Friday, October 08, 2004

Interruption

Four players are playing Bridge on a saturday evening and during one of their games, when one player starts dealing the cards abruptly stops as he had recived some urgent telephonic message. He attends the phone and comes back to deal the rest of the cards. He is not supposed to ask any of the remaining players as to how much cards have been dealt to them nor should he himself count his own cards dealt already. Also he should not count the rest of the cards he is holding. He has to complete the dealing without any error. For solving this puzzle one need not know any thing about the game bridge and it is enough if one knows that a pack of cards contains 52 cards and no joker for the purpose of playing bridge. How to solve the problem?

Answer:

Since the total number of cards is 52 and the number of players are four, and 52 is divisible by 4, the dealer should get the last card. Therefore he should deal the cards starting from the last card to himself, the penultimate card to the person sitting in the anti-clockwise direction. If one starts doing in this way he can accomplish the mission without asking to anybody nor counting his own cards.