Magical Originalities
Ernest E. Noakes
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An Amusing Card Effect
THE little wheeze I now explain permits of several "effects" to which it can be harnessed, and I will give one or two so as to help the idea along. Picking up a pack of cards, I give a portion each to two persons, requesting them to examine and shuffle the same. Having done this, they select a card each, hand me the remaining cards, and replace theirs in the same. I now instantly shuffle the cards, and yet find their cards.
I have "perpetrated" the trick on some very well-known magicians, but none of them could fathom the secret.
I feel almost that an apology is needed for the "secret" being "divulged," but I think the reader will do as I did when he is in the know, and laugh to think--"Why didn't I think of that before?"
The pack is "halved" into odd and even. The odd cards go to one person, the even to the other; they each shuffle their cards and select a card from their "half" (it is not quite half, as there are twenty-four even and twenty-eight odd cards-counting aces, jacks, and kings as "odd" cards, and the queen as "even." I take the remainder of the cards from each, and see that the even card selected is placed in the odd quantity, and vice versa. I now false shuffle, and the cards can then be named or produced at will by the performer.
A second effect is to cut the cards into two heaps on your table (by the bridge or any other method), and request someone to take either heap and shuffle it well; then have a free selection of one, two, or three cards. You take back the rest of his half and place it on the table whilst he is showing his selected cards to the audience. You now pick up the other half from the table, hand them to him, and request him to place his cards with them and again "shuffle them well." You now find the three cards, either palm them off and produce elsewhere, or just name them. There are many uses to which this wheeze can be put, and if the reader will try the effects quietly with a pack of cards, I am confident his interest will be awakened.
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