Thursday Puzzle: El Gricero and his assistant the lovely Malc

[Pondlife]

The great card magician El Gricero is in town aided as always by the lovely Malc. El Gricero takes a standard 52 card deck and has a member of the CUK audience shuffle and pick 5 random cards, which they give to the sequined Malc. Malc looks at them and takes four of these cards which he then puts in a neat pile on the table. The fifth card he gives back to our audience member. El Gricero looks at the four cards discarded and to much amazement and applause identifies the fifth card. There were no secret signals, special words spoken, or sleight of hand and there are no distinguishing features on the cards. The four cards were stacked neatly face down before El Gricero picked them up and made his pronouncement.

The four cards were QH 8C 2C AS. What is the fifth card?

No googling or spoilers.

If you want to PM or post 4 cards of your own I will tell you the fifth.

[Doggy Styles]

I'm giving this some thought. It might be too clever for me though.

[SimonMac]

If it involves Malc and Gricer it has to be the Joker

[BrilloPad]

I am sure the fact you need 5 cards is significant. As there are only 4 suits.

[SimonMac]

My four cards are as follows:

Mr Bun The Baker
Mrs Mug the Milkman's Wife
Master Pipe the Plumber's Son
Miss Plod the Policeman's Daughter

What is the 5th?

[chef]

jesus christ that's hard!! a good party trick though

even with googling and trying to calculate it I'm still not certain.. my suspected answer in white below..

5 hearts

[Pondlife]

How we all doing?

[BrilloPad]

How we all doing?

My brain hurts!

Why did you make it so hard to google?

[mudskipper]

The great card magician El Gricero is in town aided as always by the lovely Malc. El Gricero takes a standard 52 card deck and has a member of the CUK audience shuffle and pick 5 random cards, which they give to the sequined Malc. Malc looks at them and takes four of these cards which he then puts in a neat pile on the table. The fifth card he gives back to our audience member. El Gricero looks at the four cards discarded and to much amazement and applause identifies the fifth card. There were no secret signals, special words spoken, or sleight of hand and there are no distinguishing features on the cards. The four cards were stacked neatly face down before El Gricero picked them up and made his pronouncement.

The four cards were QH 8C 2C AS. What is the fifth card?

No googling or spoilers.

If you want to PM or post 4 cards of your own I will tell you the fifth.

Can this be solved from one example alone?

Or do we need more examples to work out the pattern?

[Pondlife]

Can this be solved from one example alone?

Or do we need more examples to work out the pattern?

You could work out a method and see if it fits or you can suggest four cards* and i'll give you the fifth

*Note to SM Standard playing cards please, no top trumps, D&D etc