Old Gold Winner

Last week Naval Cadet Pilot William R. Staggs, a black-browed, 25-year-old six footer attached to the aircraft carrier U. S. 5. Ranger off Coronado, Calif., exchanged telegrams thrice with Rear Admiral Adolphus Andrews, chief of the Bureau of Navigation in Washington. Their substance: Might he resign? No. Might he marry? No. Might he have 30 days leave? No.

Cadet Stagg's desire to get off the Ranger was something easily comprehensible to the whole Pacific Fleet. He had just won the puzzler's equivalent of first prize in the Irish-sweepstakes, had beaten 2,000,000 other hopefuls for the $100,000 first prize in Old Gold cigarette's famed rebus puzzle contest (TIME, May 24). News of the award and names of 200 out of 1,000 other prize winners were published last week in 350 U. S. newspapers by P. Lorillard Co. Inc. over three months after the last Old Gold rebus appeared publicly. During this interval the company and its advertising agency, Lennen & Mitchell, had their hands full.

One in every 37 entrants in the contest --54.000 contestants all told--got all the answers to the rirst group of puzzles right. A second set of 90 more difficult puzzles was mailed to them, to be solved in ten days. One in every six--9,000--came through this. A third set of 90 puzzles most fiendishly devised served only to prove the calibre of the 9,000, of whom 8,160 returned correct answers in five days. In accordance with the rules, the contest thereupon became literary, each survivor having to submit an essay on the increased popularity of Old Golds in his or her community as a result of the contest. Last week Lorillard positively refused to make public any of the prize-winning letters or the names of the judges. Second prize of $30,000 went to Pharmacist Florence Zimmermann in Peoria, Ill. Third and fourth prizes, $10,000 each, were won by an automobile accessory salesman in Seattle and a chemical engineer in Philadelphia. Impressed by the mighty fillip the contest had given to its sales, Lorillard confounded almost all observers by announcing this week a "bigger & better" contest. For a list of prizes totaling $250,000. Old Gold fans will be invited to strain their brains, not on puzzles this time, but on the invention of apt repartee bringing up Old Golds on every occasion.

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