If you’re familiar with my work, you might know that I’m fond of the following quote by Dale Carnegie:
“A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
Not only is the above quote completely on the money, it’s the ‘bedrock’ of the effect I’ll be sharing with you today…
Here’s what it looks like:
A group of friends ask you to show them something cool. You grab a deck of cards and place it on the table. Then, you pull out a second deck and get one of them to pick a card. Let’s say it’s the 8H.
You pick up the cards from the table and then spell the name of the friend that picked the card, turning the cards face up as you do so.
To their amazement, you arrive at the exact card they picked—the 8H.
But that’s not the end of the trick…
Without doing anything sneaky, you simply carry on dealing—this time spelling the name of another friend. When you do, to their astonishment, you arrive at the 8S.
You repeat this with another friend, landing on the 8D.
Finally, you spell the name of one more friend to arrive at the 8C.
It’s a knockout piece that’s made even stronger by the ‘Dale Carnegie school of magic’ technique of using their name.
It’s a really fun piece, so let’s get into the method:
First of all, this effect will require some ‘pre-show’ work. However, it won’t take a whole lot of it.
In fact, this is one of those situations where you actually WANT your friends to ask you to show them something—it feels like they caught you off guard, when in reality you’re incredibly prepared for it.
What’s the pre-show work?
You simply need to list the names of all your friends, and count the number of letters in each one.
Now, I shouldn’t have to point this out, but I will (because in the rare case someone actually DID this, I’d feel pretty bad)…
Only list the names of the friends you consistently hang out with in a group. Don’t list the names of EVERY friend you have. Just the guys/gals you frequently meet up with.
I’m going to list the names of an imaginary group of friends just to give us something to work with:
Danny (5)
Rebecca (7)
John (4)
Alex (4)
Charlotte (9)
Joe (3)
Richard (7)
Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to take a look at the Quartet lists (more can be found in Module 5 of the Skyscraper Method, but I’ve reprinted the Tamariz list below).
I’ll assume that for this effect, we’re in the Tamariz stack…
Tamariz:
Aces: (Diamonds) – 4, 8, 8.
Twos: (Hearts) – 8, 9, 8.
Threes: (Clubs) – 8, 9, 7.
Fours: (Spades) – 2, 11, 4.
Fives: (Hearts) – 8, 9, 5.
Sixes: (Clubs) – 8, 9, 8.
Sevens: (Spades) – 4, 6, 8.
Eights: (Hearts) – 8, 7, 4.
Nines: (Clubs) – 8, 9, 8.
Tens: (Clubs) – 10, 4, 11.
Jacks: (Hearts) – 12, 4, 9.
Queens: (Diamonds) – 2, 15, 2.
Kings: (Clubs) – 8, 5, 4.
All we’re going to do now is figure out if we can ‘map’ our friends’ names to one of the above Quartets.
In this case, the Kings look like they could work.
There’s only one issue—the Kings require an ‘8’, and I’ve only got a ‘7’.
Actually, we can work with that (I’ll show you how in a minute.)
You might notice that there’s only 3 numbers for the Kings, even though there’s 4 Kings in a deck. If you’re familiar with the Quartet principle, you’ll know that’s because the chart is assuming we’ve cut the King of Clubs to the top (hence why it’s in brackets.)
We’re then going to force the KC in an alternate deck.
But I’m getting ahead of myself…
Let’s go through the method step by step:
- Before the show, set up your deck
You should decide in advance who you’ll get to choose the card. Let’s say we chose Charlotte. Since Charlotte is 9 letters, I’m going to cut the stack to place the King of Clubs 9 cards deep.
Grab a second deck, also in stack, and put that in your other pocket.
- Wait until they ask you to perform something
Of course, this isn’t technically required. If you want, you can initiate things. But I find it more impressive if it feels like this is something you just pulled off ‘off the cuff.’
- Place the prepared deck on the table
Make sure it’s in full view and everyone knows you won’t be tampering with it.
- Remove the second deck and force the pre-selected card on the pre-selected friend
In our case, we’re forcing the KC on Charlotte. Use any force you like for this.
- Put away the second deck and return all the focus to the deck on the table
Tell them that Charlotte could have chosen any card and could have changed her mind (make sure you actually did give her that chance in the previous step. If she did change her mind, do a different effect, and come back to this one.)
Now pick up the deck, which everyone can see you haven’t messed with, and spell ‘Charlotte’ to arrive at the chosen King of Clubs.
At this point, everyone thinks the effect is over…
- Spell to the next King
At this point, you might point to another friend and say:
“But I bet you’re wondering, what would have happened if YOU were the one to choose the card?”
Then spell their name to arrive at the second King.
In our case, we need to deal 8 cards to get to the next King, but our closest spectator is Rebecca, with 7 letters.
In this case, we either:
- Deal 6 cards off the deck and double lift the seventh one
- Deal two cards as one during the deal and show the next King as the 8th card
- Deal 7 cards and then draw the focus back to the deck, then turn over the next card to show the next King
As you can see, there are plenty of ways to get some extra ‘reach’ when the name doesn’t quite line up with what we need
- Repeat for the other two friends
Gradually increase the tempo as you do so, doing these in a flurry as you point to a friend, spell and reveal the King, and do it again, building to a crescendo.
If you really wanted, and had enough friends, you could even have another deck set up to continue this—but I’ll let you decide where to draw the line.
I like this effect—it’s very easy, but is also powerful precisely because it does what Dale Carnegie teaches and hooks people by using THEIR name.
Have fun with it!
I’ll be back with more next week.
Your friend,
Benji
Bottom deal makes the method much easier