Miscellaneous Puzzles 59- A CARD TRICK
Take an ordinary pack of playing cards and regard all the picture cards as
tens. Now, look at the top card-say it is a seven-place it on the table face
downwards and play more cards on top of it, counting up to twelve. Thus, the
bottom card being seven, the next will be eight, the next nine, and so on,
making six cards in that pile. Then look again at the top card of the pack-
say it is a queen-then count 10, II, 12 (three cards in all), and complete the
second pile. Continue this, always counting up to twelve, and if at last you
have not sufficient cards to complete a pile, put these apart.
Now, if I am told how many piles have been made and how many unused
cards remain over, I can at once tell you the sum of all the bottom cards in
the piles. I simply multiply by 13 the number of piles less 4, and add the
number of cards left over. Thus, if there were 6 piles and 5 cards over, then
13 times 2 (i.e., 6 less 4) added to 5 equals 31, the sum of the bottom cards.
Why is this? That is the question.
- THE QUARRELSOME CHILDREN
A man married a widow, and they each already had children. Ten years later
there was a pitched battle engaging the present family of twelve children. The
mother ran to the father and cried, "Come at once! Your children and my
children are fighting our children!"
As the parents now had each nine children of their own, how many were
born during the ten years?- SHARING THE APPLES
While the Crackhams were having their car filled with gasoline, in a pleasant
village, eight children on their way to school stopped to look at them. They
had a basket containing thirty-two apples, which they were taking into the
village to sell. Aunt Gertrude, in a generous mood, bought the lot, and said
the children might divide them among themselves.
Dora asked the names of all the children and said, later in the day (though
she was drawing a little on her imagination), "Anne got one apple, Mary
two, Jane three, and Kate four. But Ned Smith took as many as his sister,
Tom Brown twice as many as his sister, Bill Jones three times as many as his