Hi ameriken
It appears that you have a good knack for picking trends in the WNH sums. Thank you for posting your efforts and results.
With that said I am taking the liberty of making a few suggestions. Please note that all my comments are based on pick4/35 and 5/37 Lotteries using ELv4.
1). If you have your package down to <1000 tickets you may like to try the "Best Tickets" routine (it is also in ELv5) to filter down to about a hundred tickets. At that level I found it to be quite good. When I tried to go much less than that the success rate seemed to drop dramatically. However
see item 2 below.
2). If you are at, say, 20 - 30 tickets you may then try using the "Optimizer." On numerous occasions this routine magically decided to re-insert a number that had been previously eliminated. What's more, that number was drawn in the next draw!! I had difficulty reproducing these results when I came back to my computer the next day so never wrote this up as a possible "good bug" or, otherwise, in the forum. I believe you will have to use ELv4 for this, and several other routines e.g. "Minimizer" and "Fast minimizer." Look under Filters/Coverage in ELv4.
Stan --> If you are reading this, could you enlighten us as to where these routines stand for incorporation into ELv5? I remember you posting way back when that you were going to try and improve them for ELv5.
3). Lastly, given your approach of developing and using independently analyzed packages, you may find the following thread in the ELv4 Forums called "File Management - Packages" started by Falcon to be interesting and applicable to your research. It is under the main category Jackpot. Using the concepts and methods described will allow you to take very large independently analyzed packages and reduce them substantially very quickly. Here is the link, if it works -->
viewforum.php?f=8Stan --> again, if you are reading this, I know you said at the time that it was unlikely you would incorporate any of the above in ELv5 due to the Perl libraries. However, please be so kind as to reconsider. - in due course.
Just my thoughts. Trust you may find them helpful.
Good fortune
Bobijohn