Tenyo Magic Forum

Good morning guys, I was talking to Bob D this morning about a magic trick/ puzzle I found for the iPhone/ipad. I had almost figured out how it worked and Bob being the mastermind he is nailed it in about half an hour. if you're interested here's the deal.
your spectator chooses 5 RANDOM cards and lays them out. the magician tells them to input four of them into the program and it automatically displays the fifth. you never need to touch the phone/pad. it's more of a mathematical teaser but with a magical slant. I won't give any clues for 24hours, and no solution for a week

Thanks for the compliment Simon but I started solving it about 12am last night until 3.30am and resumed solving it this afternoon (my time zone). It took me more than 8 hrs to solve the problem and I was just lucky to guess the solution. It's a nice puzzle and will have many clever applications. TAD and BWT are tricks based on clever mathematical principles. I'm sure JohnM can invent another winner using the principle behind this puzzle.

Yeah. I don't even know where to start to figure it out

Ok here's a starting point...
If you have 5 cards selected, at least 2 have to have the same suit.
You'll find that whatever card you place in the second position, will cause the "guessed card" to have that same suit, now you just have to find a way to tell the program what number it should be.
Trail and error, pen and paper