So tell me how it works... I've never been able to get my head round this sort of thing.

ok I'll give you a hint so you can think a bit more on it. All the numbers you come up with by adding and subtracting like that are all divisible by 9.

That's the key.

it's still extremely creepy. i did it like 7 times because i wanted to outsmart it. i managed to once. but it was because i cheated and just glanced around at all of them i am smarter than the average monkey.

you're a monkey all right!!! But a cute one!!!

That was cool....fun too!

thanks

Neato. I've seen things like this before. Thanks for sharing!

I emailed it to my husband who's a calculus junkie (though I doubt that makes much of a difference). He thought it was neat but didn't give it much further thought.

Now how does each answer being divisible by 9 have anything to do with the program "knowing" which of the many possible answers we ended up with?

~~edit~~I figured it out after revisiting it with my hubby after dinner. I'll spoil it now: Every ninth symbol is the same, but they switch up the symbols every time so it appears that they're reading one's mind.

Of course you already knew that, but I just wanted to share my personal triumph with you And ruin it for anyone else who reads this. Sorry.

Yes you got it Angela. I didn't want to spoil it right away so I waited a bit but I'm glad you figured it out. I figured it had to be magic or math and since I'm not a big fan of magic I went with the math. But it did creep me out like I said for a while until I could see why it worked every time.

Maybe it was the witch flying around......