In regards to the 1971 film adaptation, I’ve seen many people argue that Wonka knowing where to send his phony “Slugworth” means he somehow manipulated the contest to get the tickets in the hands of those five children specifically. But I don’t think that argument holds up, and here’s why.
Suppose Wonka, rather than using some kind of omniscient oversight to track the location of each individual ticket, simply made note of which lots of chocolate bars had the tickets in them. Let’s say, also, that he kept decently accurate records of the general area to which each lot was shipped.
“Slugworth” only approached Augustus Gloop, Violet Bauregarde, and Mike Teavee after they’d been interviewed by the news media. If we assume that Wonka knew the general area where each winning bar had been shipped, it’s not terribly difficult to believe he could have sent Slugworth to the nearest town or city to wait it out until the winner of that ticket was publicly announced.
Veruca Salt was approached immediately upon the discovery of “her” ticket, but consider: Mr. Salt ordered thousands of bars. If Wonka knew a ticket was among the lots Mr. Salt purchased, he could send “Slugworth” to Mr. Salt’s factory to wait for it to be found.
That leaves Charlie Bucket. This one is pretty simple: Charlie lives in the same town as Wonka’s factory. It’s pretty trivial to explain how someone working for Wonka would have been able to find him so easily.
That’s my argument. I can think of at least one major hole in it, but I’m going to leave that for you all to figure that out, because you’re all pretty smart.
