Nope, it's just a crappy puzzle from a company without a lot of respect for its customers.
Names and numbers on their own are incredibly valuable.
Names and numbers that you know exactly the demographic they come from, are gold mines.
I can tell you that some run of the mill name and number can easily be worth $1.
Gauging the fact that he assumes their target audience is rich (which I doubt this is the case), we at least know it is a very specific type of people. This is as close to texas tea as it gets for telemarketers.
First, you know hardly anything about these people. At best you have a guess about their income. You don't know age or occupation or education level. (Not to mention a large number of the names are probably bogus -- I would certainly fill out bogus data.) Realistically, you'd have to overlay it with data from other sources to make it usable to anyone besides, perhaps, other companies selling overpriced puzzles.
I can get much complete and valuable demographics for much less than $1 each. (Female C-Level executives in the marketing industry? $200 per thousand).
Like I said, it's not a conspiracy. It's just a junky puzzle.
I go with the "crappy puzzle from a clueless company" explanation.
These names/numbers aren't. Granted lots of people use bogus names and numbers, but the vast majority aren't going to that purchase an item of this value.
Yes, before you say it, I realize that nobody here does, and nobody you know does, and blah blah blah.
In the real world, most people do. I wouldn't be in business if they didn't.
I'm going to go with a crappy response, from a clueless person.