Rules + privacy

Contest rules

• Entry is free. No purchase or payment is required.
• You must be at least 18 years old when you enter.
• You must live in one of the 50 United States or Washington, D.C.
• One entry is allowed per person and verified U.S. phone number.
• The contest runs from the opening timestamp shown on the experiment page until the displayed closing timestamp, one calendar month later, or until 5,000 valid entries are accepted—whichever comes first.
• Your guess must be a whole number from 1 through 1,000,000 and cannot be edited after submission.
• The valid guess with the smallest absolute difference from the sealed count wins $100 USD. If entries are equally close, the earlier server-recorded submission wins.
• The winner will be contacted by SMS and has 14 days to respond. If the winner is ineligible or cannot be reached, the next eligible entry wins.
• Automated, duplicate, fraudulent, or manipulated entries may be reviewed and may be disqualified when I reasonably believe the rules were bypassed. A security signal by itself is not automatic proof.
• I may pause, change, extend, restart, cancel, or otherwise manage the experiment if I think it is necessary for fairness, security, or technical reasons.
• The contest is void where prohibited.

Privacy

Your phone number is used for verification, contacting the winner, and preventing duplicate entries. Firebase also processes it for verification and abuse prevention. It will not be used for marketing or included in the public dataset. Contest-related phone records, including the Firebase Authentication account, will be deleted within 90 days after the contest ends.

Answer integrity

A SHA-256 commitment to the true count is published before entries open. After closing, the count and random nonce are released so anyone can verify that the answer was not changed.

Questions or deletion requests can be sent through the contact section of my portfolio.