Monday November 23rd, 2009
 |  |
 |
Mathematical Puzzle Or Digital Clairvoyance?
Posted by Spiros Antonopoulos on January 3, 2006 - 3:58am.
The Flash Mind Reader is spooky fun at parties. It appears to read your mind. Really, try it—pick any number, subtract a corresponding number, and click upon the sparkling orb. The astrological symbol corresponding to your number appears, almost as if by magick. Is this website really reading your mind? Or if it is a trick? If this smells like tirckery to you, then how does it work?
Related Shop Items
but it’s a good one! There are two pieces to the puzzle. One is mathmatical and the other is slight of hand (or computer, in this case).
It always amazes me how these things work. I mean I’d didnt even have the answer right in my head, and I thought it was wrong and felt like I got one over on it, but nope it was right. I really love the stuff here on the beyond portion of your site. Keep posting the cool stuff!
If you don’t want to know how it works, don’t read this! The addition and subtraction that it asks you to do always comes out to a multiple of 9. Prove it to yourself…42 is 4+2=6, 42-6 = 36, 9*4 = 36.
The next trick is that the multiples of 9 all have the same symbols. It is the other numbers that have random symbols.
Since we are so fascinated that it “guessed” our number, we don’t notice that every time you click “try again”, it changes the “correct” symbol next to the multiples of 9.