Target Number (May 16 through 18)

Preparation: Take a deck of cards and separate out all of the face cards (eliminate

Jacks, Queens, and Kings);You should have 40 remaining cards from Ace to 10 in

four suits.

1. draw 5 cards face up.

2. draw a 6th card face up and place separately from the first 5.

3. begin combining all 5 cards using addition, substraction, multiplication

and/or division to result in the 6th card; there will be multiple methods to reach

your solution.

For example, you draw the 5 cards: 2, 3, 8, 8 and 9.

the 6th card is a 4.

you find that 8 ÷ 8 = 1; 9 - 3 = 6; take the result from the previous

two calculations with the first 4 cards and combine 6 x 1 = 6;

finally 6 - 2 = 4

For example, you draw the 5 cards: 4, 7, 2, 3, and 1

the 6th card is a 3.

you find that 7 x 3 = 21; 2 + 1 = 3; and 21 ÷ 3 = 7; 7 - 4 = 3.

4. if you are the first one to find the solution, you keep the 6 cards.

5. the player with the most cards wins (since there are 40 nonface cards in a

deck, there are 6 rounds in a deck). Once the deck is finished, you can reshuffle

and start again or keep a running total.

6. NOTE: Sometimes you will see the solution instantaneously, and sometimes,

it may take you 15 minutes to find a solution (HINT: go into negative numbers)

If you do not have a partner and a deck of cards, go to the web site http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?id=173

and play this game against the computer.  They call it  Primary Krypto.