A neat self-working card trick. Got any?

Cafe Society
1

When I was quite young (I’d have to guess at the actual age) my Dad taught me a card trick. First, you deal out, two at a time, ten little stacks of cards, face down. Have your trickee memorize the two cards in any one stack and return them, face down, to the layout. (This trick will work with up to ten trickees!)

Being careful not to intermix the little stacks, pick all ten up before beginning the next phase.

This next step requires you to visualize a 4X5 arrangement of four 5-letter words:

G O O S E
B I B L E
A T L A S
T H I G H

Notice that each word has its own double letter and that each word shares a letter with the other three.

With these “phantom words” as a guide. Deal out the twenty cards in such a way as to set down letter pairs. For example, you could make your first move be the two O’s in “goose” and your second move be the “G” in “goose” and the “G” in “thigh.” In any case, be sure to keep the dealing in matched letters order.

Now ask you trickee(s) to point to the row or rows where his/her/their cards are. (If you have more than one trickee, it’s easier if you do each trickee’s cards separately, so as not to have to add to your memory problems – unless you want to add an additional level of excitement and run the risk of blowing the trick! – and you trust your memory to keep those extra things in mind before you work the trick.)

To finish, simply pick up the two cards indicated by “row or rows” and hand them to the trickee. Voila!

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You could make up your own words that fit the description above. In fact, the words my Dad used were:

O T H A T
N A N C Y
R O S S Y
C H E E R

But since I had no idea what an “othat” was, I made up my own.

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If there are more than two replies to this thread, and if there’s at least one request for it, I’ll tell you another one.

Whatever, have you any self-working tricks you can share?

2

My sister seems to think this trick is an ancient family secret that I shouldn’t share. My counterargument is, bugger that.

Start with 21 cards and a rube who will believe you when you say that you’re going to demonstrate how to infuse a playing card with psychic energy… Fan the cards out facing away from you, and have the trickee (love the term!) look at the cards and, without touching them, pick one card and memorize it and pour their psychic energy into it.

Shuffle the cards, and then deal them face up into three piles (deal one card into each pile before dealing the second into each pile, and so forth). When you’re done, have the trickee point to the pile in which their card appears. Tell them that pointing to this pile gives it extra energy, focusing on it. (Use similar silly patter throughout the trick).

Now, and this is where the trick happens, pick up the three piles of cards, making sure that the pile in which the trickee’s card appears is in the middle. [The trickee’s card is now 8,9,10,11,12,13, or 14 in the stack of 21 cards].

Repeat: deal them out face-up into three piles, and have the trickee choose which pile their card is in. Pick up the three piles, making sure you put the trickee’s pile in the middle. [Because you dealt the trickee’s card into the third, fourth, or fifth slot in one of the three piles, the trickee’s card is now number 10, 11, or 12 in the stack of 21 cards).

Repeat the dealing process once more, and put the trickee’s stack in the middle once more. [Because you dealt out the trickee’s card into the fourth slot of one of the piles, the trickee’s card is now number 11 in the stack of 21 cards].

Now say that you’re getting a strong energy from the trickee’s card, you can feel it pulsing with energy, and slowly deal the cards out, face up. Before turning a card over, caress it with great concentration, furrow your brow, frown, and shake your head, saying, “No, not this one.” Secretly count the cards. When you reach the eleventh card, spend an extra long while caressing it, saying, “Hmmm…” and finally, “Yes, I can feel it. This is it.”

Turn it over, and Bob’s your uncle!

3

Shuffle a pack of cards, and meanwhile ask the victim to think of a number between one and ten. Ask them to silently count to that number while you slowly deal cards face up in a pile, one at a time. When they reach the number, they are to take the face value of the latest card and continue counting with the new number (court cards count as ten). Repeat until there are not enough cards left for the next number. When they reach the end of their final count you will mysteriously be declare as you turn it over that this is their final card.

The trick is to follow exactly the same process as the victim, but with your own starting number. It’s highly likely that you will arrive at the same last card, whatever number you start with. With a double deck it’s even more likely.

4

“…mysteriously be able to declare…”

5

The other trick I was going to share is so much like Usram’s that I’ll go ahead and explain it, even though the request is lacking.

Start with a shuffled deck of 52. Turn up a card face up. Using the value of that card as a starting number (Ace counts as one), continue dealing cards, one at a time, to that stack until you count off up to 10-J-Q-K. (If you turn a face card, count up from it to K.) Deal as many such stacks as you can until you either run out of cards on the last “K” (unlikely) or with a stack that doesn’t count all the way to “K.” You ought to have several stacks when you’re done with the dealing. Turn all stacks over so they’re all face down. Keep that last unfinished stack (assuming there is one) in your hand.

Ask your mark to pick up all but three stacks and hand them to you. Then ask the mark to turn over the top card of any two stacks. Add these two cards together, using 11 for Jack, 12 for Queen, and 13 for King. Add 10 to that number. Count off from the cards in your hand (those the mark gave you plus whatever was left from the original dealing) that number of cards. Then count off what’s left.

That count will be the value of the remaining stack’s top card.

6

Zeldar
The first trick you mentioned was the one I was going to suggest. I read about that many years ago in a magic book and the suggested mnemonic was:

 D  A  V  I  D
 L  O  V  E  L
 I  N  Y  O  N
 A  B  B  E  Y

I believe the author was British, hence the rather British-sounding phrase.
I think the author said the trick goes back to Roman times and he showed a mnemonic in Latin that was used about 2000 years ago. (I do not remember the Latin phrase).

I have another card trick but it doesn’t use the standard 52 card deck.
Go to this webpage: http://www.1728.com/cards.htm

I think you can figure out how the trick is done. Also, it would be a simple matter to use your printer and get a set of those six cards.

7

I believe I’ve seen that same trick, wolf_meister. In fact, I believe I must have a set of those cards I made up using old IBM cards and a magic marker.

Is it possible that the Roman “word square” looked anything like this:

S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S

I forget the true significance of this group, but it does have an interesting property that, unfortunately, doesn’t solve the card trick problem. I believe it’s some “magical” device. Guess I’ll go Googling for it…

8

Zeldar
Here is some information I found about the trick and the mnemonics that have been used:
http://climagic.free.fr/climagic/defis/011/sol05.htm
It is an impressive trick by the way.

9

Have someone shuffle a full deck of 52 cards. Tell them you are not going to disrupt their shuffle, just remove a single card as a prediction.

As you look through the deck, look at the ninth card from the bottom of the deck and remove the card that is the same color and value as it is. Place this card face down nearby.

Square the deck up and give back the participant face down. Have the participant start turning over cards one at a time into a pile. As they turn over the first card have them say “ten”, as they turn over the second card have them say “nine”, etc. Continue until they turn over a card that has the same value as the word they are saying or until they reach “one” and have had no matches. If there was no match place a card face down on top of the pile. If there was a match just leave the pile with the matched card on top.
Do three more piles (starting each one with “ten”). After you have four piles have the participant add up the top numbers on all the stacks (counting face down cards zero). Have them deal to this card in the deck (i.e. If the numbers add up to ten, have them deal to the tenth card.) Explain that you predicted what that card would be by picking its mate (the card with the same value and color), then reveal the cards to show that they match.

A couple of notes:

If the card you remove at the beginning is further down in the deck than the ninth card from the bottom, then the matching card will be the one after the last card they deal to in the deck not the last one.

When they are counting down, you can tell them face cards count ten or you can allow them to choose the value of the face cards at the beginning. As long as you use the same value all the way through the trick will still work.

10

This one is almost self working. It relies on one piece of misdirection that is so strong, you will make this work every time.

Take the 4 aces and 12 other indifferent cards. Deal the 4 aces onto 4 different spots on the table (in a line), then deal the remaining 12 cards evenly onto each ace. The layout should show an ace on the bottom of 4 card a pile. Now stack each of the piles on top of each other. Spread the cards out so that the spectators can see that every 4th card in the spread is an ace.

Now scoop up the spread and turn the cards face down and deal each of the cards one at a time onto the 4 piles. Deal them saying, “Card - Card - Card - Card.”, then take the next card from your pile and as you are getting ready to deal it onto pile #1, stop and point with that hand to pile #4 and ask, “What is this card here?” The specatator will say it’s an ace, you have them turn it over to show that it is, in fact, and ace. As they do this, you take the card in your hand and place it on the bottom of the pile of card you have in your hands and quickly take the top card from the pile to replace it. This will throw off where all the aces land. They will now land on pile #3. Have the spectator turn over the ace on pile #4 and continue dealing the cards out, now calling out, “Card - Card - Card - Ace.” until you have dealt out all the cards.

Your situation now is that you have 4 piles of 4 cards with the 3rd pile containing one card and 3 aces, and the 4th pile containing 1 ace and 3 cards. Get rid of piles 1 and 2. Explain that like cards tend to follow each other. Move the bottom cards from piles 3 and 4 around, turn them over and then turn over the rest of the respective piles, showing that the aces have moved to pile #3 and the other cards have moved to pile #4.

11

The sower Arepo holds the wheels at work

12

Simple but effective: you hold a shuffled deck of cards behind your back. Hold it out in front of you without looking at the top card, then name the card. Put the cards behind your back, bring it out, name the top card again.

How it’s done:

When you first get the deck, take a look at the bottom card. Flip the card over the deck so it’s on the top and facing outward. Show the card to your audience and state it’s name. Meanwhile, take a look at the new bottom card. Move behind your back and slide the card to the top. Hold up the deck and say the name of the card. Repeat.

13

Shuffle a deck of cards. While doing so, surreptitiously peek at the top card. Ask the mark for a number between 5 and 15, out loud (9, for example). Tell the mark that they are to deal out cards face down equal to the number they named. Demonstrate this as they do it. This will “load” the top card into the 9th position.

Now have them actually do it, and look at the last card they dealt out, which is the card you looked at. You can do any kind of reveal you want, even as simple as naming it or wirting it down. Or, you get trickier. Instead of simply peeking at the top card, you can put a card of your choice on top. That lets you do a cool reveal that you planned ahead of time, like sealing a prediction in an envelope, freezing a duplicate card in a block of ice, or tattooing it on your chest.