I decided to impress the grocery store owner next to my house. I did for him the magic square effect. He told me he would solve it less than a week. and he did. That freaked me out because he tought of a differend method of doing that. I went back home and put it down as a formula. Basicaly, now I can ask the spectator to fill the top line of the square with any numbers he wants and than I fill the rest of the squre to be perfect at all 28 possibilities.

Would youlike to share this formula ??

thansk glenn

Hmmm.....

I *think* I can see a way of doing this and, given that Magic Squares are old fashioned public-domain mathematical curiosities, and *not* magical secrets as such, I'll describe my idea below...


If the subject selects the numbers A, B, C and D for the top row, you can fill in the square as follows


A+0, B+0, C+0, D+0

C-1, D+1, A-1, B+1

D+2, C+2, B-2, A-2

B-1, A-3, D+3, C+1


This matrix has the nice property of supporting the 28 "standard" groups of 4. Basically, you get lots of sub groups containing one each of A,B,C and D --- with the other additions and subtractions cancelling each other out (if I've done it right!)


However, this sort of approach has a few problems:

* It is susceptible to having duplicate values within the final grid (unless the initial 4 values are VERY well chosen or, at least, quite widely separated)

* The subtractions could lead to negative results if you are given small initial numbers


Ultimately, I'm not sure if this is very practical, but perhaps someone can do something with it?

Well I don't know how everybody else thinks about this solution but I think it's great.

Thanks for sharing.

This is great!!!! I have been looking at a way that I can repeat my perfomance of the magic square, I do the version (i think it is created by anneman) that is taught in The Magic Book by H. Lorayne. I showed it to my maths teacher, and he worked out different "constant" numbers (that should make sence if you know the method). he worked out several alternate methods for me. (if you do do this method, if you PM me I will pass on the alternate numbers if you want).
But this allows for a different sort of climax, not only are you repeating the effect but you are allowing them to pick more than just the total of the row.
Thanks for the formula!
owen
P.S. Can someone verify for me whether the routine I talk about above is truely a creation of Anneman, in "The Secret Ways of Al Baker", there is a picture of Anneman showing baker the routine, and the caption reads: "Anneman teaching Baker his magic square". But is this really of his creation?

Thank you, MagicSquare, this is just what I was looking for to round out my use of magic squares.

Roei, if you haven't done so already, take a look at Doug Dyment's work on the subject at http://www.oratory.com/deceptionary/mindsights.html.

A nice program to construct a perfect magic square is given by Michael Doermann in
members.aol.com/mdormann/tricks/vernon.html

Bye,

(Pedro)

Thank you magicsquare,
I am working out a routine right now.

I think this is great also. Thank you.