Companies preparing to go public don’t always get the stock ticker symbol they’d like to. Zillow really wanted the letter Z and the Seattle Times found out how they got it. Single letter symbols aren’t easy to come by, not only because there are only 26 of them, but the New York Stock Exchange controls doling them out. Zillow had to employ clever tactics when they discovered the NYSE was reserving Z for another IPO (likely the games company Zynga). The NYSE, planning a merger with Deutsche Borse, would like to avoid any controversy with the SEC. Zillow used that to their advantage, arguing that holding the Z for a company that hadn’t even filed to go public yet was anti-competitive behavior. They got their Z without a big fight. The single letters left are: I, J, Q, U, and W.