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?

The first card that the assistant hands the magician is the same suit as the hidden card (there are five cards so one must be the same)

Now you've narrowed down the feild to 13. Actually 12 because you know one that it definately isn't.

the remainig three cards can be used to determine the card ranking from 1 to 12 using four possible placements: Verticle and face up, horizontal and face up, vertical and face down, and horizontal and face down.

Posted by Hank on 2003-05-08 09:07:32