An improved upper bound for the football pool problem for nine matches

The problem of determining K3(n,1), the minimum size of a ternary code of length n and covering radius 1, is called the football pool problem. By construction, it is here shown that K3(9,1)⩽1269. A code whose full automorphism group has order 648 is given, but this bound is actually achieved by a vast number of inequivalent codes.