I’ve been so excited to finally share this week’s effect with you.
This is one that I dreamed up quite a while ago, but didn’t get round to putting in print for far too long.
Here’s what the effect looks like:
The spectator chooses a number, and a card. You deal that number of cards to the table. To their astonishment, the exact card at that number is their named card!
But it doesn’t end there…
You take the rest of the cards and spread them face up, revealing that…
All the other cards are BLANK!
Here’s how it works:
This is an idea that occurred to me while reading Matt Baker’s excellent ‘The Buena Vista Shuffle Club’, in a routine called ‘Outlier.’
Now, there IS a little ‘arts and crafts’ involved in this effect. I know—I’m not usually that kinda guy, but I made an exception for this routine because it’s so darn cool.
Let me explain the overall ‘big picture’ version of how it works first, and then I’ll let you know all the specifics of what you’ll need to pick up.
Let’s go through this step by step…
- The spectator chooses a number, and a card.
We’re going to treat this first phase the same as we would the usual ACAAN effect—using the memorized deck.
We start by placing the memorized deck on the table, in full view.
The spectator can freely choose any number. For example, 18.
We then note the card at that number in our memorized stack—if I’m using Mnemonica, 18 is the KC.
In a second deck (also stacked), we force the KC.
- You deal that number of cards to the table. To their astonishment, the exact card at that number is their named card!
Again, this is the same as ever. We pick up the deck on the table, cleanly deal 18 cards, and reveal that the 18th card is the KC.
Now for the interesting part…
- But it doesn’t end there…You take the rest of the cards and spread them face up, revealing that…All the other cards are BLANK!
How on earth does THIS work?
Actually, it’s pretty simple…
The deck is not what it seems.
It looks and FEELS like a regular 52 card deck.
In reality, it’s actually 104 ‘ultrathin’ cards—so TWO full decks.
52 cards are the regular cards of our stack, and 52 cards are blank.
We’ve essentially got 52 ultrathin blank cards, with 52 regular cards on the backs of those blank cards.
For example, the first 3 cards of the deck go like this…
- Blank card with 4C stuck to the back of it
- Blank card with 2H stuck to the back of it
- Blank card with 7D stuck to the back of it
And so on.
This means that, if we were to spread the deck face up on the table, all we would see would be blank cards.
But in reality, each blank card has the corresponding stack card ‘stuck’ to the back of it.
We’ve essentially ‘hidden’ the stack behind the blank cards.
So for the ACAAN as described above, we deal 18 cards as usual—each blank card/stack card is stuck together to handle like one card—and stop on the 18th card.
When we get to the 18th card, we simply detach the stack card from the blank card below, and display the KC.
We spread the rest of the deck face up to show the rest of the cards are blank.
Alright…
Some of this might be making sense, but you’re likely still wondering HOW we actually make this happen.
Here’s the arts + crafts part I mentioned…
- You’ll need to pick up a custom deck of cards from the link below.
https://www.card-shark.de/?page=20&lang=en&detail=true&Category=7&ArtID=142
(In case you’re reading this at a later date and the above link no longer works, the product is a ‘Phoenix Double Decker’ deck)
You’ll want to select ‘blank face decks with red backs’ and then any of the ‘1x standard deck’ combinations. You’ll end up with a spare deck, but that’s okay.
Once you’ve got them, you’ll have 52 ultrathin blank cards and 52 ultrathin regular cards.
But how do you join them so every blank card/stack card handles like one?
Again, I have to credit Matt Baker for introducing this genius idea to me…
- Science Friction
Science Friction is a magic product that allows you to ‘glue’ two cards together while still being able to detach them at will.
Here’s the link:
https://www.penguinmagic.com/p/9981
It’s not super cheap, but once you get it, you’ll be able to use it for a whole bunch more than just this trick.
(in fact, I think they teach you a whole bunch of tricks and techniques when you buy the spray).
Alternatively, I believe this would also work with regular ‘Roughing Fluid’ which you CAN pick up cheap.
Either way, you want the cards to adhere to each other so you can spread to show the blank cards without revealing the stack cards beneath them—but easy enough to separate that you can do so when you need to display the chosen card.
There’s no getting around it—this trick will definitely take more preparation than most of the stuff I share with you.
But I think that pales in comparison to the strength of the overall routine.
Let me just remind you what this is going to look like when you’re done…
The spectator chooses a number, and a card. You deal that number of cards to the table. To their astonishment, the exact card at that number is their named card!
But it doesn’t end there…
You take the rest of the cards and spread them face up, revealing that…
All the other cards are BLANK!
Man…I’m getting goosebumps just WRITING that!
Let me know how much fun you have with this!
Your friend,
Benji