty 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.
2085	54	It's my favorite number!
2086	55	54 seems a touch too small, and I can't count to 56.
2087	55	Just guessing
2088	55	im smart
2089	55	Not too high, not too low. Not a little bit above 100 (likely people will pick it).
2090	55	sqrt(3000)
2091	55	I picked a random number, assuming the lowest unique integer would be double digits. Fingers crossed nobody else picks it.
2092	55	all
2093	55	Thinking one step ahead: everyone will pick an obscure number, so I'll pick a relatively non-osbscure one.
2094	55	Its pretty small but not THAT pretty small
2095	55	AA
2096	55	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.
2097	56	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.
2098	56	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.
2099	56	Take a well known, small prime number[1] and subtract 1. [1]https://mfluch.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/57-the-grothendieck-prime/
2100	56	First let's see what game theory says we should do. Assume 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. What 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 p(1) = ln(N)/N The total chance that someone wins with this strategy is (number who try it)*(chance to win) = N p(1) * (1/N) = p(1) and the chance that no-one wins with this strategy is therefore (1-p(1)). Similarly 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 Exp[-N p(m)](1-p(1)-...-p(m)) = 1/N or dp/dm e^(Np(m)) = -p(m) I don't quite see how to solve this but it's clear that the typical m-value is of order N/ln(N) If I assume 1000 players then the typical number to pick is in the 150 range. But 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. So I tried 56. We'll see how it goes.
2101	56	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.
2102	56	5*6 = 30
2103	56	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.
2104	56	Not too high
2105	56	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)
2106	56	Pure guesswork
2107	56	Not too high, not too low :)
2108	56	There can't be *that* many nerds playing this game.
2109	56	all
2110	56	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.
2111	56	that's why
2112	56	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.)
2113	56	Uniqueness is my main concern. I'm going the conservative route with a high number. I think the winner will be less than 100
2114	56	aa
2115	57	People tend towards even numbers? People will guess higher than 100 or lower than 50? Man... I don't know.
2116	57	Guessed
2117	57	For Grothendieck
2118	57	Tried to think a number that wouldn't have much meaning and wouldn't be too low that others would pick it
2119	57	Just a hunch
2120	57	Just a guess
2121	57	Not too low.
2122	57	why not
2123	57	seems low, but not so low that everyone will choose it
2124	57	Just hoping for the best
2125	57	My daughter just told me it's her least favorite number. It just might be low enough to win.
2126	57	all
2127	57	I just randomly picked grothendieck’s prime
2128	57	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).
2129	57	No particular reason
2130	57	aa
2131	57	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.
2132	57	Think about it!?
2133	57	Cause it's a stupid fucking number
2134	58	Why not?
2135	58	70 - 12 = 58
2136	58	Because it's the right answer
2137	58	Seems like a good number. Not prime, but doesn’t have too many factors either.
2138	58	Smallest doubled prime over 50
2139	58	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.
2140	58	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.
2141	58	It is the most anonymous number below 100
2142	58	Seems like an unlikely number, just picked almost out of a hat. Seriously, I just rolled a pair of dice twice.
2143	58	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.
2144	58	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.
2145	58	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).
2146	58	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. There will assuredly be those who pick nice numbers; but there will be a lot who pick uncomfortable numbers on that logic. So 58 - not too nice, not too messy, not too low, not too high (I hope).
2147	58	all
2148	58	It's a random number that's not prime (which I assume will be everyone's strategy)
2149	58	aa
2150	58	a random guess
2151	58	felt like it
2152	59	luck
2153	59	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.
2154	59	I chose it as not-commonly selected as a number and is low enough to possibly win.
2155	59	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.
2156	59	59 is not a round number, nor is it a number associated with anything notorious.
2157	59	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.
2158	59	Because why not.
2159	59	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.
2160	59	I thought of a number I didn't like.
2161	59	all
2162	59	all
2163	59	aa
2164	59	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.
2165	59	why not
2166	60	Hoping for luck
2167	60	It's pretty clear that it's 60
2168	60	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).
2169	60	Absolutely arbitrary.
2170	60	It's just a solid relatively low number. Being divisible by [1,6] is pretty neat.
2171	60	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.
2172	60	all
2173	60	aa
2174	60	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.
2175	60	60
2176	61	I felt the number must be somewhat high, given the amount of people submitting answers, and 61 just felt like a petty unique number.
2177	61	Who the f*** cares about 61?
2178	61	Wouldn't you like to know
2179	61	go low!
2180	61	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.
2181	61	That's the page number I'm on for the book I stopped reading to answer this.
2182	61	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). If 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 product(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). Number 61 is reasonable in that the probability is close to maximal, though the probability that this entry wins is only roughly 2/300. Python 3 code for estimated winning probability: def winprob(N,M,n): k = 1/sum(1/n for n in range(1,M+1)) prob = (1-k/n)**N for m in range(1,n): prob *= 1-N*k/m*(1-k/m)**(N-1) return prob
2183	61	Seems high enough but not too high
2184	61	Cuz it's the best
2185	61	Is there really supposed to be any logic to this?
2186	61	all
2187	61	Thought odd has to be more likely and also prime.
2188	61	It seems like a number that would not be chosen a lot.
2189	61	not sure
2190	61	aa
2191	61	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.
2192	61	Has to be fairly large. Few thousand submissions.
2193	61	Based on loose assumptions on how many participants there will be and how they will choose their numbers. The "choose" model favors smaller integers...
2194	61	just a guess, aren't they all?
2195	61	I generated it on random.org
2196	61	It's a pretty good number!
2197	61	shruggie
2198	62	Depends on how many people respond
2199	62	I picked a number that's low but not too low!
2200	62	No reason
2201	62	Probably too low... But a pretty unremarkable number.
2202	62	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.
2203	62	Just hoping no one else chooses 62 I guess
2204	62	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.
2205	62	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.
2206	62	It is even
2207	62	Shot in the dark
2208	62	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.
2209	62	I asked a coworker for a number between 1 and 200 and that's what they gave me.
2210	62	Random
2211	62	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.
2212	62	all
2213	62	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.
2214	62	Why not
2215	62	aa
2216	62	cus
2217	62	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.
2218	62	Nobody chooses 62
2219	62	Just cause
2220	63	who even knows
2221	63	Gut Feeling
2222	63	I used my Masters in Analytics to pull a number out of the air.
2223	63	No good reason
2224	63	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.
2225	63	Year of my birth
2226	63	Call it a hunch
2227	63	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. Considering 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). What fun! Cheers!
2228	63	63 seems to be a number without many interesting properties that may cause people to pick it.
2229	63	Intuition
2230	63	63
2231	63	all
2232	63	aa
2233	63	Just a guess
2234	63	far enough from 1 but not too much
2235	64	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. However 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.
2236	64	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...
2237	64	Because 64
2238	64	all
2239	64	just a guess
2240	64	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.
2241	64	aa
2242	64	Hi Abi
2243	64	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.
2244	65	It just kinda felt right at this exact moment. Not too low, not too high.
2245	65	all
2246	65	aa
2247	65	Not too small
2248	65	I just guessed
2249	66	Even numbers are rarely considered 'random'. Especially with repetition involved.
2250	66	Element 66 Dysprosium is my go-to number for random stuff
2251	66	Random number between 1 and 100
2252	66	Beats me.
2253	66	Random guess
2254	66	I picked a 2-digit number using a random number generator.
2255	66	all
2256	66	doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122923 + some fiddling with the data.
2257	66	Assuming people stack the low numbers
2258	66	aa
2259	66	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.
2260	67	Stab in the dark.
2261	67	I estimated that this is the point where people will start skipping over numbers.
2262	67	Not too low. Not too high.
2263	67	all
2264	67	It can't be a very low number, but might be a higher, but not common number
2265	67	A couple lower than 69 😂
2266	67	aa
2267	67	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.
2268	67	Its high enough where it shouldnt be selected but still low enough to win
2269	67	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).
2270	67	¯\_(ツ)_/¯
2271	67	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.
2272	67	https://frankzliu.com/the-riddler-2017-07-28-edition/
2273	67	Nobody likes the number 67
2274	67	Past experience
2275	68	It's really just guessing, isn't it?
2276	68	Random pick
2277	68	I rolled a d100 and got 68
2278	68	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.
2279	68	Really counting on people choosing 69
2280	68	One less than 69
2281	68	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.
2282	68	It is not prime, and it seems fairly high enough to possibly be unique while still low enough to win.
2283	68	1 less than the children who will choose 69 :-)
2284	68	It just feels right.
2285	68	Teams in the NCAA tournament
2286	68	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. I am most interested in the lowest integer that *nobody* submits.
2287	68	Guesswork
2288	68	all
2289	68	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.
2290	68	aa
2291	68	No rhyme or reason
2292	68	I didn't think anyone else would submit it
2293	69	I just like it
2294	69	69
2295	69	Reverse Phycology ( lol )
2296	69	nice
2297	69	Nice
2298	69	all
2299	69	Gronk's favorite number
2300	69	Guess
2301	69	funny number
2302	69	Isn't it obvious?
2303	70	People usually choose good factorable numbers, so they won't choose one because they think others will.
2304	70	Random number generator between 50 and 100 (arbitrary endpoints that seem about right)
2305	70	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.
2306	70	IDK, seems reasonable?
2307	70	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.
2308	70	69+1
2309	70	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.
2310	70	WAG
2311	70	Chosen at random :)
2312	70	No work done - I am lazy
2313	70	all
2314	70	all
2315	71	I guessed
2316	71	Seemed like a unique number.
2317	71	Aliens
2318	71	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.
2319	71	Why not, seemed like a nice number (and prime!) :)
2320	71	An uninteresting low number
2321	71	Why not
2322	71	Random number...
2323	71	71 is odd and a prime
2324	71	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.
2325	71	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.
2326	71	It's a nice number
2327	71	its so close to 69 that most people in the vicinity will just choose 69
2328	71	I dunno
2329	71	Just a random low guess
2330	71	Just strange enough to maybe be unique!
2331	71	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?
2332	71	I do what the voices tell me.
2333	71	Chose a prime number and a bit high as people would rarely choose such a number
2334	71	Pulled it out of thin air
2335	71	all
2336	71	?
2337	71	I innately knew the answer.
2338	71	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.
2339	71	Probably going to be a lot of trolls who fill up all the low numbers, so just pick a number and pray.
2340	71	lucky number
2341	71	I picked a random number between 1 and 100 (well, the first time it gave 1 and I rejected that.)
2342	71	Random guess
2343	71	Picked a random number from 1 to 100. that's it.
2344	71	Looking for a number that does not stand out
2345	71	Guessed
2346	71	Guess.
2347	71	Lutetium (LU) is both my favorite element and my wife's maiden name
2348	71	Random Number Generator ftw
2349	71	Just a hunch
2350	72	Random
2351	72	Sandwiched between to delicious primes
2352	72	Hoping to sneak a low number in!
2353	72	Just throwing out a guess.
2354	72	Pure guessing
2355	72	First number that popped into my head after I read the prompt.
2356	72	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 :-)
2357	72	Feels just random enough and just small enough
2358	72	Assumes Riddler readers will submit primes, so I wanted a seriously composite number!
2359	72	It's a good number
2360	72	all
2361	72	all
2362	72	Even number not to small, not to big
2363	72	A guess. I figured many people will chose a number over 100
2364	72	My lucky number
2365	73	Random guess
2366	73	Aribtrarily not small, but not too large
2367	73	Why not?
2368	73	Because it is a prime, emirp, star number, and a palindrome in octal/binary. Essentially it is just the best.
2369	73	Mmmm
2370	73	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).
2371	73	Just a guess
2372	73	Picked out of thin air
2373	73	Figured at some point people would give up on numbers below 100 and try to be smart with higher numbers.
2374	73	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.
2375	73	Prime
2376	73	just a guess
2377	73	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.
2378	73	it's a number?
2379	73	Seems like an arbitrary number so maybe others won't pick it
2380	73	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.
2381	73	Gut feeling, but decided odd number has a better chance of winning (probably succumbing to groupthink and failing miserably in process)
2382	73	Seems high enough without being to popular
2383	73	it's a cool number!!
2384	73	all
2385	73	I wanted an obscure two digit number know lots of people would pick very low numbers.
2386	73	It's my favorite number, and one not usually picked for, really, anything.
2387	73	I totally guessed
2388	73	I looked at a list of prime numbers and selected an non-obvious choice.
2389	73	Kind of a random number, and it is prime. Thought the number was just high enough to be unique.
2390	73	I went largely on instinct
2391	73	Theoretical answer is infinite, but reality is different. It is the opposite of the famous Keynes problem.
2392	73	Why not?
2393	73	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).
2394	73	no body likes 73, I think it needs some love
2395	73	It's not a number people really think of often
2396	73	David Blaine once said that 37 is the most commonly-selected two-digit number between 0 and 100.
2397	73	Prime numbers are less thought of.
2398	73	yes
2399	73	Sincerely a guess, but I'm expecting a relatively steep drop-off in number choices and opted for a prime number for flare.
2400	74	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.
2401	74	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.
2402	74	My lucky number!
2403	74	No
2404	74	guess
2405	74	Because it seems reasonable
2406	74	It might work
2407	74	Common but not the most common.
2408	74	It looked nice.
2409	74	all
2410	74	Random number between 1 and 150, rolled a few times until I got one I liked.
2411	74	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.
2412	75	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.
2413	75	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.
2414	75	all
2415	76	I hope no one else picks this.
2416	76	Not too low, not a number commonly associated with something else, but not unreasonably high.
2417	76	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.
2418	76	I have no idea how to guess what other people will be entering, so I am just making a random guess.
2419	76	Because
2420	76	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.
2421	76	all
2422	76	Arbitrary
2423	76	:drunk_smiley_face:
2424	77	Meh. Showing work is overrated.
2425	77	Shot in the dark.
2426	77	Hide 68, 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 I 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.
2427	77	Guess
2428	77	all
2429	77	I guessed
2430	77	Just a hunch...
2431	77	guess
2432	78	I picked a number
2433	78	Whimsy
2434	78	Science!
2435	78	idk
2436	78	Not too low, not too high, just right
2437	78	all
2438	78	Used a random number generator to pick a 2-digit number
2439	78	i don't know
2440	78	Many, many low numbers will be chosen. Most will not be unique.
2441	78	Figured people might forget about that one
2442	78	No
2443	78	A magician never reveals his secrets.
2444	79	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.
2445	79	random guess!
2446	79	It's a prime number greater than 50, below 100
2447	79	79
2448	79	all
2449	79	I assumed people would work through 1-50 pretty quickly, so I tried to think of a number that I would think of last.
2450	80	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.
2451	80	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.
2452	80	random guess
2453	80	The stars told me to
2454	80	all
2455	80	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.
2456	80	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.
2457	81	Best guess
2458	81	Seems like a good number to submit
2459	81	2-digit # has better chance. 80s might get overlooked, if I'm lucky. 80 is too obvious.
2460	81	all
2461	81	all
2462	81	Seems it's the "sweet spot"; besides, it's 9², and the number 9 has some intriguing properties in our decimal counting system.
2463	82	Going by the pareto distribution I would guess numbers with high leading digits would be less common answers. Plus 82 is neither prime nor well divisible so it isn't that interesting a number
2464	82	Lot of numbers out there.
2465	82	Primes are obvious, high even numbers maybe not so much?
2466	82	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.
2467	82	Just felt right
2468	82	all
2469	82	Seems about the right range
2470	82	Go small or go home
2471	83	Feels like crumby number. Without knowing our sample size it's hard to know how high to go.
2472	83	Random Guess
2473	83	I'd prefer not....that's how I managed to find a unique answer
2474	83	Randomness
2475	83	Random!
2476	83	randomly
2477	83	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.
2478	83	all
2479	83	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.
2480	83	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.
2481	84	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. So 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.). Then, 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.
2482	84	It's small, but not THAT small
2483	84	Boring but not too boring. If I lose it will be the other guys' fault.
2484	84	Ha. Antonio Brown's jersey number. Also, I kinda expect people to go for primes/avoid round numbers.
2485	84	Not too high, not too weird (assuming people go for weird).
2486	84	It came to me in a dream.
2487	84	all
2488	84	People avoid even numbers. Assumed that 3-digits is too many.
2489	85	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
2490	85	all
2491	86	it felt right
2492	86	The number isn't prime, and seems sufficiently large.
2493	86	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.
2494	86	it's less than 100, it's bigger than 50, and it doesn't have a "7" in it.
2495	86	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.
2496	86	Guess
2497	86	86
2498	86	all
2499	86	Lucky guess...
2500	86	Just a guess...

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