I saw this on TV a few years ago but can never figure it out.
The trick is, a man is strapped spread-eagled in an X-shaped rack. The device has his hands and arms trapped so he can’t move. A round metal arm is lowered onto his chest. It has an O shaped opening that is blocked from view with some fabric. The thing looks like this:
…O./
…|/
…O
…|
…|
…/.
…/…\
The woman gets behind the guy and then literally climbs through the hole in his chest! How do they do that? From what I could remember, there really wasn’t enough room for her to wiggle her way around the body and out of the hole, the metal arm was simply too close to his body. I don’t really remember any other characteristics about that rack but it didn’t seem like he could the bottom of his body anywhere. Besides, he stepped into the rack in full view of the audience.
Also, another magic trick. This was done to me years ago and I can’t figure it out either. The guy said, pick a card, any card, so I did. He doesn’t see it what card it is. Then I put it back into the deck and shuffle it. He then takes the deck and spread it face-down messily on the ground. He looks at the cards for a second, then he points to a card, turns it up, and magically it’s the card I picked. How the hell did he do that?
Or it could have been a Svengali deck where every other card is the same card, and slightly shorter than the other half of “regular cards.” You can shuffle them one way to show a mixed deck, but if you shuffle the other direction you see only the “same card” half of the deck.
The most common way to do any “Pick a card” trick is with a force. Through a variety of mechanisms, the performer forces you to take a predetermined card. For instance, I may start fanning through the deck until you say “Stop.” When you say stop, I will (through sleight-of-hand) inserst a three of clubs into the deck where I stopped as I cut the deck in half and hold the bottom half out (laden with the three of clubs) for you to take your card.
Without more detail about your example I’d have a hard time knowing with force mechanism was used. But if you google “Card Force” you’ll see a ton of youtube videos with different examples.
As for the first question, it’s been shown on that “Magic’s Biggest Mysteries Revealed” show(or whatever it’s called). There IS room for the girl to wiggle around the guy’s ribs, it’s just an optical illusion designed to look like it’s not. I never really liked that trick because it’s just so clear that there is no other way it would be possible (it’s very clear the top and bottom half of the man are real, so how else could it possibly be done?).
That’s just what they want you to think!
Most of the apparatus used in tricks like this is designed to look like there’s no extra room, but really there is. One of my old favorites is the vertical 3-part box, where the assistant steps in and the magician slides out the middle part containing her torso, while her head and legs remain in place. It’s a very convincing illusion, but “illusion” is indeed the key word. If you get a closer look at the box, you’ll find there’s really plenty of space for the assistant to remain firmly in one piece. Yet the way the box is built and painted, and the angle at which it’s shown to the audience, makes it seem otherwise. The same principles apply for the illusion you describe.
I can probably think of at least a dozen different ways to do the “pick a card” trick, depending on the precise details. And one thing you can count on with magic audiences, is that nobody but another magician is going to remember the details precisely enough. Given what you told us, though, I think the most likely is that he used an asymmetric deck. This could be that the picture on the back of the cards is asymmetric (it has a “right side” and a “wrong side” to be up), or it could be a subtle difference in shape (the cards are slightly trapezoidal, rather than perfectly rectangular). Either way, after you look at the card and put it back in the deck, the magician arranges for you to put it back upside-down relative to the other cards. When he spreads them out on the table, he just has to see which one is upside-down, and that’s your card.
Other possible methods for the “pick a card” trick (not all of which could necessarily have been used for the trick you saw):
The backs of the cards are marked, and he saw what your card was when you were looking at it.
There’s a mirror (or other reflective surface) behind you, and he saw what the card was in the reflection.
He had an assistant standing behind you who saw the card, and signaled what it was to the magician without you noticing.
He forced you to pick that card by virtue of every card in the deck being identical.
He forced you to pick that card by arranging the cards in piles and asking you to select some piles, or some cards in each pile, then either discarded the piles you selected, or saved the piles you selected and discarded the others.
He asked you what the card was, and then after you told him, produced evidence that he already knew (told you to open a particular envelope, or to look under your chair, or to look under the table, or whatever). No matter what card you said, he had something prepared for it.
He made a wild guess, and was planning on turning the trick into a joke in the likely event that he guessed wrong.
He had you put your card on the top or bottom of the deck, and used a trick shuffle to keep it on the top or the bottom.
He had you put your card right next to a different, known card in the deck, and used a trick shuffle to keep those cards next to each other.
He had you pick your card from a limited set of cards, and then claimed to have removed your card from that limited set, when he’s actually showing you a completely different set of cards (you see this one sometimes on Web pages).
Now that I think about it Chronos, it did seem like he was staring at the back of the cards carefully. It may have just been an asymmetrical deck.
It couldn’t have been any of the other things because there wasn’t another person in the room, there were no mirrors, I shuffled, not him, and I specifically looked through the deck to make sure it wasn’t all the same card.