Tuesday, October 9, 2012

TILED AND PROFILED: The neatest Scrabble/magic trick ever?  Maybe. I have some thoughts on how it was done, but first just watch what David Kwong did.

5 comments:

  1. Randy9:00 PM

    Is it excessively grumbly of me to point out that he used a blank for the H in CHIVALRY, and therefore that tile is worth 0, not 4?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Adam B.9:01 PM

    My two thoughts on how it was done:


    1. That's his own dollar bill that he forced in during the "let me see your bills" process; no one knows what serial numbers are on their bills. So he knows what numbers he needs.
    2. It's not a standard set of tiles, but is weighted towards the common, low-pointing letters.


    It's still neat.

    ReplyDelete
  3. 1 must be correct. Given a normal distribution of 0-9 digits on the serial numbers, it is very unlikely there would be that many numbers 4 or above, maybe about 1 in 40 bills. Given that he only asked for 5 bills, I'm sure you are right. Plus, lots of bills have B and C on them for the letter, and those might just not show up in the draw.

    Still really impressive though, I agree. The other trick described sounded even harder.

    ReplyDelete
  4. One showman to another, it would chafe me if a magician continued the habit of thanking me before I applauded. Cap it with a funny line, you needy magician.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Roger9:45 PM

    Oh sure, it's clearly his own bill, and he knew in advance the bingos he was going to make. I suspect the bag over-sampled the letters in those words and had enough blanks to fill in any problems. And then he just needed the three minutes to use the rest of what people drew while leaving out the A and E. Still, really cool trick.

    ReplyDelete