Crossword Scratch-Offs vs. Number Matching: Which Type Wins More?

Scratch-off players tend to have strong preferences. Some always reach for a crossword game. Others never touch them, convinced that number-matching tickets are faster to scratch and more likely to win. Both camps have logic behind them. The actual data across 14 states tells a more nuanced story: crossword games win on overall odds at every price tier, but number-matching games return more money per dollar at the $10 and $20 tiers. The right answer depends on what you're optimizing for.

How the Analysis Works

This comparison pulls current active game data from Texas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Virginia, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, North Carolina, Michigan, Maryland, Iowa, and Arizona via ScratchCheck's live rankings. Games are classified as crossword (including Cashword variants) or number-matching/multiplier based on game name and format. 80 crossword games and 257 number-matching games across the 14 states are included in the analysis.

The National Averages

Across all games and price tiers combined, crossword games average overall odds of 1 in 3.44 and a 72.6% payout rate. Number-matching games average 1 in 3.53 odds and 74.1% payout. Crossword games win narrowly on overall odds nationally. Number-matching games win on payout rate by 1.5 percentage points.

That national summary understates the real differences because the two game types aren't evenly distributed across price tiers. Crossword games skew heavily toward $20-$30. Number-matching games are spread more evenly across $5-$50. Comparing them at the same price point reveals much larger gaps than the blended averages suggest.

At $5: Crossword Wins on Odds

At the $5 tier, crossword games average 1 in 3.72 overall odds and a 69.3% payout rate across 16 games surveyed. Number-matching $5 games average 1 in 3.89 odds and 68.6% payout across 52 games. Crossword games are meaningfully better on odds (you win something more often) and slightly better on payout rate.

The $5 crossword advantage on overall odds is consistent across states. In Massachusetts, the best $5 crossword games run around 1 in 3.5 odds. In Texas, the Cashword series consistently outperforms number-matching $5 games on overall odds. For players buying $5 tickets and wanting the most frequent wins, crossword is the better format at this price point.

At $10: The Biggest Surprise

The $10 tier is where the comparison gets most interesting, and where number-matching games make their strongest case. Crossword $10 games average 1 in 3.41 odds and a 66.5% payout rate. Number-matching $10 games average 1 in 3.54 odds and 74.2% payout.

Crossword games win on odds by a modest margin (1 in 3.41 vs 1 in 3.54). Number-matching games win on payout rate by 7.7 percentage points. That's a significant gap. On a $10 ticket, 7.7 percentage points is $0.77 per ticket in expected value. A player buying one $10 ticket per week for a year and consistently choosing from the number-matching games rather than crossword games in their state would receive roughly $40 more in expected returns annually.

Why does this happen? The $10 crossword category is pulled down by several games with relatively low payout rates despite decent odds. The number-matching $10 field includes a larger share of higher-payout multiplier games. The crossword format at $10 doesn't automatically mean better overall value. You win slightly more often, but you get back less per dollar when you do win.

At $20: Close, with Number Matching Ahead on Payout

At $20, the gap narrows. Crossword games average 1 in 3.21 odds and 70.6% payout. Number-matching games average 1 in 3.27 odds and 72.9% payout. Crossword games still win on frequency of winning (tighter odds). Number-matching games return more per dollar (2.3 percentage points higher payout rate).

Massachusetts provides the clearest example of why this happens. The $5,000,000 100X Cashword is a $20 Massachusetts game with 1 in 2.85 odds and an 83.9% payout rate, one of the strongest $20 games nationally by both metrics. But it's the exception, not the rule. Across the 13 $20 crossword games in this analysis, most don't match those numbers. The broad field of number-matching $20 games across 59 games averages a higher payout even though no single game stands out as dramatically.

At $30: Crossword Wins Clearly

The $30 tier is where crossword games most decisively outperform. Crossword $30 games average 1 in 2.84 overall odds and 78.7% payout. Number-matching $30 games average 1 in 3.17 odds and 56.1% payout.

That's a 0.33 unit odds advantage and a 22.6 percentage point payout advantage for crossword games at $30. The payout gap is enormous and reflects a structural pattern: the $30 national best-odds leaders are disproportionately crossword games. Iowa's Ruby Red Crossword (1 in 2.29, 75.3%), Arizona's Million Dollar Crossword (1 in 2.30, 77.7%), California's Crossword Xtreme (1 in 2.72, 80.1%), Massachusetts' 100X Cashword (1 in 2.85, 83.9%) all cluster at the top of the national $30 rankings. Number-matching $30 games simply don't produce as many structurally strong entries at this price tier.

The national best-odds analysis we published previously identified four of the top six games in the country as Iowa crossword games. The crossword format's dominance at the premium tier is not coincidental. The prize table structure that works best at $30 and above tends to align with the crossword format's distribution of many mid-tier wins.

Why Crossword Games Have Better Odds

The structural reason crossword games tend to have tighter overall odds is the prize table architecture. A crossword game creates multiple simultaneous win opportunities on a single ticket. You're not looking for one match. You're looking for enough letters to complete words, and a single ticket might have 20-30 letters to reveal. The game can distribute many small wins across a large number of tickets without exhausting the prize pool, because "winning a $2 prize" in a crossword is structurally cheaper to fund than "winning a $2 prize" in a number-matching game where each win is a discrete event.

This is why crossword games often look better on overall odds but sometimes trail on payout rate. The wins are more frequent and smaller. Number-matching multiplier games tend toward fewer wins but larger amounts when you do win, which can produce higher per-dollar returns despite worse overall odds.

What About Bingo, Poker, and Other Formats?

Beyond crossword and number-matching, scratch-off catalogs include bingo cards, poker hands, word searches, and licensed-theme games. These formats don't cluster as consistently as crossword vs. number-matching, but a few patterns are worth knowing.

Bingo-format games tend to perform similarly to crossword games in terms of overall odds, because the bingo card creates multiple simultaneous match opportunities on a single ticket, the same structural feature that makes crossword games efficient at distributing frequent small wins. In Florida, Fireball Bingo runs 1 in 3.61 overall odds with a 70.1% payout at $3, competitive with Florida's crossword options at that tier. In California, bingo games perform near the crossword tier average on odds.

Poker-format games vary widely. California's $1,000,000 Poker leads that state's $10 tier with 12 top prizes remaining and solid base odds, making it one of the better poker-format games nationally. Joker's Wild Poker in the same state has the highest payout rate of any $10 game at 78.5%. Poker games are a smaller category than crossword or number-matching, so the sample is too thin for broad conclusions, but individual strong entries exist across several states.

Licensed-theme games (JAWS, Yellowstone, Jeopardy!, FROGGER) don't have structurally different odds or payout rates by virtue of the license. The underlying prize table follows the same economics as any other game at that price tier. The licensing fee shows up somewhere in the economics, which some analysts argue slightly reduces payout efficiency compared to non-licensed games at the same price, but the data in this analysis doesn't show a consistent gap significant enough to influence buying decisions.

Which Should You Buy?

At $5: crossword. Better odds and better payout rate.

At $10: number-matching if payout rate is your priority (7.7pp advantage). Crossword if win frequency matters more (1 in 3.41 vs 1 in 3.54).

At $20: slight edge to number-matching on payout rate. Slight edge to crossword on odds. Functionally a toss-up at the format level. Specific game selection within the format matters more than the format itself.

At $30: crossword, clearly, on both metrics.

The more important variable at every price tier is which specific game you're buying. The best number-matching $10 game in your state right now probably beats the worst crossword $10 game on every metric. The best odds rankings and best payout rankings on ScratchCheck let you sort active games without filtering by format, so you can find the best current option in your state regardless of whether it happens to be a crossword or a number game.