Alix Axel Weblog

My sister just showed me this little math trick, it’s fun - try it out with your friends and share your experience here.

This game consists on six “magic” squares, here they are:

Simply ask someone to think in a number (but not tell you) and give you all the magic squares where the number exists, then simply sum the upper right cell of all the magic squares where the number exists and voilá - you guessed the number!

Example: if I think in the number 23 and give you all the magic squares that contain the number 23 (1, 2, 3 and 5) you just have to calculate 1 + 2 + 4 + 16 = 23! The secret lies upon binary numbers as you may have guessed.