A slip of the hand won this Hagerstown Lottery player a $50,000 top prize on a Crossword Deluxe scratch-off.
Lucky lady takes home $50,000 top prize playing the Deluxe Crossword game
A 43-year-old can thank the slip of her hand for a recent $50,000 top prize win on a scratch-off game. The fortunate player went to purchase one of the Maryland Lottery’s $20 scratch-off games out of a self-service Lottery vending machine, but pushed the wrong button and ended up with a $5 Deluxe Crossword game instead.
“I was like ‘Dang’ when that ticket came down,” said the winner, who chose the alias “Winner by Default” because of her mistake. “I don’t even typically like the Crossword games, but this worked out well.”
Reluctantly, the winner grabbed the ticket and went home to scratch it. The single mom of three sat down and began the process of revealing the words on her crossword ticket. After scratching the whole ticket, she believed she won something and read the directions to confirm. Still not sure, she decided to scan the ticket using the Lottery’s app on her phone. She was shocked at the message staring back at her, “Congratulations — $50,000 Winner.”
“It was unreal,” she said. “I thought something was wrong with the app, so I scanned it again.”
Sure enough, the same message appeared. After jumping up and down and screaming, the big winner called her children down to share the news.
“I put the ticket on the counter and scanned it again so they could see the winning message,” said the winner, who works as a service manager for an HVAC company. “They couldn’t believe it was real.”
Later the lucky player made an appointment to claim her prize at Lottery Headquarters. She shared with Lottery Officials that she just purchased a new home and plans to use some of the winnings for home renovations. She plans to put the rest in the bank.
The winning Deluxe Crossword game was purchased at Halfway Liquors located at 17438 Virginia Avenue in Hagerstown. The retailer will receive a $500 bonus for selling the winning ticket, which is 1% of the top prize won.
The $5 game went on sale in June and still has five $50,000 top prizes remaining along with ten unclaimed $10,000 prizes and hundreds of thousands of prizes ranging from $5 to $1,000.
