One bidorbuyer with mathematical leanings calculated that, armed with the first clue, you need to sift through 296,040 (give or take a few) listings to find the one that may lead you to winning an iPod in the bidorbuy competition.

After solving the riddle number one, complains the said bidorbuyer, I found 7,401 pages of new items currently listed on the site. At the rate of 40 items per page, that comes to the whopping 296,040 items (that fit the requirements of the clue number one).

There are two ways to approach the bidorbuy treasure hunt competition in which the prize is an iPad.

One is to patiently collect all clues and, ten or so days later, find the mystery listing with a practically fool-proof certainty.

The other is to get a clue or two and immediately immerse yourself into the bidorbuy pages, trusting your good luck to lead you to the mystery listing.

If you’d like to try out the second method, your task just got easier by about 40 percent – providing you find the clue number two on the bidorbuy page on Facebook.

You must admit, the clue number two really does narrow things down, for the prices of the items you can buy on bidorbuy range from a handful of cents to a million or so rands.

Tip for finding the clue number two: take a peek into the Competition tab.

Tip for applying the clue number two: when searching for items in a specific price range in the bidorbuy Advanced Search functionality, leave out the R sign and enter the numbers only.