A North Carolina Man Trusted His Gut and Won $1 Million on Cashword King

Everett Cooper of Marston, North Carolina had a feeling. He walked into a store in Laurinburg, bought a single $10 scratch-off, and walked out with a $1,000,000 top prize. "Something just told me to get that ticket. I had that feeling," he told the North Carolina lottery. It is the kind of story that keeps people buying tickets.

The Win

Cooper bought his Cashword King ticket at CAPL Retail on South Main Street in Laurinburg, in Richmond County. Cashword King is a $10 game that launched in August 2025 with five $1,000,000 top prizes, and Cooper is a longtime crossword-style player. "I like to have a coffee, take my time and enjoy myself when I play," he said. He plans to use the money to help his family and donate to his church.

What "$1 Million" Actually Paid

A $1,000,000 scratch-off top prize is almost never a $1,000,000 check. Cooper took the lump-sum cash option, which came to $600,000 before taxes, and after federal and state withholding his actual take-home was $432,063. That is still life-changing money, but it is a clean reminder that the number printed on the ticket and the number that lands in your account are two very different figures. We walk through why in our guide on how much you actually take home from a lottery jackpot, and the tax side in how lottery winnings are taxed.

The Gut Feeling, and What It Did Not Do

Cooper's instinct makes a great story, and we are not going to take that away from him. But the feeling did not change the math. A scratch-off's outcome is fixed the moment the ticket is printed, and no hunch, ritual, or cup of coffee changes which ticket is the winner. We dug into exactly that in are scratch tickets actually random and what's the trick to winning scratch-offs. What a hunch can do is get you to buy a ticket on the day a winner happened to be sitting in that pack. Someone wins these prizes. This time it was Cooper.

The Chase Is Not Over

If Cooper's win has you eyeing Cashword King, the useful question is not whether someone can win, it is how much is still on the board. According to ScratchCheck's latest data, just one of the game's original five $1,000,000 top prizes is still unclaimed. On our numbers the game runs overall odds of 1 in 3.57, a 75.8 percent prize payout, and a ValueScore of 52.8, which is middle of the pack for the state. Check the live remaining count on the Cashword King game page, and weigh it against every other game in the state on the North Carolina top prizes remaining page before you spend.

Cooper did everything a scratch-off player actually can do: he bought one ticket, enjoyed the moment, and got lucky. That is the dream and why we scratch.