'Think of a number' trick

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I heard this at work and it’s great. USUALLY works.

  1. Think of a number from 1-10
  2. Multiply it by 9.
  3. You now have a two-figure number - add the figures together. If you don’t have a two-figure number, leave it be.
  4. Subtract 5.
  5. Take the number of letters in the number you’ve got now. So if it’s “seven”, you have five letters, so you get the number five.
  6. Using the principal that A=1, B=2, etc, relate the number to a letter of the alphabet.
  7. Think of a country starting with that letter.
  8. Take the second letter of the country’s name and think of a four-legged animal with that initial.
  9. And now…

TAKE THAT ELEPHANT BACK TO DENMARK!

(IF YOU PICKED “Dominican Republic” INSTEAD OF “Denmark”, YOU CAN JOIN MY MOTHER AND ALL THE OTHER SPOILSPORTS IN FEELING SMUG THAT I NOW LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT)

Otherwise pretty cool huh?

2

I’ve used the same trick, but not specified ‘four legged animal’ since people usually guess elephant, and also asked for the colour. There’s always a smartarse though.

3

and all because the digits of any number multiplied by 9 always add up to 9.

Isn’t Maths a wonderful thing? :smiley:

4

Um, eagle was the first animal that came to mind.

5

Whups, I missed that 4-legged part. Hell, wings are legs, I’m sticking with it.

6

I always get a jackal from Djibouti. But then I usually fall into the “smartass” category.

7

Umm, “Dalmatia” yields an “A” and what do I do with the aardvark?

8

I got the same answer. Oddly, I came up with Djibouti, and thought “That can’t be the answer they’re looking for…what other country starts with ‘D’?” And I also picked jackal, although jackalope was a close second.

9

4 wings?

10

I thought of Djibouti too, but my animal was a jaguar (my first animal was “giraffe” but then I said, “that doesn’t start with J! silly me.”)
Jump, shake Djibouti
Jump Jump, shake Djibouti

11

Pick any number. (For simplicity’s sake, make it an integer between one and ten.)

Square the number.
To the result, add three times the number
Divide the result by the number.
Add 39 to the result.
Subtract the original number.

And you have now arrived at: --------> 42.
Damn, I’m good.

(My dad and I used to play this game in the car when I was a kid.)

12

Yup, I got elephant and Denmark. I’ve never heard of this trick before. It’s pretty neat.

13

I’ve heard that one before, but it was slightly different. Use the same formula as in the OP.

Once you go through all the math and arrive at your final number:

  1. Think of a country starting with that letter (A=1, B=2, etc).

  2. Now take the last letter of that country’s name and think of an animal that starts with that letter.

  3. Last, take the last letter of that word (the animal) and think of a fruit that begins with that letter.

Which gives you…

A kangaroo eating an orange in Denmark. (Or, if you’re one of those smug people, you have a cat eating a tangerine in the Dominican Republic :))

14

OK, take any number between 1 and 10

Multiply it by 2

Add your original number to it.

Subtract twice your number from that.

Multiply that by 5

Square that number

Divide the result by 4

Add 17.6 to it

Take it’s cube root and inverse it.

Move up to the next real number and multiply it by “e”

Divide by “i”

Factor out Zeno’s paradox and graph the all the numbers you’ve gotten on each step based on a 3 dimentional binary graphing system

Connect the dots to form a really cool picture!

15

My friend at work said “ewe”.
Damn creative people!

Eweboss

16

I think I did something wrong.

I got an Ant from Canada.

I’ll try again

17

I screwed up too. I got a rabbit from France.

I think I was fuzzy on this step.

Oh well… I did this once before, and I had an emu from Denmark.

18

I got an Echidna in Denmark.

19

Pretty nifty! George Boole and Pythagoras fighting over an abacus! Or did I miscalculate somewhere?

20

Or a koala eating an apple/apricot/avocado. Or an iguana eating same in Djibouti. Or an auk eating kiwi fruit in Dominica. Or…