She likes sheep but not lamb, and beef, but not veal …
and she’s related to Silly Sally from Walla Walla.
Since several other people here have already explained the trick, I’ll just add that William Poundstone covered it fairly thoroughly in one of his “Secrets” books. He was explaining how Uri Geller was able to drive a car while blindfolded.
Another possibility is that she was using a Svengali deck (I think thats what its called anyway). Normally these decks have half of a normal deck and the other half all the same card, all about half a millimeter shorter in length than the other cards. Some pretty amazing tricks can be performed with this type of deck, amazing that is until someone catches on to the gag. The shorter cards look perfectly normal in the deck, shuffle normally, etc, but it is very easy to distinguish them simply by comparing the egdes of the card to the rest of the squared up deck. This can be done very quickly as each card is drawn by the other hand. In this trick, of course, she could have had short cards red, long cards black. This would require no collusion whatsoever and no seeing through the blindfold.
slight hijack, but interesting (I think).
I once saw a truly blind guy (as he was introduced) (as opposed to “legally” blind) separate a deck of cards into a pile of face cards and numeric cards very quickly. As fast as he could flip a card from the deck in his his left hand into his open palm, he decided on the card and dropped into an appropriate pile. This was done with all the above trappings, new, sealed deck, shuffled etc. The difference was that the deck was shown the entire time. It was fanned out to show that is was in order when opened. The jokers were removed and the deck was shuffled. It was fanned again showing the mixing of the cards. The dude only made two or three mistakes. Showmanship? I doubt it. How’d he do it? easy! He explained it as the face cards have more ink than other cards, thus they weigh more. Sure it’s slight, but he could tell the difference.
Mebbe he’s teachin a class somewheres!
No one’s yet mentioned another possibility, so let me bring up the “nose peek.” The human face is not flat, so it’s nearly impossible (without glue) to get a blindfold to follow exactly the contours of the face and nose. Generally, the nose creates a little gap on either side.
I’ve read about “psychics” who have ping-pong ball halves attached to their eyelids, then have a thick blindfold (not burlap) filled with oatmeal tied over that. Then they identify small objects without touching them and do other tricks to demonstrate that they can see. (The usual explantion I’ve heard is that they’re using a “third eye” or some other New Age gobbledgook thing on their foreheads. But what they really do is peek down their noses.)
There’s no reason why more than one of these couldn’t be true, of course. The woman could have been peeking down her nose and able to partially see through the burlap. But I doubt the deck was stacked; usually these tricks are done in much simpler ways.
An interesting set of guesses! Well done, Cervaise, for providing as much detail as you did. Without the detail, we can guess the answer but never really know. With the details, at least we stand a chance!
Ignore the ‘Svengali’ deck idea. Such a deck cannot be used for this trick.
Stacked deck? The stack would have to be more sophisticated than either Si Stebbins or other very common stacks (which typically do not include Jokers, by the way). Also, as a rule, stacks are specifically not used in tricks where all 52 cards will be turned face up in sequence - since this tends to render the stacked sequence rather conspicuous. This is especially true if the demo is being videotaped in such a way that the sequence of cards can be analysed at leisure.
Gaffed blindfold? There is absolutely no need for it to be a professional item as supplied by Abbotts and others, and from the description it doesn’t sound like one.
Ungaffed blindfold, but she can see through it anyway? Quite possibly.
Gaffed cards? From the description of the back design, and the trick itself, the deck was neither faked nor professionally gaffed and does not have to be.
The most interesting part of the description is this:
I see three options here, and the correct solution depends on which applies:
(a) Cards are face down. She sorts the cards into red and black piles while the cards are still face down. Later, cards are turned over to see if she is right (all red in red pile, all black in black pile). (b) Cards are face down. She takes each card, guesses if r or b, then turns it face up to show she’s right, then proceeds to next card. © Cards are face down, she takes first card, turns it face up, then commits to whether it’s r or b.
Also, when you say “quickly and efficiently”, how long did it take to get through all 54 cards? Could you provide some sort of estimate? This affects how likely it is that she was using a stack.
Next point. One student took care of shuffling the cards. What can you tell me about how this student was selected, and by whom? And what can you tell me (if anything) about the likelihood of this student having been in collusion? This also affects the right answer.
The thing can be done without stacks, confederates or fake blindfolds, although these are all reasonably good guesses, but I need answers to the above before I can take it any further for you.
Okay, so this is irrelevant. I remember seeing (on TV) a blind person who could sort the face cards from the deck. He did it by the slight differences in the mass of the cards with more ink. It was cool to watch and he didn’t claim to have psychic powers, just practice at being able to beat the crap out of unsuspecting souls who sat at his 21 table on the riverboat.
Sorry to disappoint you, Sigene, but it’s a trick. One cannot sort the ‘face’ or ‘court’ cards by ‘weight of ink’. We all know that blind people are sometimes credited with heightened sensitivity in other faculties, but even so, the ‘weight of ink’ difference, if it exists at all, is simply too minuscule to detect. However, the ‘weight of ink’ theme is often used by we magicians as an intriguing line of patter. Trust me, it can’t be done for real!
So how did the guy on the TV show do what he did? It’s impossible to say without seeing the show, or having a very detailed account from someone who knows what to look for. But there are dozens of methods.
I would be interested in knowing if the situation was a, b, or c as well. If it is situation a, she was just doing “Out of this World” with the entire deck.
If she was doing situation b she could be using a confederate signaling her. Most likely she was able to see through the blindfold somehow.
If she was doing situation c, she could be doing it herself and again, just be seeing through the blindfold somehow.
The fact that the instructor had to stop the demonstration half way through to “straighten the piles” makes me think it is situation a and she was just performing the “Out of this World” routine. Do you happen to remember what situation this was? FYI, I do perform the “Out of this World” routine and have a regular audience member do the sorting. When they are done, the cards are all dealt out face up and they are all separated. The fact that an audience member does this with the entire deck makes this effect especially powerful.
Answers to recent inquiries:
It was C. Deck is in left hand, face side down. Right hand comes in, takes top card, turns it over so face is up; immediately goes to red or black pile. “Quickly and efficiently” means this happens as fast as it would by someone who was sorting the colors without a blindfold.
I do not believe the student was in collusion, but as Duck Duck Goose points out, this could of course be part of the con. If it was, it was really well acted. The instructor offered the deck to the group in general; there was a moment of hesitation as various people looked at one another, y’know, the classic “Don’t pick me” reaction you get when you ask for a volunteer. Two people raised their hands, looked at each other, and then one put their hand down and the remaining person got it after a moment of “You sure?” offering back. Again, if this was staged, it was done really well.
Further, the class was pretty small, less than 20, at an already small college. Everybody was known to everybody else, at least to some degree; it wasn’t like there was one “extra” person in class nobody recognized. If the student was in collusion, she had to have been approached beforehand to actively engage in the fraud, she had to have agreed, and she had to have not shared her participation with her classmates after the trick, meaning keeping her mouth shut for weeks. The alternative is that the student was a plant from the beginning of class, which I think beggars belief. Sure, any of this is possible, but far less likely in my mind than a clever bit of solo trickery.
I feel I should also clarify one point that several people have glommed onto:
As I said in my original description:
In other words, unless this was more acting, it wasn’t his idea. She started it; he stepped in to help. Yes, again, they could have been cooperating, and this could just be a performance detail. But again, to justify his collusion – taking into account his apparent beliefs in ghosts and astral projection and whatnot – either he had set himself up as a woo-woo type from the beginning of class, weeks beforehand, in order to make the eventual “psychic” demonstration more believable, or he was being wildly inconsistent in his willingness to accept all this other supernatural stuff and then deliberately perpetrate a fraud on the class. I repeat, neither is impossible, but given that there was nothing to be gained from such a “long con,” it seems more reasonable to assume the “psychic” was just putting one over on him as a gullible victim, and by extension the whole class.
Thanks again for all the information and help.
Thanks for the extra info Cervaise. Give yourself a pat on the back for being able to provide this much detail, and being willing to - you are practically unique among laymen, believe me!
By way of an obvious caveat, I can’t be SURE as to the method, given that I wasn’t there, the description might be flawed (no offense, Cervaise!), and in any case in magic there is always another option.
OK. It’s not ‘Out of this world’ (puzzled Dopers, please see note below). I doubt it involved any stooges or collusion, given the circumstances as described.
Two main options.
(1) Woman can see despite the blindfold. Contrary to some earlier posts, I doubt it was a ‘fake blindfold’, as sold by magic stores, or that any of the blindfolding materials were anything other than what they seemed to be. The key is the cotton wool balls. They masquerade as items that make the blindfold better (=harder to see through). Their actual purpose is to provide a movable layer between the eyes and the outer blindfold layer (in this case, the burlap).
At the time the makeshift blindfold is applied and checked, there are no peeking gaps to be found. Hence people (even enlightenend Penn & Teller devotees!) can examine and check it all they like, and they’ll find nothing. However, after the blindfold has ben checked, the performer can nudge the cotton balls upwards a little, by a process akin to wrinkling and unwrinkling the forehead and eyebrows several times. There is some misdirection provided by the business with the spec shuffling the cards and handing them back. Also, of course, the outer layer, the burlap, provides an opaque screen behind which this wrinkling re-adjustment can happen without being seen. Thus the performer jiggles or shifts the cotton wool balls (one of them will suffice), opens up a downward peek option, and can see.
At the end of the demonstration, it is not hard to re-adjust the cotton wool downards, either before or during blindfold removal, by reversing the wrinkling manoeuvre. This makes all seem as it was b4. But by then most people aren’t paying muich attention since the demo appears over.
**(2) Deck switch **. In this version, the woman genuinely cannot see. She takes the shuffled deck and switches it for an identical deck pre-stacked in a memorised order. The best time for her to have done this would have been in the action of ‘collecting’ or ‘sweeping’ the shuffled deck up off the table and commencing the demonstration. There are specific moves for achieving this kind of switch, especially when one is sat at a table and therefore has a hidden lap into which objects can fall.
Quote honestly, I doubt the ‘deck switch’ option has much mileage in it. It’s not the kind of move most magi would want to attempt when they themselves cannot see. If you’re executing that kind of move, you want to be able to see to keep tabs on the audience (make sure the move will work) and to get your timing right.
So I go with option 1.
Note on ‘Out of this World’. The name of a very famous card trick, probably the single most famous and popularised card trick of the 20th century, invented by Paul Curry. Spectators deals face down deck into two piles. When cards are turned over, she is amazed to find she has managed to deal all the reds into one pile and all the blacks into the other, without knowing how she did it. Vey cool trick, but plainly not the trick under discussion.
To those Dopers in the know, please let’s have no posting of the method here. Curry put a lot of hard work into inventing the trick, and it still delights and entertains countless people. Let’s not disrespect his work, trash his intellectual property and kill this fun. Besides, it’s pointless citing “the” method, since there are dozens of variants.
It’s one thing when people pass off magic tricks as psychic demonstrations. But when it’s just entertainers providing entertainment, let’s not harm what isn’t harmful.