Here’s a very fun way to use the classic ‘one ahead’ principle that I’ve never seen discussed before…
This is another perfect example of Darwin Ortiz’ ideas on the ‘conflict’ problem.
To simplify his theory, the bottom line is that we should never create conflict between two spectators…
…UNLESS it’s a parent vs their child.
In this case, it’s perfectly okay for the child to absolutely spank the adult.
Enter this effect.
Here’s what it looks like.
You spread some cards facedown in front of the child, and spread some more cards face down in front of the parent.
Now, you ask the child to pick a certain card. Of course, since the deck is facedown, they won’t KNOW which card is which—they need to rely on their ‘intuition.’
Whichever card they touch, we place facedown in the center of the table.
Next, we do the same thing for the parent.
We repeat this a couple more times, and then reveal how they did.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the child has got a PERFECT match for each card—while the parent has none!
It’s both hilarious and incredibly fooling.
Here’s how this works:
We start, of course, in memorized deck order. I’ll be using Mnemonica. As ever, if you get confused at any point during this explanation, pick up a deck and follow along with cards in hand (and all will soon become clear!)
We’re going to give the first 16 cards of our stack to the child, and the second 16 to the parent.
Spread the cards in front of the child—making sure the spread is long enough that we can clearly see the distinction between each card. Do the same for the parent.
Now, we’re going to ask the child to select a card. But not just any card—we’re going to ask them to pick the 4C.
This card is actually the top card in their spread, which will be a mighty useful fact later on.
Now, most of the time, they won’t pick this card.
(if they do, end the effect there!)
While they pick, we count how far into the spread they choose. If they picked the 8th card—we, thanks to our memorized deck, know their card is the 5H. If they picked the 4th card, we know it’s the 3C.
Either way, we place that card in the center and take a mental note of it.
NOTE: As you do all this, it’s probably a good idea to have a piece of paper where you can jot down the cards you’re asking for—don’t put the onus on the audience to remember 6 cards!
Now, we turn to the parent and act as if we’re doing the same thing.
In truth, we couldn’t care less what card they pick. The whole point is that they’re going to get it wrong.
Now, we turn back to the child. We ask them to pick the card that they ALREADY picked.
So if they picked the 5H (in the first round, after we asked for the 4C) we ask them in this round for the 5H.
Whatever they pick, we take a note of it.
(of course, you’ll need to subtract 1 from how many cards you count—since we already removed the 5H, the 8th card.)
The next time we return to them, we’re going to do the exact same thing. Let’s suppose they chose the 2S in the second round. In the third round, we ask them for the 2S.
Whatever they pick, it doesn’t matter. We lay it out in the center of the table.
Their cards will be, from top to bottom:
RANDOM (the card they chose in the 3rd round)
2S (the card they chose in the 2nd round)
5H (the card they chose in the 1st round)
Our work is done.
To reveal the cards:
You have three cards in the center of the table—the three cards picked by the child, and the three picked by the adult.
We square up each pile.
Now we square up each of the larger spreads and place the 3 card packets on top of their original spreads.
So for the child, we square up their spread and place the 3 card pile from the center on top of it. Same for the parent.
We place the list of cards we noted on paper in the center, and move the decks closer to us.
We ask someone to call out the 3rd card you asked the child for. In our case, that’s the 2S.
As they do, you do a double lift. This will show the named card.
(That’s because the card you called out in round 3 was based on the card they ACTUALLY chose in round 2. And by doing a double lift, you show the 2nd card rather than their 3rd card. One ahead, baby.)
In essence, you’re disguising the RANDOM card and showing the 2S—which is the card you asked for in the third round.
You turn the double over and place the double on the bottom of the spread. You’ve now done the ONLY move you need to.
From here on out, you can get someone else to reveal the cards—all the dirty work is done.
Is it?
Well, yeah!
In the second round, you asked for the 5H.
What card is on top now?
Well, since we used a double lift to place the RANDOM and 2S to the bottom…the 5H is on top!
And then, once we reveal that, which card will be on top?
Well, since the cards are in stack order…the 4C!
Which, you may recall…was the first card we asked for!
That’s literally all there is to it.
ONE double lift.
Try it with the cards in hand and you’ll see how fooling this is.
It’s a very cool way to combine the ‘one ahead’ principle with the memorized deck.
NOTE: You may notice this reveal as being a similar reveal to the one used in ‘Per Capita’ in Skyscraper. That’s because they both use the One Ahead principle.
NOTE: I suppose it’s possible the parent might accidentally get one right every now and then. But it’s so unlikely.
We can make it a certainty by asking for cards within the first 16 (that we know haven’t been picked.) Since these cards will be in the child’s spread, there’s no way the adult could pick them. But if we do that, we don’t want to spread the child’s cards at the end as they’ll see those cards in the spread.
NOTE: Some people might think it’s odd that the cards you ‘randomly’ asked for happened to be within the 16 card spread you gave to the child. If you’re worried about that, I think there’s nothing wrong with taking a brief look at the child’s spread to ‘see what options you have’ prior to the effect (and the same for the parent just for consistency.)
Alright.
Another fun ‘coincidental’ idea.
But what about something different?
Next time we speak, I’ll show you how to ensure the child always beats the parent in a simple poker-style game. This idea was first popularized by Vernon himself, who picked it up from a Mexican gambler.
Until then, enjoy working with this.
Benji