Module 3 – Part 11: Histed Hoisted Foisted
Benji
Histed Hoisted Foisted…
What about situations where you’re asked to perform, but you only have a borrowed deck to perform with?
No decks to switch in. No time to prepare.
Well, I’m sure at this point it no longer comes as a surprise to you that…
…magicians have thought a lot about this, and come up with some pretty clever solutions.
First, I’ll let you in on the ‘classic’ method, then I’ll tell you one of my personal ideas on it.
The Classic:
I believe this method comes from Louis Nikola, one of the early proponents of the stacked deck.
The idea is as follows:
From a borrowed deck, force three cards on your spectator. The three cards you force are actually the last three cards of your stack.
(The original method is to force three cards on three spectators, which also works. But if you just have one spectator, this presentation works too.)
Then hand the deck to the spectator.
(if using three spectators, they get a third of the deck each.)
Tell him you’re going to name cards one by one. As you name each card, he is to give you that card.
Start naming cards, beginning with the first card of your stack and working forward.
As you go through the cards, you’re assembling the stack in your hand, while getting over closer to revealing their card. The fact you haven’t repeated any cards, coupled with the fact you’re constantly narrowing in on their cards until you’ve named all the cards in the deck EXCEPT theirs makes for a strong piece of magic. And of course, by the end of it all, you’re in stack.
This is a standard procedure, and it can work very well.
However, I decided to include an idea I’ve been playing with that I think you may find interesting.
Not only does it eventually set up your stack, it sets you up to perform ‘Histed Heisted’, one of the strongest mindreading routines you can do with a memorized deck.
Histed Hoisted Foisted:
The inspiration for this effect came from a combination of Simon Aronson’s ‘Histed Heisted’ and Matt Baker’s ‘Histed Hoisted’.
Plus some ideas from Pit Hartling’s ‘Sherlock’ and Matt Baker’s ‘Elementary, My Dear Vernon.’
Hence the name…
Histed Hoisted Foisted.
Here’s what goes on:
The deck starts out shuffled. Either because your audience has shuffled it, or because you’re borrowing it.
(or both.)
You ask someone to just think of a card. Next, they’re going to hand you the cards of the deck.
But before they do so:
You explain that there are cards that people NEVER pick. You’ll soon assemble a pile of these such cards.
There are also cards that people USUALLY DON’T pick. You’ll also assemble these cards.
There are cards that people SOMETIMES pick. You’ll assemble these cards.
There are cards that MANY people pick…but not them. You’ll assemble these cards.
And finally, there are cards that you think ONLY THEY would pick. You’ll assemble these cards.
Explain that if the card they are thinking of gets placed in that last pile, you’ll have succeeded.
As they hand you cards from the deck, face-up, what you’re actually going to do is place them in one of the following 5 piles, facedown:
1-10
11-20
21-30
31-40
41-52
(note: I did it face up in the Live Session. This was helpful, to see the numbers of the cards. But in performance you want to do this facedown.)
Since you’ve just explained the above, it makes sense to be doing this.
The cards don’t have to be placed in the piles in stack order, but you do need to do one thing:
Place all the cards from 1-5 in the top half of the pile, and all the cards from 6-10 on the bottom half of the pile.
(21-25 and 26-30 for 20-30. Same for the rest. And then the final two cards on the bottom portion of the last pile.)
By the end of it, you’ll have all the cards in some semblance of order.
Ask the spectator which card they chose. As soon as they do, you know which pile it’s in—based on its stack number.
Now you’re going to stack all of the piles in stack order (1-10 at top, 11-20 below that, etc.)
The one exception is that you’ll place whichever pile their card IS in on top of the deck, and leave an indifferent pile on the table.
Let’s say their card is the JC.
That’s 36, so you know it’s in the bottom portion of the 4th pile. What I would then do in this situation is turn pile 1-10 face-up, place pile 11-20 face-up on top of it, then pile 21-30 face-up on top of that, then pile 31-40 face-up on top of that, leaving pile 41-52 on the table.
(when it comes to placing pile 31-40 face-up on the pile, I do that at a vertical angle in case the face of that packet is the chosen card.)
As I do this, I spread the top cards to see exactly where their card is (with the cards angled toward me so they aren’t immediately visible.) I note how many cards deep their chosen card is. I know it’s going to be somewhere between 1 and 5.
I know that cards 31-40 are on the face, and then cards 36-40 were the bottom portion of those cards…which means they’re closest to the face of the deck.
(if we were using a card within the 31-35 section, you’d have to count to a maximum of 10.)
Now that I know where their card is, I turn the deck face down and double undercut their card to the top (by moving one card at a time, similar to how we discussed in the section on glimpses.)
As I do this, I draw the attention to the pile of cards left on the table as I ask the spectator if his card is among them.
Naturally, it’s not.
While they look, we top palm the top card (see module 6 for some pointers on that during the Live Session.)
They will look up and inform us that their card isn’t in that pile.
Say:
“Oh…that’s strange. Well, I do keep one more backup pile, just for situations like this. It’s the pile of ‘cards I was so sure you would pick that I removed them from the deck.”
As you reach into your pocket with the palmed card and remove the one card, you say:
“Well, I call it a ‘pile’ but it’s really only one card!”
Reveal that the one card in your pocket t(he ‘entire-time’) is their named card.
To finish setting up, place the card back on the face of the deck, then place the 41-52 pile on top of it.
That’s the first phase.
It’s not bad, but nothing terribly special on its own.
But what it DOES having going for it is that it sets you up for ‘HIsted Hoisted.’
You could even say that this is a ‘perfect follow up.’
You can now hand out packets of 5 cards to each spectator. I think doing this with 10 of them is a pretty awesome number.
You give cards 1-5 (from the top of the deck) to the first spectator. Then 6-10 to the second. And so on.
Once you’ve finished doing so, you get each person to shuffle their own packet and just THINK of any one card.
Once that’s happened, you’ll take back the cards from the spectators one by one, ‘shuffling’ them a little as you do so. In reality, as you take back each block of 5 cards, you’re putting them in stack order. But since it’s just 5 cards, it’s easily done and can be covered with overhand shuffle type actions too.
Once you’ve collected back all the cards, the deck is stacked.
But now we’re going to do something clever and bring out a second deck. Claim that you don’t want to touch the cards in the case, and borrow or pull out a second deck. Now we’re going to shuffle this second deck and then claim to read out the cards ‘as they fall’ in this deck.
In fact we’re only going to pretend to call out the cards in the order they are found. Instead, we’ll call out cards 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, 31, 36, 41, 46
We’ll now ask if anyone heard their card. Tell them to put their hand up if they did.
Now, watch who puts their hand up. If the first person puts their hand up, their card is 1. It has to be! After all, they were only given cards 1-5. They CAN’T have any of the other cards named. So they MUST have 1.
If the 4th person puts their hand up, we know that we gave them cards 16-20. Therefore, their card HAS to be 16.
(5 cards each. 4 x 5 = 20, therefore we gave them the cards 16-20.)
We can proceed this way, working through the entire deck. Next would be 2, 7, 12, 17, etc. And then 3, 8, 13, 18, etc.
Each time, it’s easy to determine which card belongs to who—because for each person, there only is one option it COULD be!
By the end of it, we have a mindreading showstopper…plus we’re back in stack!
However, don’t worry if this seems to be too complex for you or just not your style. You could simply refer to the Nikola effect initially discussed, and return to this over time as it makes more sense.
NOTE- The beauty of Histed Heisted is that you just need the cards of each grouping—they don’t need to be in any particular order.
NOTE – as sometimes happens with these ‘heady’ explanations, you might find an extra little nugget of information and practical handlings tips in the Live Session where I go over this Live with Jacob.
NOTE – what happens if they don’t have a full deck? Assemble the stack as usual, but keep in mind the card(s) that’s missing. So you can subtract 1 (or whatever the number is) when doing estimations or other procedures.
(the only time I wouldn’t turn them face up is if you recall that the last card you placed on the bottom of the pile.)
That’s a wrap on Module 3…
Let’s move to Module 4, where we’ll discuss my absolute favorite memorized deck ‘tool’, plus the surprising secret behind your memorized deck ‘Steel Skeleton.
Join me there…