Self-Working Card Tricks by Karl Fulves

Author:Karl Fulves [Fulves, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780486156569
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-22T04:00:00+00:00

47. LONG DISTANCE

Astonishing as it may seem, it is possible to perform card tricks over the telephone. This means that the magician, calling from a house that may be a town or a state away from the spectator, can reveal a card chosen by the spectator under conditions that are the most stringent imaginable; not only is the magician away from the deck when the card is being chosen, he may be hundreds or thousands of miles away!

Credit for devising the basic idea of a telephone trick is given to John Northern Hilliard. Over the years many clever minds have devised methods of performing a trick over the telephone. The following presentation, suggested by Audley Walsh, is one of the most impressive.

Call up a friend and explain that you would like to try a test in telepathy over the telephone. Ask him to bring a deck of cards to the phone. When he has done this, ask him to cut the deck into two approximately equal piles.

Then ask him to choose one of the piles and discard the other. He is to shuffle the chosen pile thoroughly. Then tell him to count the cards in this pile.

He will arrive at a two-digit number for his total, but caution him not to tell you the number. Instead, he is to mentally add together the two digits. Then he is to discard from his selected pile the same number of cards as the total of the two digits.

Instruct him to think of a number from 1 to 10, remove that number of cards from the chosen pile, and place them in his pocket. When he has done this, have him count down in the remainder of his selected pile to the same thought-of number and remember the identity of the card that lies at that position in the pile.

Now for the first time you ask him for some information. Tell him to hold his selected pile face-down in his left hand, deal cards one at a time off the top, and name them out loud to you. When he has read off all the cards, you immediately name the card he chose. Then as a topper you tell him the number of cards he has concealed in his pocket.

The method is easy and is never suspected. Before you call the spectator, bring a pad and pencil to the telephone. Instruct the spectator in the handling of the cards exactly as described above. When you reach the point where the spectator begins calling out the names of the cards one at a time, jot them down in a vertical column on the pad.

When he’s finished calling out the cards, count the number of cards listed on your pad. Whatever this number is, subtract it from 18. If your result is, for example, 6, then the spectator’s chosen card is the 6th one from the beginning of your list, and further, the spectator has exactly six cards in his pocket!

On rare occasions you will find that the spectator will call out more than 18 cards.

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