We have a normal deck of 52 cards. We want to do the following magic trick:

A person from the audience chooses 5 random cards. The magician's assistant looks at the 5 cards, chooses 4 of them, hands them to the magician one by one face up and keeps the other one hidden. The magician then guesses the fifth card (the one that the assistant kept hidden) just by looking at the 4 cards he was handed in.

Is it possible to devise a strategy, so that no matter what the original 5 cards were, the trick always works?

(In reply to re: ideas by levik)

you are rigt levik, but we only need 13 numbers in a binary counting system. there is another way to get the suit with how you hand the other magician the cards. For the first card, 1 finger and the thumb = hearts, 2 fingers an the thumb = spades and so on with the cards tilted up and down or sideways for a binary system four digits long that will get you 15 numbers. that works for every deck.

Posted by Jon on 2003-05-08 07:28:18