RAY: I'm going to hand you a deck of normal playing cards-- 52 cards and no jokers. You're going to be placed into a darkened room. You'll also be blindfolded, and you'll be naked.
TOM: Are you going to stick pokers in my eyes, too?
RAY: The deck of cards will have 13 of the 52 cards turned face up. They're all mixed up in the deck. You don't know where they are. And you can't tell.
TOM: Because I'm blindfolded.
RAY: Right. Your challenge is to arrange the cards in two piles so that each pile has the same number of cards facing up.
TOM: How can I do that? There's 13 of them.
RAY: That's your problem. But here's a hint: they don't have to be equal piles. But, if the main deck winds up with, say, 9 face-up cards, the other pile has to have 9 face-up cards, too.
Got a clue how to solve this card conundrum?
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
