Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Magic Detectives Wanted

One of the readers sent me this fun "magic" trick that uses deep breathing, color preferences and even hypnosis:
I will guess your number
Try it out and see whether you can detect how it works.

Solved the mystery? Enter your explanation on our Family Puzzle Marathon page. Be first to solve three puzzles and get a prize!

5 comments:

Wang said...

Interesting, they got my number.

It looks like when you choose your number, it has a particular color. You choose that color and it instantly narrows down to a group of numbers.

I took care in noting down the group of numbers in my head so when I chose the house, each number in the group was in a different house.

By choosing both a color (which narrows down the group of numbers it could be down to 5 or 6) and then choosing a house (with each number in a different house), you can find out what number you chose.

Unknown said...

In addition to what W said, there are two pages that are meaningless: The one with 9 colors and the one with the crystal balls. The last page is dynamic and whichever door you pick first gets assigned "your" number, but the other doors are still assigned numbers after the first click.

Maria said...

Phil and W you complete each other so wonderfully that I think you both deserve a puzzle point. W - two more points and we can make a puzzle about you! Looking forward.

I frequently need things to be explained twice, so to help those like me:
the "magic" trick linked above tries to mislead us by showing pages with colors, geometric figures, doors. From all the pages in this trick, there are only two pages where your selection matters:
1) page where you select a number and need to click on a button that corresponds to the color of this number. There are 5 colors and 5 numbers of each color. When you select a color, this trickster app knows that it is one out of 5 numbers of this color.
2)page where all the numbers live inside the houses and you select a house containing your number. Here, there are five houses and each contain only one number of the color you selected on step 1). When you choose a house, this application knows what number you picked.

A very cool puzzle is coming up tomorrow!

Anonymous said...

I think I got this because it is very much like the card trick from a little while ago.

Anonymous said...

its a computer! it knows what you picked!

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