The answer is x.

Brilliant answers are integers ranging from 0 to 999. Let $x$ be the answer to this problem, where $0 \leq x \leq 999$ . Without any clue to solving this problem, Tom randomly picks an integer $y$ as his answer in the same range. The probability that $1 \leq y < x$ can be expressed as $\frac {a}{b}$ , where $a$ and $b$ are coprime positive integers in the simplest form. Since usual problems that ask for a fraction have their answer as the sum of $a$ and $b$ , find the smallest possible answer $x=a+b$ .