The Juan Tamariz/Paul Curry Frankenstein strikes…
This week in the Inner Circle, I’ll show you what might happen if Paul Curry’s ‘Out of This World’ married Juan Tamariz’ ‘Total Coincidence…’
I started thinking about this after spending so long discussing odd vs even cards last week.
(If you haven’t read that training yet, go here: https://innercircle.jasoncoppage.com/hidden-property/)
This week’s effect is very different from last week’s, but again takes advantage of our knowledge of the ‘secret property’ of our cards—their stack numbers.
This is, admittedly, verging on the ‘crazy’ spectrum of my ideas.
But, hey—that’s what we’re here for! Pushing the limits of what we think is possible in magic.
Following this with cards in hand is probably the saner decision. As usual, we’re using the Mnemonica stack to accomplish this effect.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Going forward, when I say ‘even’ and ‘odd’ I’m referring to the stack number, NOT the identity of the card. So while the 2D is technically an even number (the value is 2) I refer to it as ODD because the stack number I’m using (19) is odd. Make sense?
Effect:
You hand out the deck, letting various spectators shuffle it. You then retrieve the shuffled packets and shuffle them together further.
You then invite two audience members up to help you.
The first spectator cuts the shuffled deck in half, giving the other half to the second spectator. They shuffle their packets and are instructed to place them in their pockets and keep an eye on them, ensuring you can’t do anything sneaky!
Next, you remove another deck from your pocket. This deck again is shuffled by the audience.
You act as if presenting ‘Out Of This World’ and get them to try to sort the cards by red and black by ‘feel.’
When you turn over the cards at the end, it appears they messed up.
However, you reveal that in fact, each spectator dealt themselves the exact same cards as the ones previously placed in their pocket (from a previously shuffled deck!)
It seems to be an impossible coincidence!
And best yet, you end STILL IN STACK!
Method:
This is pretty simple, but might sound more complex than it is.
(alright, I wrote that at the start of this explanation. By the end…I wasn’t so sure.)
We start the performance with the first deck in faro-6.
In other words, we were in stack initially and then did 6 out faros before starting the performance.
(see module 4 of Skyscraper for our handling of the faro).
Here’s the chart that has our ‘stack numbers’ and shuffles on it (Expert Card Technique page 146 for reference) –
As you can see, we have a sequence of 13 odd numbers (1, 5, 9, 13, 17, etc.) followed by 13 even numbers (2, 6, 10, 14, 18, etc.) followed by 13 more odd numbers and then 13 even numbers.
What we’re going to do is hand out 4 packets of 13 cards to 4 spectators.
This way, each spectator will get ONLY odd or ONLY even. They can shuffle their packet as much as they like, the cards will always remain odd/even. Then, we are going to collect the packets back in the same order we handed them out, making sure the first packet stays on top, the second packet goes beneath, etc.
The end result will be 4 blocks of 13 cards, in this order:
- First 13 cards are ODD
- Second 13 cards are EVEN
- Third 13 cards are ODD
- Fourth 13 cards are EVEN
We now split the pack in half and faro shuffle the halves together.
Here’s what we’ll end up with:
- First 26 cards are ODD
- Second 26 cards are EVEN
We’ve essentially divided the deck into one half odd and one half even while letting the audience think THEY shuffled the deck.
Clever, huh?
NOTE:
If you wanted to, you could perform a simple divination at this point. Just get someone to select a card, ensuring they take from either the top or bottom half. Then make them return the card to the opposite half (without making this obvious.)
You’ll end up with one ODD card in the EVEN half, or vice versa. That will be the selected card, which you can return to its rightful half before proceeding with the rest of the effect.
END NOTE.
Now that the deck is divided into odd and even halves, we need to cut the deck in half and give one half to each spectator. Most of you familiar with the faro will have no trouble with cutting the deck exactly in half. Alternatively, you could crimp the corner of the bottom card of the third packet (this is the card that will end up as the last card of the upper half) and use that to tell you where to cut.
Either way, the first spectator ends up getting all of the odd cards, and the second gets all of the even cards.
You can have the spectators shuffle their cards before placing in their pocket. It doesn’t matter—they’ll only be shuffling odd cards or even cards, they can’t change the cards in the packets. We don’t care about the order, we just care if they’re odd or even—and shuffling each packet individually won’t change that.
Second Phase:
Now, we remove the second deck.
We’re going to perform the same ‘shuffle’ procedure as with the first deck. Yet again, we’ll end with the odd cards on top and the even cards on the bottom.
Now we’re going to perform a modified ‘OOTW’ procedure.
This is mostly the same as the standard method, but it works VERY nicely for this effect since the pattern we’ll be using is unknown to the spectators.
We say we’ll give each of the spectators a turn. In fact, this will ensure the first spectator deals himself all the ODD cards and all the second spectator will deal himself all the EVEN cards.
We’ll start with the first spectator. We hand him the deck and tell him to deal the cards into two piles—red and black.
Once we count ‘26’ we’ll know he’s dealt all the odd cards to himself.
Now we move to the second spectator.
We’re going to do the same but with the even cards. In fact, we could spread the deck face up on the table halfway through to show that the cards really are mixed. To them, they LOOK mixed because there’s no discernable pattern.
But to us, there’s a glaring pattern—all the cards are EVEN stack numbers.
But since that is a ‘secret identity’, the audience has no idea.
By the end, we’ll be in this situation:
The first spectator has all the odd cards in his pocket. In front of him, he has two packets of odd cards.
The second spectator has all the even cards in his pocket. In front of him, he has two packets of even cards.
Now we want to act like they were supposed to sort them by color.
We want to really sell this supposed ‘failure’ as the time misdirection will come in handy later and prevent them from thinking about the fact that we gave them each card, they just decided which pile it went in.
When we turn their piles face up to ‘see how they did’ we want to spend a decent amount of time bemoaning our ‘mistake.’
Then we act as if suddenly remembering something.
“Wait! The cards from the beginning…”
We get them to remove the packets from their pockets.
“Perhaps you chose these cards because you were drawn to them…”
In fact, that’s a bit of a lie. Their choice was in fact limited to the cards in each half. But by saying this kind of thing, we plant those false memories—after all, they did make a choice, just not quite the choice we’re suggesting.
We get them to spread the cards from their pocket face up on the table.
Then we pick up the two piles they dealt during the OOTW phase.
We’re going to go through this pile and show the coincidences in stack order.
For example:
“Look! You shuffled yourself the 4 of Clubs. And guess what…you dealt yourself the 4 of Clubs!
And look! The 7 of Diamonds is in your hand, AND it’s in this packet.”
Each time we do this, we remove the cards from both our hand and the table and lay them face up on the table, with one of the cards below the other. We’ll do this for the rest of the cards in the first spectator’s piles.
The end result will be two stacks of all the odd cards, in stack order.
We’ll do the same with the second spectator.
At the end, when we turn the decks face down, we’ll have two decks assembled with all the odd cards in stack order on top and all the even cards in stack order beneath them.
(we’re actually in faro 7 right now.)
Now all we need to do is give each deck a single out faro and we’ll be back in starting stack order.
I think that’s one of the major positives of this—we end back in stack even though the audience remembers shuffling the cards so many times.
Phew…
That took a LOT longer to write out than I thought.
I warned you this week would get ‘heavy’ on this stuff. But I had fun.
Let me know what you think!
Note:
You could always use a marked deck for the second deck. That way, you can find the odd cards based on the backs rather than the faces. Worth a mention.
Next week, I’ll be back with a handling of Juan Tamariz ‘Neither Blind Nor Stupid’ that should fool BOTH magicians and spectators alike…
Your friend,
Benji