You might remember towards the end of last year, Stuff was giving away a brand new iPhone 16 to one lucky (magazine) reader. The entry details were found in the October-November 2024 issue of Stuff Magazine but the entry mechanism was hosted here on the website. And, we must say, some of you folks know how to take chances.

See, there was a single requirement for a valid entry. Entrants had to track down and list which pages the iPhone 16 appeared on in the Oct/Nov issue of the magazine. It wasn’t too hard, since we gave you a few of them to start with, and yet… we had some creative attempts at subverting that requirement. Our favourite — though the folks asking if the giveaway was a scam was… novel — simply read ‘cartoon robot’. We’re not sure why.

Who won the iPhone 16 already?

Okay, fine, enough dragging it out. Those of you who were truly impatient didn’t read this far anyway, having skipped to the bold name most of the way down the page. For those of you who entered, there’s a significant chance that you’re in for disappointment. For one of you, that’s not about to happen. Our winner is…

Johannes Hermanus Lutz

Congratulations to Johannes, who even provided the correct response to the bonus question (as did many of you… but not as many as we’d hoped). You’ll find an email in your inbox asking you to confirm your details. To everyone else… better luck next time. If you’d like a better chance of winning our next giveaway, it’ll help to know how we draw these things.

Stuff‘s giveaways, including this iPhone 16 affair, all follow the same procedure. The list of entrants is fed to a program that selects a random name. That name is manually examined. If the qualifying question is answered correctly, the prize is awarded. But two things can get your entry disqualified.

Entries that only include a first name are removed from the pool (which Stephen are you talking about, Automatic Name Selection Program?). Entries that don’t include any contact info (you’ll be surprised how often this happens) are similarly removed. You’re also disqualified if you’re related to anyone who works (or you directly work for) Stuff Group. Okay, three things. We’ll come in again.