"Win $$$$$$$$"

A buxom housewife on Manhattan's Riverside Drive posed winsomely for the photographer and said: "It can't be true. Oh, how wonderful!" She pocketed a check for $10,000.

A student with a Spanish name happily bared his teeth for the camera and said: "Now I can finish with my law." He got $2,000.

With her $1,000 a comely high-school girl in The Bronx wanted a raccoon coat, a big party, a college education.

One hundred and twenty-seven other New Yorkers got $2,665 and Publisher Julius David Stern's struggling New York Post got 23,000 estimated net gain in circulation.

Thus last week ended the most flamboyant newspaper circulation contest New York City has witnessed in recent years. But even before prize winners in the first contest were announced, the Post had already embarked on a second and bigger one with $25,000 in prizes; and the tabloids Mirror and Daily News had been drawn into the scramble with offers of $40,000 and $15,000 respectively.

"Game of Names." The New York Post had only 60,000 circulation when David Stern bought it from Curtis-Martin year ago. The new owner tried to change the paper from a genteel, arch-Tory organ to a rowdy New Deal standardbearer. He succeeded mainly in making it a sensational hodgepodge. By fits & starts, the Post claimed to have 75,000 steady readers when it began its "Game of Names" contest last August.

Like all extended contests, the Post's started out to be childishly, incredibly simple. The object was to choose which of several given names best fitted a cartoon drawn by John Held Jr. A new cartoon appeared every weekday for ten weeks. The person submitting the "best or most appropriate names" to the 60 drawings in the series was to get the first prize, $10,000. However, as the contest wore on, the pictures became more and more obscure, the lists of names longer and longer, until several names seemed equally appropriate. That reduced the possibility of ties. Result: even the first prize winner was charged with three errors.

One feature of the Post's contest which it mentioned only in the tiniest type, was the contestant's obligation to send 10-c- with every group of six pictures, or $1 for the whole contest. For each dime he would receive a print of one of the drawings, "suitable for framing." Since some 40,000 started the contest and 30,000 saw it to a finish, the 10-c- rule netted the Post $33,000--a little more than double the sum paid out in prizes. That, however, did not make the contest a direct moneymaker. The Post spent $45,000 advertising its contest in other New York dailies; $8,000 for radio advertising; $18,000 for a special clerical force of 300; $11,000 for printing the drawings, "suitable for framing"; about $5,000 to Artist Held. Total cost: $69,665. But an increase of 23,000 in circulation so pleased Publisher Stern that he promptly ordered the new, 12-week series, with drawings by Peter Arno. "

``What They Are Saying" is the Mirror's contest, copied by permission from London Tit-Bits. A set of four action photographs is printed every day for 28 days. Object: to guess which of 48 suggested "sayings" best fits each picture. All readers of this gumchewers' sheetlet who can decipher English are expected to get the first two weeks' examples perfectly. Hence, the tabulating company retained by the Mirror does not even examine the entries until the final, difficult ones have been received. Then the tabulators begin searching for highest scores among the last returns, which narrow their labors to a comparative few. Only those need be traced back to the early weeks' answers.

The Mirror's first prize is $5,000. Second prize, valued at $4,000, must be taken in the form of a bungalow at Lake Parsippany, N. J. The 500 lesser prizes likewise are in merchandise. Each puzzler is obliged to buy a 10-c- "color print of a popular movie star" with each week's answers. Estimated revenue: $35,000, which will just about cover the cost of the contest, exclusive of prizes.

In its first three weeks the Mirror contest bagged 85,000 new readers.

"No Entrance Fee" was the pointed boast of the Daily News. It offered a difficult crossword puzzle, did not require readers to buy anything. Half-apologetically it confined the puzzle to small space, did little crowing about its $15,000 prizes. No stranger to contests before it became supreme in circulation in the U. S., the News seemed embarrassed by the necessity of brawling with the vulgar Mirror.

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