How Lowball works

A twice-a-day prediction puzzle — rounds close at 8 AM and 8 PM Eastern. Pick a number. The lowest one nobody else also picked wins.

The rules in detail

1. One pick per player, per round. Rounds run every 12 hours, closing at 8 AM and 8 PM Eastern. You can change your pick any time before the round closes — only your last pick counts.
2. Pick any integer from 1 up to the round's ceiling. The ceiling grows as more players join, so the range is wider on busier days. The pick widget shows the current ceiling in real time.
3. At 8 AM / 8 PM ET the round closes. New picks are blocked. The system reads every player's final pick.
4. Eliminate duplicates. Every number that more than one person picked gets removed entirely. (If three players all picked 5, none of them are eligible to win — the number 5 just disappears.)
5. The smallest remaining number wins. That number's owner gets the round's token pot.
6. If no numbers remain (every pick collided with another pick), nobody wins. The pot rolls over to the next round.

A worked example

Let's say a small round closes with five players picking these numbers:

Bob and Carla both picked 5, so 5 is eliminated. The eligible numbers are 2, 3, 7. The smallest is 2. Erez wins the round.

Now look at why this is tricky. Picking 1 feels obviously right — it's the smallest possible win. But the moment more than one person reasons that way, 1 collides and everyone who picked it is out. The same logic applies to 2, 3, 4, and so on. The right pick is whichever number the crowd will just barely overlook. That depends on how many people you think will play, and how they'll reason about each other. There's no single optimal answer.

Strategy (without spoiling the fun)

Low numbers are popular, but not always

Players gravitate to single digits because they look like easy wins. But "easy" picks collide. The Stats panel shows the most-chosen number and the middle 50% of picks after each round — a quick read on where the crowd clusters, and where it doesn't.

Pay attention to player count

When more people play, more numbers collide, and the winning number tends to be larger. When fewer people play, even 1 or 2 might survive. The "Players today" counter on the pick screen is your best read on the current round's character.

The mid-range is where it gets interesting

If you pick something between 15 and 40, you're betting that the crowd is over-thinking and will cluster lower. If you pick between 1 and 5, you're betting they're under-thinking and will cluster higher. Both have worked. Neither always works.

Avoid round numbers

10, 20, 25, 50, 100 attract more picks than they should because they feel "memorable". Off-by-one numbers (11, 21, 51) often clear better.

Frequently asked questions