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 How i would do it by Brian Smith)

the only problem with this is the audience chooses the cards at random. the magician would have to devise a plan to figure out a permutation midtrick, I can't think of one, but I am sure it is possible.

Posted by Jon on 2003-05-08 07:37:16