This proposition has been kicking around for years, and sometimes I wonder how anybody can still be taken by it. When searching a directory Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute," he meant every word of it. Here's how the proposition works.

From a pile containing an unknown number of matches two players take turns removing matches. Each player may remove any number from one through six at each turn, and the one who takes the last match is the winner. Many puzzlers (puzzle fans) know the winning system behind this one: it has been printed and reprinted in the puzzle books for years. When the pile becomes small enough, the player who knows the secret counts the number remaining. He often uses a pencil to push aside the matches he wants to remove, thus slowing the game down a little so he has time to make the count. (The hustlers call him a pencil pusher.)

He divides his result by 7. When it does not divide evenly he re¬moves whatever numbers of matches are left over. As long as he leaves his opponent with a multiple of 7 each time, he will eventually win.

Left with a multiple of 7 him self he takes only one match. This gives him 5 chances out of 6 that an opponent who doesn't know the system won't reply by taking six matches, and he can take enough on the next turn to hit the next winning position. Once he hits one winning position he can hit all the others by noting the number his opponent takes and taking enough more to make a total of 7.

When only seven matches remain and it is the opponent's turn he can't win because he cannot remove more than six and the last match is captured by the puzzler. You have almost no chance of winning if you don't know the system when playing against someone who does.

In this swindle it's not the chump who doesn't know the system that the hustler goes to work on; the guy who does know it is the one who makes the best victim. Take the time Doc Peters, a carnie from way back, spotted a puzzler using the pencil in a saloon in Montana. The Doc let his mark win 20 clams at his sure-thing game to make him feel confident, and then said he had to get back to the show but had time for one gamer, provided the stakes were worthwhile. "Make it a hun¬dred," the puzzler said, sure that he wasn't giving Doc anything but the very smallest chance. "Make it five hundred," Doc answered, and the chump agreed.

They broke open a new box of matches, discarded half at random to make sure neither player could know the starting number. Both Doc and the puzzler played quickly at first. Then, as the pile became smaller, the puzzler began to use his pencil to slow it down. And Doc, of course, counted the matches too. The count was 38. The puzzler took away three, and each time thereafter took away as many as Doc did plus enough to add to 7. Then, at the end, the pencil pusher's confident grin suddenly vanished. He found that on his last turn there were seven matches left and that it was Doc who held the final winning position.

Doc collected the five C-notes, said a cheerful good night and took it on the lam. The cute psychological bit here is that the puzzler never rumbles the gaff; he always decides he must have miscounted. What the mark did not suspect was that Doc used a pinch of sleight of hand. Once he saw that the mark had gotten a count, on his turn he reached toward the pile with one match palmed and pretended to take it away, but actually removed nothing. From then on it was Doc who hit the winning positions, and the wise guy with the sure thing was riding for a fall.

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