Magic in a Minute by Mac and Bill King

Magic in a Minute

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Comments (4) (Please sign in to comment)

  1. FlyGuyP38

    FlyGuyP38 said, about 1 year ago

    The directions and plot are planned to balloon 11. Not sure why the balloon number isn’t mentioned though.

  2. Kosaka Jinnai

    Kosaka Jinnai said, about 1 year ago

    I did these kinda math tricks as a little kid. And I could still never figure them out.

  3. Edward Clayton

    Edward Clayton said, about 1 year ago

    FlyGuy – it’s upside down in the bottom right corner.

  4. OldTracy

    OldTracy said, about 1 year ago

    Ishikawa,

    The trick is that each instruction sends you to fewer possible places to be.

    The easiest way to see this is to look at all possible results after each instruction is completed.

    After picking one of the 8 green balloons, you are instructed to move left or right to the nearest red balloon. If you started with balloons 2, 3 or 4, you are forced to balloon 1. If you chose 5, you will next be at 6. If you chose 9, 11, or 12, you will be forced to 10. If you chose 13, you will be forced to 14.

    So you started with 8 possible places to be , but after just the one instruction, you are now at one of only 4 possible places. (1, 6, 10, or 14).

    The next instruction tells you to move up or down resulting in only balloons 2 and 5 being possibilities.

    Moving diagonally from them gets you to 7 and 10 and the final instruction forces you to balloon 11.

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