That ’skill-testing’ question

I've always wondered why contests in Canada had that 'skill-testing question' at the end. Here's why:

In reality, the test is a hack of Canada's legal code by the promotions business. Canadian anti-gambling law makes it illegal to sell chances to win a prize, so promoters always offer a free method of entering each contest, and task every winner with a skill-testing question

If you ask me, the crown jewel is:

It's also a standard in decline. In the past 20 years, expectations have lowered for Canadian sweepstakes winners. Today, many questions, such as the one used in Microsoft Canada's Xbox sweepstakes, have only three operations, and the tests rarely use numbers with more than two digits. Some questions use only single-digit numbers and ask contest winners to divide by 1.

When I get 'divide by one' on an entry, I always do a double-take. Perhaps it's the pointlessness of it all. It also could be the desire not to make an absolutely stupid mistake on something so trivially easy. Could be both.

So now you know.