算命骗局解密

Four street tricks

Peachwood Surnames

Silently choose a surname listed on the cards. Answer whether it appears on each of five cards, then see the answer. A quick mode has 31 surnames; expanded booklets are also available.

Twenty-One Ghost Cards

Remember one playing card and report its column three times. Watch the columns gather and redeal before the middle card is revealed.

Three-Cup Flip

The performer can bring all three cups into line. Try it yourself under the same stated rules.

Han Xin Counts the Beans

Take a handful of red beans and report only the remainders after grouping them. See how the total is reconstructed.

From experience to explanation

Try the trick, reveal its mathematics, then optionally practise as the stallholder.

A note from the developer

We wanted to make a small game that first makes you wonder how something could happen, then makes you want to try it yourself.

A stall on an old street, a few playing cards, three cups: behind the mysterious performance are mathematical patterns you can observe, reason through and test. We want those patterns to become interactions you can see and manipulate, so revealing the method is enjoyable too.

Every trick therefore begins with your own experience. Keep a little suspense, then switch on the reveal view and lay the method out on the table. You can leave with the explanation, or take the stallholder's seat and perform the trick for the game's fictional visitors.

There are four tricks at present. Rather than piling on more questions, we care about whether each trick is clear, whether it surprises you, and whether the explanation makes you say, ‘So that's how it works.’

If a step is confusing, a result is unconvincing, or an interaction stutters, please tell us which trick and what happened. Those specific experiences help us improve the game. Thank you for taking a seat at this little stall.

Open on TapTap.