Fitch Cheney's Five-Card Trick and Generalizations
The standard trick (originally proposed as an example
of telephone magic) has five cards randomly picked from
the deck, four of which are shown to the mathemagician,
who promptly names the fifth card.
Colm picks four of the five cards to show Jeff (the fifth
card was given back to the audience member)
Jeff names the fifth card which the audience member holds
high
This classic of mid-20th century math magic--and a generalizion to
a trick in which the performer is shown three of four cards, and can
name the fourth--is discussed in the paper
``Fitch Cheney's Five-Card Trick''
which appeared in MAA Horizons in February 2003.
(This is http://www.spelman.edu/~colm/cheney.html,
click here to return to main page.)
