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?

I think the "best" solution is one you can show to the audience the most number of times and they still won't catch on. This would hurt solutions where you turn them wierdo directions and with different fingers... (which I address in "Restrictions")

Posted by Gamer on 2003-07-03 14:46:23