Claire Reid
Eagle-eyed social media users reckon they spotted the second a secret piece of chocolate being added during a ‘trick' that is doing the rounds.
In case you haven’t yet seen it, the ‘trick’ involves a bar of chocolate made up of 15 squares - five rows of three. In the clip, the squares are reassembled into four rows of four - 16 squares in total - before being laid out as five rows of three with one piece over. You can see it here:
Magic, eh? Well, maybe not.
The video, which has been shared widely on X, formerly known as Twitter, asks: "Where did the extra piece come from?"
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And it wasn’t long before folks answered - and it turns out that magic or maths don’t feature.
Responding to the post, one person said: “Initially 3 x 5 = 15 But then 4 x 4 = 16. Apparently he added one piece.”
Another commented: “One was added. It was initially 15 then they added one to make it 16 and complete as four in a row, so when they got it back to the previous three in a row there was an extra because three in a row is 15.”
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However, others went further and were able to show when the extra square was added.
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Sharing a screenshot, an X user posted: “Cheating… this one was under his hand.”
A second said: “It comes in about seven seconds into the video when the person slides the extra piece in.”
While someone else wrote: “Extra piece is placed at this moment as the 4th square in the third row.”
A fourth shared a screenshot and chipped in: “Here he sneaks in a square from the outside. There is two empty spaces and he only grabs one square but when he moves his hands the two empty spaces are full.”
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So you mean to tell me it’s not actually magic then? Ah well.
The clip is reminiscent of the ‘infinite chocolate’ trick that does seemingly end up with an ‘extra’ square of chocolate, but in that trick it’s a simple matter of where cuts are made to the bar to make it seem as though an extra piece has appeared from nowhere.
The illusion works by spacing out the volume of the chocolate bar. By dividing the bar up and rearranging it, you are displacing enough chocolate to remove a whole chunk from the bar - and even when you understand how the trick works, it’s still pretty cool.