Unclassified Puzzles
- A PUZZLE WITH CARDS
Take from the pack the thirteen cards forming the suit of diamonds and
arrange them in this order face downwards with the 3 at the top and 5 at the
bottom: 3,8,7, ace, queen, 6, 4, 2,jack, king, 10,9,5. Now play them out in
a row on the table in this way. As you spell "ace" transfer for each letter a card
from the top to the bottom of the pack-A-C-E-and play the fourth card on
to the table. Then spell T-W-O, while transferring three more cards to the
bottom, and place the next card on the table. Then spell T-H-R-E-E, while
transferring five to the bottom, and so on until all are laid out in a row, and
you will find they will be all in regular order. Of course, you will spell out the
knave as J-A-C-K.
Can you arrange the whole pack so that they will play out correctly in
order, first all the diamonds, then the hearts, then the spades, and lastly the
clubs?
- CARD SHUFFLING
The rudimentary method of shuffling a pack of cards is to take the pack face
downwards in the left hand and then transfer them one by one to the right
hand, putting the second on top of the first, the third under, the fourth above,
and so on until all are transferred. If you do this with any even number of
cards and keep on repeating the shuffle in the same way, the cards will in due
time return to their original order.
Try with 4 cards, and you will find the order is restored in three shuffles. In
fact, where the number of cards is 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, the number of shuffles
required to get them back to the original arrangement is 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
respectively. How many shuffles are necessary in the case of 14 cards?- A CHAIN PUZZLE
A man has eighty links of old chain in thirteen fragments, as shown on the
following page. It will cost him l¢ to open a link and 2¢ to weld one together
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