Hello everyone,

This game is adapted from one of Joyce's books (Comprehensive curriculum for gifted learners, 2d ed); my former students loved it!  Your family can easily build a Krypto deck out of index cards.  If you want to see the entire Krypto challenge, email me, and I will send it.

Read on and have fun!

Krypto

 "The game of Krypto is a card game that uses a deck of cards numbered 1-25 (three each of cards l-10, two each of cards  1-17, and one each of cards 18-25), A hand of five cards is dealt, then a sixth card that serves as a target number is dealt. The object of the game is to use all five cards in any order combined with any of the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and/or division to obtain a result that is given by the number on the target card. Solutions may not be unique. Some hands may be unsolvable (packaging indicates this is the case in about 1/3,000 hands).

Card-1      Card-2 Card-3  Card-4   Card-5

Example:  Hand dealt:   5    12            3                7                   20

Target card:  2

Possible solution: 12 divided by (3 x 7 -20 + 5).  See they way in which all of the numbers on the cards listed above (5,12, 3, 7, and 20) produced the number on the target card (2).

Play Krypto with a partner or small group. Call "Krypto" when you think you have a solution; present it orally. Keep track of how many hands you win.  

Bonus question:  How do you think the developers of the game concluded that about 1 in every 3,000 hands is unsolvable? "