I was at a conference call today, and by the time I pressed the button to finish the call, the notes from it were in my mailbox. That led to the following mail exchange:
Me: Wow!! So quickly, it came before I managed to hang up!
Kim: And for my next trick, tonight’s lotto numbers are…
Which reminded me a story…
Back in the end of the 70s, a weekly TV show made Bulgaria different. It was called “Every Sunday” (“Всяка неделя” in Bulgarian).
Its anchors were Kevork Kevorkian and Yancho Takov. I know them both, and have even translated one book from English for Kevork back in 1990.
Forward:
Every Sunday, at 5:40 p.m., 10 minutes after the beginning of the program (if I remember it correctly) the Bulgarian National Lottery was being drawn. Now, for those of you, who don’t know that Bulgaria, there were only 2 lottery games – Toto 1 and Toto 2. Toto 1 was related to football (soccer) games, and Toto 2 – it was called also “6 of 49”, as they would draw 6 numbers, plus two extra (so if you guess the first 6, you get a max of $ 10,000 – enough to buy three cars, or two small apartments in socialist Bulgaria; but if you guess 5 + 1 of the extras, then you’d get only $ 1000).
So, the story.
One day something went wrong with the big sphere, that served to mix the lottery balls, and they couldn’t draw them on time. It took them about two hours, and around 7:30 p.m. they managed to do it, and the numbers were, say, 9, 17, 3, 46, 33, 24 plus two extra – 6, and 19.
At the end of the program, while Yancho Takov was interviewing some celebrity, he was asked by his guest, “What would you have done if they didn’t fix the sphere”?
Without even thinking, he responded, “Well, I have prepared a list of 6 numbers – 3, 9, 17, 24, 33, 46, plus two extra – 6, and 19”.
Touche!