After following this post since the first day, I have a "personal" theory that may explain how the system work (Dont take it seriously because its a guess only):
My thought is they did the drawing in day 1 (or even 1 to 2 days ahead). Given choosing randomly using modern technology should be quick, they should have all the result by the time they started sending out email.
Then they sort through the chosen list simply from 0 to z (Kind of make scense if think of it in sorting mechanism in computing language). In this case they would not choose from a subset (like certain starting number combination) and maintain truely randomly select from the whole pool.
I remember someone mentioned ircc send out confirmation email manually. (If this is true,) My guess is each employee get a subset of the sorted result list daily and process them each day.
That may explain why it is number then alphabit.
However, it does not make sense at the same time they do not publish the whole list for people to check. Rather they keep us stressful in this two weeks period.
Lets see in the next few days if we observe any pattern in the confirmation number...
