What are the best and worst numbers to have in your SB squares pool

After the commercials, the food and the actual game (most times in that order), the Super Bowl wager is another tradition.  You can bet on everything from who wins the coin toss to the jersey number of the first player to score a touchdown to how many times Tom Brady's wife Giselle will be shown on tv.

At big game parties everywhere, the square game may be the most popular.  Super Bowl Squares require participants to place their name in one or more of the 100 available squares of their choice (if you’re playing for money, a square would cost a predetermined amount). After all boxes are accounted for, numbers 0-9 are randomly assigned along the vertical and horizontal squares. A winner is then determined for each quarter, or only for the overall score of the game. To determine a winner, take the last digit of each team’s score and find the corresponding square on the grid. For example, if the NFC team has 21 points and the AFC team has 17 points, the square that intersects 1 on the NFC side and 7 on the AFC side wins.

So what are the best numbers to have, statistically?  According to Neil Greenberg in the Washington Post, the 0,0 box is the best box to have although any combination of 0,3 & 7 are good too.  By the way, the worst boxes to have at the end of the first quarter include 3,9; 9,9 and 0,8 — boxes that have occurred less than one percent of the time over the past three seasons.  Greenberg breaks down the best and worst numbers for each quarter, halftime and the end of the game, with graphs and everything.  You can check it out yourself here.  Have fun and good luck!