Item — HN Reader

It has been fashionable to trash the post office (USPS) but growing up in a rural route area, I occasionally did a test by sending a letter to the grandparents with just the last name, the city name and the zip. Always got there. I probably could have just put the name, county and zip.

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There's a picture in my local paper this week of an envelope. It's addressed simply to:

The editor of the local paper

Congleton

Apparently, it arrived at the offices of the Congleton Chronicle without an issue.

I've heard that someone once addressed a letter to:

HILL

JOHN

MASS

And it got there. See if you can figure out the intended recipient - it took me a good half hour. Spoilers at http://www.randomhouse.com/features/billbryson/bb_title/disp...

I once mailed a postcard from Honolulu addressed only to

  Michaelangelo McKasty
  Albany, New York

and it never arrived. I find it highly unlikely there is more than one Michaelangelo McKasty in Albany. I assume the USPS clerks in Albany are somewhat more disenchanted with their jobs than the ones in Andover, and just threw the postcard away.

Well, Andover has 31,000 and Albany has 94,000. The first is as a puzzle, the second one not so much.

In my case, the town is much smaller, and pretty much everyone knew everyone.

Or, they didn't appreciate you screwing with them when they're already agreeing to deliver your letter for just 44 cents and 3 lines of address.

You can put just the zip and the P.O. box number and it'll get there.

The zip+4 uniquely identifies every address in the US. We're probably nearing a billion addresses, though, I wonder what happens after that?

According to wikipedia, zip+4 does not uniquely identify single individuals unless they are high volume recipients.

sometimes they do, depends on population density.

Well, this was before the +4, and the official address was Rural Route #.