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?

Wouldn't the audience be suspicious if you handed the cards to the magician in a wierdo way? (like sideways or faceup or like that) I liked Bryan's solution.

Posted by Gamer on 2003-05-08 12:01:30