Problem

Source:

Tags: combinatorics



A Magician has a deck of $52$ cards. Spectators want to know the order of cards in the deck(without specifying face-up or face-down). They are allowed to ask the questions “How many cards are there between such-and-such card and such-and-such card?” One of the spectators knows the card order. Find the minimal number of questions he needs to ask to be sure that the other spectators can learn the card order. (9)