Module 4 – Part 6: The best thing since Sliced Bread…
Benji
The best thing since Sliced Bread…
In the early stages of this module, I introduced you to the idea of the ‘faro wheel’, and my vastly mistaken assumption that I was the first magician to discover it.
(the more times I type that, the more it makes me laugh.)
And while my discovery was certainly not NEW, it is pretty darn cool either way. So I figured I’d share the routine with you anyway…
The idea is that you start with a certain order, then perform 8 faros to bring yourself back to that order (although to the audience, you seem to be shuffling it further and further into chaos each time). You can then perform 8 different astonishing effects at each stage in the faro wheel, ending with something truly special.
When I first devised this, I started out with all the Four of a Kinds arranged as follows…
(for old times’ sake, I’ll use the original photos I took when I was first putting this together.)
As you can see, we’re arranged in a CHSD order (Clubs, Hearts, Spades, Diamonds) with all the Aces, then the Twos, then Threes, and so on and so forth.
Now I’ll walk you through what the cards look like at each subsequent faro, and some ideas for effects that I had for those stages.
Plus, at the end I’ll show you can get into this from Mnemonica (and then back into Mnemonica.)
Again, the word ‘mouth watering’ seems appropriate…
Faro 1:
The first obvious thing to point out about this arrangement is that each Four of a Kind is separated by one. So in theory we could cut to a certain location, deal two poker hands, and have any named Four of a Kind fall to either the dealer or spectator.
To do that would require some familiarity with this arrangement, although you won’t need to necessarily memorise anything.
Fortunately, if you ask someone to name a Four of a Kind, they’re likely to say something quite beneficial for you: the Aces. Since the Aces are on top, you can false shuffle and then deal.
If they named the 2s, you know they’re going to be 9 cards deep.
Why?
Usually the 2s appear after the Aces (aka 5 cards deep), but we know that each Four of a Kind is separated by 1. Therefore we take the 4 Aces and add on 4 indifferent cards to get 8—so the 2s start at the 9th card.
The 3s?
Same deal, except these start at the 17th card. That’s because we had 8 for the Aces and indifferent cards, and 8 for the 2s and indifferent cards.
The 4s start at the 25th card (8 x 3 = 24.)
The 5s start at the 33rd card (8 x 4 = 32.)
To recall that in a pinch, just remember the formula (8 x n-1) + 1.
Yeeeesshh.
What’s that all about??
N = the value of the card. We do N – 1 because there’s always going to be 8 cards for each value leading up to N (aka N -1). And then we add one because our sequence starts on the next card (not the last card of the previous sequence.)
Let’s try it for the 6s.
N = 6.
N – 1 = 5.
So we do 8 x 5, which equals 40.
Then 40 add 1 to get 41.
The 6s start at card 41. Is that true? Let’s count…yep, that’s right. 41.
What about for the Aces?
N = 1.
N – 1 = 0.
8 x 0 = 0.
0 + 1 = 1.
Therefore, the Aces start at card 1. Is that true? Well, yeah!
The 7s are where it gets a little weird. That’s because the 7s START at 49, like we’d expect them to (8 x 6 = 48.)
But since we run out of new cards at 52, we have to jump back to the beginning of the deck.
What about the 8s?
8 – 1 = 7.
8 x 7 = 56.
56 + 1 = 57.
Surely that’s not right?
Well…kinda. See, the numbers have no way of knowing that we’ve reached the end of the deck. So we’ll have to adjust for them.
This is the new equation to remember for cards higher than 7…
8 x (n-1) + 1 – 51
Which can be simplified to:
8 x (n -1) -50
Why did we shift to – 51? I’m honestly not sure, but I’m sure somebody with more maths degrees than me could tell you. All I know is that once we jump back to the start of the deck, the rules change slightly.
So in this new case, we want to know where the 8s start.
8 – 1 = 7.
8 x 7 = 56.
56 – 50 = 6.
The 8s start at the 6th position.
Let’s try one last one, the Queens.
Queen = 12.
12 – 1 = 11.
11 x 8 = 88.
88 – 50 = 38.
The Queens start at the 38th card down. Do they? Yep.
Of course, being able to work out the positions like this also allows us to do ACAAN style routines.
NOTE: I’d advise getting comfortable with that formula. The last thing you want to be doing in performance is starting out the window for 5 minutes while muttering formulas. If you do do that, make sure you have a compelling presentation.
NOTE: If you deal 2 piles of 4, you can undo this by placing the second pile on the first, then dealing 4 piles of 2 and placing the cards back on top of the deck.
Actually, that reminds me of another formula I should teach you. Credit for this goes to Juan Tamariz.
If you deal m piles of n hands, the way to undo that and bring yourself back to stack is to deal n piles of m hands.
So if you dealt 10 hands of 2 cards, you’d undo that by dealing 2 piles of 10 cards. If you dealt 4 piles of 5 cards, you’d undo that by dealing 5 piles of 4 cards. Make sure to pick the cards up prior to the second dealing by picking up the last pile first, placing it on the second to last, and so on, working backwards
NOTE: I really wrote out all the above just to let you know that it exists. Most of the time if it were down to me, I’d just skip the first faro. Or, rather, I’d do the first faro—but not an effect with it. I’d just move straight to…
Faro 2:
Here we’re in a similar situation to the first faro, except each value is separated by 3 cards. Therefore, if you were to deal four hands of poker, you could make any named Four of a Kind fall to any player.
NOTE: again, undo this using the m/n formula I showed you above.
NOTE: Perhaps formulas could be made for this one, but I’ll leave that to the experts, and proceed to…
Faro 3:
Here’s where things start getting really sexy.
Take a look at that picture and honestly tell me that you spotted the patterns within a second of looking.
No?
Great. Then your audience won’t either.
I would use this as my ‘proof’ stage to show (implicity, of course) how shuffled the deck is. You could perform any card trick which doesn’t disturb its order.
(wow, that just blew the door open on a good few hundred thousand effects)
Alternatively, you could learn the order of this and use it as a regular stack. (but perhaps we’ll return to this later in the course.)
NOTE: In case you didn’t notice, there’s 7 cards between each Ace. If you really wished to, you could deal an 8 hand game and have all the Aces fall to the dealer.
But like I said, this one is more about ‘proof’. Come to think of it, so is…
Faro 4:
This is another place where you can implicitly demonstrate the shuffled nature of the deck.
The only caveat with this one is that the cards are in color blocks of 3. 3 red cards, followed by 3 black, followed by 3 red, etc. With a few 4 card color blocks in there too.
Perhaps you could do some kind of ‘color divination’ effect with this setup, but we’ll have more on that later, so for now let’s move to…
Faro 5:
Alright. This is starting to heat up. Do you feel it?
Take a look at the cards. Notice how we are now arranged in blocks of odd and even?
The exact pattern they follow is ODD, EVEN, ODD, EVEN, EVEN, ODD, EVEN, ODD.
This would make for a nice little ‘one ahead’ type trick, maybe like this:
Spread the cards on the table and remove one from the first group of 6. Ask them if they think it’s odd or even.
Whatever their answer, note it down on a piece of paper. Of course, even though you haven’t looked at it, you know whether it’s odd or even.
What you’re going to do is pick each subsequent card based on the previous answer. Or, in other words, use the one-ahead principle.
So if they said ‘ODD’ for the first card, you’re going to make sure the second card you remove is ODD. If they say ‘EVEN’ for that card, you’re going to remove an EVEN card for the next round.
As I remove the cards, I would outjog them in the spread rather than removing them.
Let’s take a quick look at how this might play out:
We spread the cards face down on the table. We tell them we’re going to test their powers of sensory perception. (or we tell them that we’re going to hypnotise them to pick the right cards. Or we tell them they have the sniffing ability of a bloodhound, so we want them to smell the right cards. You get the idea…)
We outjog a card from within the first block of 7. We know it’s ODD.
They say EVEN.
Not to worry. We write down ‘EVEN’.
The score is:
(ACTUAL CARD | THEIR PICK)
ODD | EVEN
Now we want to pick an even card, so we move to the second block of 6 cards. We outjog one.
They say ‘ODD.’
Not to worry. We write down ‘ODD.’
The score is:
(ACTUAL CARD | THEIR PICK)
ODD | EVEN
EVEN | ODD
Since they said ODD last time, we’re going to give them an ODD card this round. We move to the third block of cards and outjog one.
They say ‘ODD.’
Sweet, but wouldn’t have mattered either way.
The score is:
(ACTUAL CARD | THEIR PICK)
ODD | EVEN
EVEN | ODD
ODD | ODD
Since they said ODD, we’re going to give them an ODD card next round.
(based on the fact we know the ‘pattern’ the cards run in, we can easily push off enough cards to land in the next odd block.)
They say ‘EVEN.’
Not to worry.
Their score now is:
(ACTUAL CARD | THEIR PICK)
ODD | EVEN
EVEN | ODD
ODD | ODD
ODD | EVEN
Since they said ‘EVEN’ last time, we’ll outjog an EVEN card.
They say ‘ODD.’
Perfect.
The score as it stands is:
(ACTUAL CARD | THEIR PICK)
ODD | EVEN
EVEN | ODD
ODD | ODD
ODD | EVEN
EVEN | ODD
It might seem like we’re in a pretty bad situation—after all, they only guessed ONE card right so far! But despite that, all we need to do is move ONE card and the entire thing will be perfect.
Here’s how:
We remove the cards from where they were outjogged. As we do, we separate the cards to the left and right of the outjogged card so there’s a clear gap where we can reinsert the card later (so we maintain the stack.)
We place the cards under each other in the order we outjogged them, face down.
Now we just need to ‘shift’ one card from the top to the bottom.
Why?
(ACTUAL CARD | THEIR PICK)
ODD | EVEN
EVEN | ODD
ODD | ODD
ODD | EVEN
EVEN | ODD
That’s the old score.
Now watch what happens to the score if we move the top card to the bottom.
(ACTUAL CARD | THEIR PICK)
EVEN | EVEN
ODD | ODD
ODD | ODD
EVEN | EVEN
ODD | ODD
Neat, huh?
There are so many ways to do this—pass, Hermann shift/invisible turnover pass, half pass and turnover of the other cards—you just need to pick one that works for you.
Here’s a very easy one that requires none of the above sleight of hand (really…a pass?? What was I thinking?)
Ask them to read out what they predicted for the first card. As they read it out, do a double lift on the top card. Once you’ve verified that they got it right, take the two cards as one and place them at the bottom of the packet.
Then, as an afterthought, take the bottom card (the one they just saw the face of) and place it on the table, face up “so we can all see it.”
The card that WAS the top card is now on the bottom, just like we wanted.
Now you can go through the rest of the cards and show that they match.
At the end, take the pile of face up cards, turn them face down, slip the bottom one back to the top, and reinsert the cards where they came from.
You’re back in stack.
Now, you might think I got lucky…but I really didn’t. It’s a 50/50 chance that they’re going to say ODD. And if they don’t, we just keep going. Sooner or later they’ll say it, and we’ll only have to move one card to prove that they were right.
That’s kinda neat, but more of a warm up for what’s about to happen in…
Faro 6.
Whatttt???///??
Isn’t that the craziest thing??? Back in New Deck Order. Go figure.
I initially did think of just revealing that the cards were in New Deck Order, but then I came across a suggestion by Tamariz that I think is hard to top:
Vernon’s Triumph (found in Stars of Magic) is wonderful because despite all the apparent chaos, the order of the cards isn’t changed.
Therefore, we can do Triumph, and reveal for the kicker that the entire deck is in New Deck Order.
NOTE: The card enthusiasts may be thinking:
“But that’s not TECHNICALLY New Deck Order! New deck order is AH-KH, AC-KC, KD-AD, KS-AS“
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the majority of people aren’t intimately familiar with the arrangement of the suits straight out of a sealed deck. For 99.9% of people, what we’ve just shown them is ‘New Deck Order’. I mean, seriously…no one is going to call you out on that (aside from other card collectors and enthusiasts.)
That’s pretty gnarly. But so is…
Faro 7:
Yeah. Red and black, baby. Divided deck.
Right now we’re set up for OOTW, which you could perform using the method I outlined in the previous section—just with a full deck, rather than 16 cards.
What if we didn’t want to disturb the stack?
That’s a tough one.
Some would say that this trick is strong enough to be worth destroying the stack. I’m not sure.
Another alternative would be to only use 16 cards, a la the version in the last section. Countdown 18 cards and then use the next 16 cards (that will give you 8 red and 8 black.)
Then do the method that we discussed in the previous section. At the end, you only have 16 cards to sort back into order, which is easier done by picking them up in order and reinserting them.
This doesn’t hit as hard, but it maintains the stack. The decision is up to you.
Of course…if someone has any other ideas on OOTW without messing up the stack, let me know.
Of course, let’s quickly return to our…
Faro 8.
As you see, we’re back how we started out. For this arrangement, I would do a ‘cutting to named value’ effect where they name a card, and then I cut and show I found all 4 of that value.
Now, that’s how I originally constructed the faro wheel.
HOWEVER…
I have since come to the conclusion that the correct place to end is in Faro 6—Triumph and reveal of the New Deck Order. It’s undoubtedly the most impressive of the effects, and so should naturally be our closer.
However, doing so means sacrificing the OOTW presentation. Instead, I would use Faro 7 to do a card location—get them to pick a card from the red half, make sure it gets inserted in the black, and then quickly find it. Since Faro 7 would be our starting Faro, it’s fine that this is a pretty quick effect. It’s a good opener—fast and hard hitting.
And since you end on Faro 6, you can actually transition BACK into Mnemonica.
Here’s how:
Remember how I showed you how to go from new deck order to Mnemonica in the early stages of this module?
Here’s what I said at the time:
“The cards should start in this ‘Spanish’ order, from the top down:
AS-KS, AH-KH, KD-AD, KC-AC.
Since most American decks don’t come in that order, but this one…
AH-KH, AC-KC, KD-AD, KS-AS
…you’ll need to:
Cut the AC to top. Overhand shuffle run 13 cards, reversing the order of the clubs. Throw the balance of the deck on top.
You’ll be left in this situation:
AH-KH, KD-AD, KS-AS, KC-AC.
Now cut the KS to the top. Overhand shuffle run 13 cards, and throw the balance of the deck beneath, but keep a break between the top 13 cards and the pack. You’ll be left like this:
AS-KS, KC-AC, AH-KH, KD-AD.
Now take the top 13 cards as one packet and place on the table, at the left.
Then take the next 13 cards as one packet and place them on the table, in the middle.
(catch a break under the second 13 cards by riffling up the back of the deck until you see the AC)
Then place the remainder of the cards as one packet on the right.
Now pick up the packet on the right and place it on top of the center packet. Then place the packet from the left on top of the rest.
You’ll be left in this situation:
AS-KS, AH-KH, KD-AD, KC-AC.
All of this just looks like you’re shuffling and cutting the cards, when in reality you’re ready to faro your way into Mnemonica.
Give the deck 4 out faros using either the classic or ‘EZ’ method.
Now overhand shuffle run the top 26 cards singly to reverse their order, and throw the balance of the deck beneath.
Cut the top 18 cards and out faro them into the top of the rest of the cards.
(to do this using the ‘EZ’ method, cut the top 18 cards and hold them in your left hand, then take the next 18 cards in your right hand. Then do the EZ faro and place the resulting pile on top of the deck. To justify leaving some cards on the table, perhaps say: “one last shuffle…okay, a little fewer cards so this doesn’t take so long.”)
Now cut the 9D to the bottom.
Congratulations—you just shuffled your way into Mnemonica!”
This is the key line:
“The cards should start in this order, from the top down:
AS-KS, AH-KH, KD-AD, KC-AC.”
If you look at the image for Faro 6, you’ll see we have:
AC-KC, AH-KH, AS-KS, AD-KD.
We need to overhand shuffle run the top 13 cards (the Clubs) and throw them back on top of the deck.
The situation is now:
KC-AC, AH-KH, AS-KS, AD-KD.
Now turn the deck over and overhand shuffle run the FACE of the deck (the Diamonds) for 13 cards and then throw them back in place.
The situation is now:
KC-AC, AH-KH, AS-KS, KD-AD
Cut the top 13 cards to the bottom.
The situation is now:
AH-KH, AS-KS, KD-AD, KC-AC.
Now we cut the top 13 cards and place them on the table, to the left. Next, cut the next 13 cards and place them on the middle of the table. Then place the remainder on the right. Now place the middle packet on top of the leftmost packet, and place the combined packet on top of the rightmost packet.
The situation is now:
AS-KS, AH-KH, KD-AD, KC-AC.
From here, we can drop ourselves into the usual procedure, skipping the part where we go from American order to Spanish order (we’re already in Spanish order.)
Here’s where we pick back up.
“You’ll be left in this situation:
AS-KS, AH-KH, KD-AD, KC-AC.
All of this just looks like you’re shuffling and cutting the cards, when in reality you’re ready to faro your way into Mnemonica.
Give the deck 4 out faros using either the classic or ‘EZ’ method.
Now overhand shuffle run the top 26 cards singly to reverse their order, and throw the balance of the deck beneath.
Cut the top 18 cards and out faro them into the top of the rest of the cards.
(to do this using the ‘EZ’ method, cut the top 18 cards and hold them in your left hand, then take the next 18 cards in your right hand. Then do the EZ faro and place the resulting pile on top of the deck. To justify leaving some cards on the table, perhaps say: “one last shuffle…okay, a little fewer cards so this doesn’t take so long.”)
Now cut the 9D to the bottom.
Congratulations—you just shuffled your way into Mnemonica!”
Nice.
NOTE: But what if we want to get from Mnemonica to Sliced Bread?
(what a legendary sentence.)
First, we need to get from Mnemonica to New Deck Order.
Here’s a nifty way of doing that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8eSZLaO-wc
(drop him a like too…this is a super valuable video!)
Don’t worry about all the ‘false deal’ stuff…just focus on the bare mechanics of it. I.e just cut the AC to the bottom rather than the top and deal four piles of 9 cards. Then the rest is just an overhand run and some out faros.
You’re left in this situation:
AS-KS, AH-KH, KD-AD, KC-AC.
Or, as we now know it, the ‘Spanish’ order.
To get from here to our Sliced Bread set up, we just basically do the mirror of what we did earlier:
Cut the top 13 cards to the table on the left. Cut the next 13 to the middle. Place the remainder on the right.
Place the middle packet on the left packet and then place them both on the remainder.
We’re left in this situation:
AH-KH, AS-KS, KD-AD, KC-AC
Cut the bottom 13 cards to the top, so we’re in this situation:
KC-AC, AH-KH, AS-KS, KD-AD.
Now overhand shuffle run the top 13 cards (the Clubs) and throw them back on top of the deck.
AC-KC, AH-KH, AS-KS, KD-AD.
Finally, turn the deck over and overhand shuffle run the FACE of the deck (the Diamonds) for 13 cards and then throw them back in place.
The situation is now:
AC-KC, AH-KH, AS-KS, AD-KD.
Or, in other words…
Sliced Bread arrangement. We can now faro around and do any of the Sliced Bread effects, then once we’re back in Faro 6, do the shuffle procedure to get into Mnemonica.
‘Mouth watering’ is starting to feel redundant…but how else do you describe it??
NOTE: One idea I had but still need to clarify is maintaining the stack throughout the OOTW reveal.
One way you could do it is by doing the regular method, but changing the reveal. Instead of letting the spectators spread over the cards at the end, YOU pick them up and fan them toward your face, backs to the spectator. Remove them in the stack order—showing that they got:
“One black. That’s one for one!”
Remove the AC.
“Two blacks. That’s two for two!”
Remove the AS.
And so on…
NOTE: As I said at the time, the real credit for this should go to Juan and Luis Garcia. I used Juan’s idea to end with Triumph in new deck order.
NOTE: I just realised I never explained the reasoning behind the name of this effect…Sliced Bread.
Since this whole concept is called the ‘Faro Wheel’, I was trying to figure out some popular inventions that rivaled the ‘wheel’ in popularity.
After a second or two of thinking, guess what popped into my head?
Yep…Sliced Bread.
Alright, we definitely sliced that bread. Now let’s move into some fun ideas I had based on Marlo’s ‘Faro Notes’ and that table I gave you at the start of this module…