Minnesota's new $20 Mystery Prize Crossword wins 1 in 2.76 times and launches as the state's top-rated game

The Minnesota Lottery added a $20 crossword on October 12, a week after its holiday launches. Mystery Prize Crossword has three top prizes of $300,000 in a run of about 1,588,000 tickets, about 1 in 529,333 each, along with 30 prizes of $10,000 and 40 of $5,000.

Players reveal 18 letters and scratch the matching letters in two crossword puzzles. Three or more complete words win the prize for that puzzle. A mystery prize area pays an amount tied to how many words were completed, from three to nine, and a mystery multiplier spot can multiply the win. Each puzzle plays separately.

The overall odds are 1 in 2.76, the best of any game Minnesota sells and well ahead of the state median of about 1 in 3.7. Part of that comes from the bottom tier. There are 222,322 prizes of $20, the price of the ticket, about 39% of the game's 575,767 winning tickets. Prizes of $1,000 or more turn up about once in 9,179 tickets.

All told the game pays out $23,011,505 on about $31.76 million in sales, 72.5%, a bit above the 72.1% average for Minnesota's six active $20 games. With every prize still unclaimed, it rates 97.4 on our ValueScore™, first of the state's 39 active games. New games usually start high and slide as prizes are claimed, and we compare the rest of Minnesota's lineup in which Minnesota scratch-offs are worth buying.

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Minnesota Lottery: Mystery Prize Crossword