This is not the exact same by any means, but reminded me of a story my dad told me. Sometime in the 60s a radio station had a contest where you had to guess the top 5 songs of the week in the proper order (1-5) and the winner would get $1000. To make a guess you had to mail in an index card numbered 1-5. Maybe 10 or so songs were likely to be in that top 5, so my dad guessed guessed every permutation. The cost was the price of a stamp for each index card but he did end up winning.