Card trick question: difficulty level -- different language, math

May 13, 2023 11:33 AM

When I was a child, my grandfather showed me a card trick, based on a mnemonic in a language other than English. I would like to reproduce it in English.

I am sure there is a name for the kind of card trick it is in the taxonomy of card tricks, but I don't know it. The trick went like this: he created ten pairs of cards and lay them face down. Then he instructed the other person to pick up one of the pairs, memorize the cards, and put the cards down in the same place, while he himself looked away. Then he arranged the cards, going pair by pair (so, without shuffling), in accordance with a phrase made up of four words with five letters each (in a different language), where each letter repeated only twice, so each pair of cards would be "pinned" to unique "coordinates" -- so, the grid would look like this:

Н А У К А
У М Е Е Т
М Н О Г О
Г И Т И К

Then my grandfather would ask which row or rows the cards were in, and once he had that information, he could easily identify the pair.

I would like to know if there is a card trick like that in English, and it not, how can I "translate" it -- so basically how can I create a phrase that would fulfill the necessary conditions (I am sure it's possible to create similar phrases that would be longer than 20 letters and thus would use more pairs of cards -- that is fine).

I think this is a math problem, probably one that requires expertise in combinatorics. I know enough to recognize that this is probably a combinatorics problem but not enough to actually come up with a solution in English.

Can anyone help, either by pointing me to an analogous card trick that already exists in English, or by helping me figure out how to "translate" it?

posted by virve to Science & Nature (5 answers total)

Yes!! I remember a very similar trick from a card games book in my childhood. Here's an article about similar ones in English!
posted by peppercorn at 12:12 PM on May 13, 2023

I know this trick! I was taught it with four "Latin" words that are not really Latin:

MUTUS
NOMEN
DEDIT
COCIS

I found an article about it here and another here. Sorry it's not in English, but maybe this phrase can help you find more variations?
posted by amf at 12:25 PM on May 13, 2023

I hate to recommend this is an answer, but I think Chat GPT is good at things like this. I remember someone saying they used it to spit out a bunch of acronyms.
posted by radioamy at 2:25 PM on May 13, 2023

I tried this against ChatGPT 4 a bit, but it kept coming up with flawed answers.
posted by cameradv at 8:50 PM on May 13, 2023

If you want to come up with your own set of four five-letter English words to perform this trick, you can use a Wordle tool to help.
Each word must have a double letter which none of the other words contain, and then the other three letters in that word are shared among the other words one time each. (Letter order within a word doesn't matter.)

For example, starting with MOSSY and
ALARM (which has the M), I want two more words, which either have LO and RY respectively, or OR and LY.
So I ask Wordle Helper for a word that has O and R in yellow but excludes the other letters in MOSSY and ALARM (MSALY). Then I look in the 62 possible words for one with a double letter and get OFFER. This adds an E that has to be included in the fourth word.
For this last word I put L, Y, E in the yellow squares and exclude MSAFOR. This didn't find anything useful (JELLY, but L can't be the double letter), but after rearranging the yellow letters a bit I got CYCLE.

Ultimately:
MOSSY
ALARM
OFFER
CYCLE

This gives you the option to choose one or two words with the right vibes to them, such as the
BIBLE
ATLAS
GOOSE
THIGH
of peppercorn's answer.
posted by What is E. T. short for? at 12:08 AM on May 14, 2023