Number of the Bleeps: 6-6-6 Lottery Draw Mints More Than 5,000 Winners Statewide

Disclaimer: While this article is based on devilishly accurate facts, it also contains satanical amounts of satire.

This month, a North Carolina lottery drew a seemingly unlikely set of Pick 3 numbers: 6-6-6 (was the drawing also held on May 6? It was!). Still, they turned out to be quite popular across the state—the organization said that the combination was a winner for 5,662 winning tickets, and paid out $2.1 million in prize money.

Although 666 has a whole host (see what we did there?) of implications in mathematical settings, we will skip listing them here because they are, for the most part, SO boring. But in the religious realm and Christian lore in particular, the combination is almost universally known as the “number of the beast.”

Some people take the purported Satanic implications of 666 very seriously, even avoiding anything related to the digits 6-6-6, a condition defined as hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, which is a real word that we did not invent. But in Chinese numerology, 666 is considered good luck—and none of the lottery winners shied away from using them!

No matter which numbers you choose, the odds of winning Pick 3 are about 1 in 1000—which, though chances of a payout are much higher than the Powerball or Mega Millions jackpots, the winnings max out in the low hundreds of dollars. Three of the same number is called a “trip” in lottery lingo, and we agree, they are trippin’.

Obviously, most people probably pick this particular trip for fun and/or shock value… or because a shadowy, preternaturally handsome figure, who perhaps seemed to fall directly from heaven, suggested it to them in exchange for, I don’t know, their immortal souls?

A previous winning 6-6-6 Pick 3 happened all the way back in 1980, in a lottery scandal in Pennsylvania known as “the Triple Six Fix.” Across the three drawing machines, conspirators swapped in weighted balls, except for the ones numbered 4 or 6—making those lighter ones more likely to be drawn. 

Before the draw on live TV, they bought up tickets with those numbers statewide, placed illegal bets with bookies, and blabbed to their friends and family to do the same. After the draw, the winnings were paid out to eight people who were all in on the scam—but they neglected to honor their illegal bets, and in turn, the bookies handed them right to the cops. One of the original schemers, and the guy who claims credit for the idea, was the host of the nightly broadcast, which made for an exceedingly convenient catch-and-convict success story.

Sounds like they all made a foolproof deal with the guy we mentioned before. If popular culture is any guide, we’re sure that figure, who shall not be named, will hold up their end of the bargain. We can’t really blame them. That could happen to any Kushner. 

And as every halfway mediocre scion of capitalism knows, the only foolproof way to get out of debt isn’t to win the lottery—it’s to accept a giant payout from a similarly mediocre scion of a hostile foreign government after your corrupt father-in-law unwillingly leaves office.