Lottery tickets and certain other forms of game card, such as some types of Bingo card for example, have an array of numbers or other symbols imprinted on the ticket or the like. The player crosses out or otherwise marks a selected combination of the numbers with a pen or by other means in an effort to predict a series of numbers that will be determined later at a drawing or other chance procedure.
When the winning combinations of numbers is announced, the players must examine their tickets to ascertain if they had marked that particular set of numbers. This can be somewhat time consuming and subject to error. Many lottery tickets have arrays of numbers which are small and closely spaced. Such tickets often have several repetitive arrays of the numbers each of which must be scanned to determine if the winning combination has been marked in one or more of them. Players often purchase a number of tickets in a single game thereby further complicating the task of examining the arrays of numbers to locate a winning selection.
Lottery tickets or the like may be imprinted on cards designed for machine reading by the organization conducting the lottery. The complex and costly data processing equipment used for this purpose is not available to the typical player.
Less costly devices have heretofore been devised for the purpose of facilitating the examination of lottery tickets or the like by players. Prior devices of this type may, for example, have means for receiving the tickets and a series of slidable pointers which can be positioned at the locations which winning numbers occupy on the tickets. The player can then readily observe if the numbers adjacent each pointer are marked numbers. In another form, the device is opaque and has an array of small windows at the location of the numbers on the ticket. A small opaque hinged cover at each window enables covering of all windows except those which are at the locations of winning numbers on the ticket. When the winning combination of numbers is announced, the player opens only those windows which correspond to the locations of the winning numbers on the lottery ticket. One or a series of marked tickets may then be positioned in the device and the presence of a winning ticket is immediately apparent as, in that case, markings are visible at all open windows.
Prior lottery card reading devices of the above described form require small moving parts, such as sliding pointers or hinged flaps, of a type that complicate manufacture and thereby adversely affect the costs of the devices. These somewhat fragile parts are externally exposed and susceptible to damage. Manipulation of the parts to accommodate to a new set of winning numbers can require delicate operations and be readily susceptible to error, particularly when the numbers on the ticket are small and closely spaced.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems discussed above.