Scratchcard withdrawn after confusion over negative numbers

A lottery scratchcard has been withdrawn from sale by Camelot - because players couldn't understand it. The Cool Cash game - launched on Monday - was taken out of shops yesterday after some players failed to grasp whether or not they had won.

To qualify for a prize, users had to scratch away a window to reveal a temperature lower than the figure displayed on each card. As the game had a winter theme, the temperature was usually below freezing.



But the concept of comparing negative numbers proved too difficult for some. Camelot received dozens of complaints on the first day from players who could not understand how, for example, -5 is higher than -6.

Tina Farrell, from Levenshulme, called Camelot after failing to win with several cards. The 23-year-old, who said she had left school without a maths GCSE, said: "On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn't.

"I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher - not lower - than -8 but I'm not having it."



Whilst the three people in the photo above also all don't understand the concept.
The above link is now via Google cache. For a while.
Maybe the newspaper website removed the link to spare their blushes.

Peter Hall, of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, said: "The concept of minus numbers is something we would cover with 11 or 12 year olds, and we would expect them to have come across it before."

A spokesman for Camelot said: "The instructions for playing Cool Cash are clear and are printed on each individual card. However, because of the potential for player confusion, we have decided to withdraw the game."