Challenge of Inverted Playing Cards

One fine day, Mr. Puzzle and Mr. Fry were playing cards, but suddenly power went off and they were getting bored. So Mr. Puzzle randomly inverted position of 15 cards out of 52 cards(and shuffled it) and asked Mr. Fry to divide the card in two pile with equal number of inverted cards (number of cards in each pile need not be equal).

It was very dark in the room and Mr. Fry could not see the cards, after thinking a bit Mr. Fry divided the cards in two piles and quite surprisingly on counting number of inverted cards in both the piles were equal.

What do you think Mr. Fry must have done?


This is what he must have done! 

  

Equating Counts of Inverted Cards in Piles

What was the challenge?

Mr.Fry must have taken top 15 cards & inverted positions of all. So he divides deck into 2 piles - one with 15 cards & other 37 cards.

Now suppose if there are 7 cards that were inverted in top 15 & 8 were inverted in remaining 37. When he flips top 15, 7 remains in normal position & 8 remains in inverted position. That is equal to 8 cards in inverted position from pile of 37 cards.

In short, if there are N cards inverted in top 15 then there are  15 - N cards inverted in remaining 37 cards. So on flipping position of top 15, there will be 15 - N cards in inverted position in top 15. That's how both piles would have equal number of inverted cards i.e. 15-N.  

 

Had Mr.Puzzle inverted positions of 20 cards randomly then Mr. Fry would have flipped top 20 cards. He would have made 2 piles with one with 20 cards & other 32 cards to equate the count of inverted cards in piles.

Guess The Order Of Cards

A man sitting opposite you has four cards in his hand facing him: 2, 3, 4 and 5 (but not in that order). He wants them placed in ascending order from his left to his right. To do this, he takes the leftmost card (from your perspective) and puts it last. He then takes the third card from the right (your right) and puts it in the last place.

What was the previous order of the cards?

Order Of Cards?

Here was the previous order! 

Source 

Identified The Order of The Cards

How cards were shuffled? 

Since he puts the leftmost card (from our point of view) to it's opposite location that card must be 2 (that's the smallest one & needs to be first in ascending order).

So the last card (from his point of view) must be 2. We still don't know exact positions of 3,4,5. Now 2 is in first position

Now what he does is that, moves third card from his left (our right) to the last position. Now to be in ascending order the last card must be 5. So the card that he used in this move must be 5.

Since these 2 moves completes the ascending order, rest must be in ascending from left to right already i.e as 3 & 4 but 5 in between them.

Hence the order before he moved cards must be as 3,5,4,2.

  Previous Order of The Cards

 

Identify The Cards

From a pack of 52 cards ,I placed 4 cards on the table.

I will give you 4 clues about the cards:

Clue 1: Card on left cannot be greater than card on the right.
Clue 2: Difference between 1st card and 3rd card is 8.
Clue 3: There is no card of ace.
Clue 4: There is no face cards (queen,king,jacks).
Clue 5: Difference between 2nd card and 4th card is 7.

Identify four cards ?

Cards identified here!

Source 

Identified Cards From Clues

What was the task given? 

Let's list the clues once again here for our convenience.

Clue 1: Card on left cannot be greater than card on the right.
Clue 2: Difference between 1st card and 3rd card is 8.
Clue 3: There is no card of ace.
Clue 4: There is no face cards (queen,king,jacks).
Clue 5: Difference between 2nd card and 4th card is 7.

From Clue 4, it's very clear that there is no King, Queen or Jack card.

From Clue 2 & Clue 3, we have combinations of either 1,9 or 2,10 at first & third place. But Clue 3 eliminates the combination of 1,9.So at first place we have 2 & at third we have 10.

Again from Clue 5 & Clue 3, possible combinations at second & fourth place are 2,9 & 3,10. If it was 2,9 then 4 cards would have been like 2,2,10,9. But according to Clue 1 the card on left can't be greater than that at right. Here, the card at third place (10) is greater than that at fourth place (9) placed at right. Hence, this would be invalid combination.

Hence the correct combination for the second & fourth place is 3,10.

So we have 4 cards as 2,3,10,10.