Objetivos Generales de los Instrumentos

Yet another shot at Any Card at Any Number! Anyone shuffles the deck. One spectator picks out any card, by freely cutting the deck herself. A second spectator, with the deck in his own hands, deals out any number of cards himself. Bingo.

Working

1. You don’t need to be at a table. Alan and Bridget are facing you. He is right of centre, she is left of centre. Hand the deck to Bridget for a thorough shuffle. Then ask her to hand the deck to Alan for a further shuffle. “It’s important that you both give the cards a mixing, because this experiment is going to involve both of you.” Receive the deck back, and place it on the open palm of Bridget’s left hand.

Explain that you want her to spell out her name by cutting small packets off the top of the deck, one packet per letter. Demonstrate by using a random name such as Ann, and using your right hand to cut off three packets on to your open left palm, one packet per letter. Point out that if the name was spelled A-N-N-E, you would need to cut off an extra packet for the extra letter. Do so. This emphasises the fact that even small variations in spelling will result in different numbers of cards being cut. Return the dealt cards to the top of the deck on Bridget’s left palm.

Ask, “What is your name, actually?” When she says, “Bridget,” invite her to make the cuts on to the flat palm of your left hand. Then point to the top card of those remaining in her left hand, and invite her to take a peek at it and remember it. There is one proviso— she must not let Alan see its face. She leaves the card on top of those in her left hand. 2. You now go into “Personal Control,” from The Magic Gourmet. Your right hand picks up the dealt packet from your left palm in Biddle grip. Your left hand takes the remainder of the deck from Bridget, and your right hand now slaps its packet on top of the left hand’s cards, but in a slightly outjogged position. You are now holding the entire deck in Biddle grip.

3. Immediately turn to Alan, and at the same time, your right fingers, at the far end of the complete deck, squeeze the upper half back towards you. Your right thumb, pushing down on the injogged strip of the lower half, opens a break, and your left little finger maintains it as your right hand moves away.

Ask Alan to offer you the open palm of his left hand. Say, “We already know your name, Alan.” Immediately repeat the transfer of small packets from the top of the deck to an accumulating pile on his left hand—one packet per letter as before—but this time spelling out the name A-L-A-N. All you need to do is reach the break at the second-last letter of his name. When you drop the remaining cards on top of the cards in his hand, reciting the final letter of the name, the chosen card will now be on top of the deck. In this handling, you have been holding a break for no more than a few seconds.

“You’ve now both spelled your names with the same deck of shuffled cards. You know what that means, don’t you? It means this deck is personalised to you both. But it’s been personalised to each of you separately—once with your name, Bridget, and once with your name, Alan. What we need now is a way to make use of some bond between the two of you. We need something that both of you have in common. Suppose we take a number—some number that has a special meaning to both of you. It might be the number of years you’ve been together. It could be the day of the month when you first met. Or the number of the house where you live. Your choice. What do you suggest?”

4. Suppose they decide on 17—the number of years they’ve been together. Hold out your left hand palm up (as you did for Bridget), and invite Alan to deal 17 cards face- down on to the palm of your hand.

Alan will stop dealing when he reaches the number 17. Your right hand pinches the near end of the dealt packet in a very open and delicate fashion, between forefinger on top and thumb below. Your left hand takes the rest of the cards from Alan, then flips these cards face-up and spreads them a little as you say, “Alan, these are the cards you didn’t want, because you didn’t even reach them.”

Use the right hand packet to tap the face- up packet now in your left hand, and take the opportunity to glimpse the bottom card of the right hand packet (Fig.1) This is the chosen card, You don’t even need to identify the exact card—all you need is a flash of the suit. Suppose this is Hearts. Your left hand squares up its cards again. “Bridget—your left hand, please.” Your left hand deposits its cards, still face-up, on Bridget’s left palm.

Your right hand replaces its 17-card packet on your open left hand again. Your right forefinger taps the top card of the packet as you say, “Alan, this is your seventeenth card.” Turn to Bridget, and say, “Now Bridget, we come to the interesting bit. Do you still remember the card in your head?”

5. You are now about to use Ken Krenzel’s Milk Run. Your right hand lifts the near end of the top card between the first two fingers above and the thumb below. Raise the near end of the card to an almost vertical position, but with the far end still in contact with the far end of the packet (Fig.2). Look at the face of the upraised card. Ignoring the actual suit of this card, and remembering that the chosen card is a Heart, say, “Bridget, you’re not thinking of a red card, are you?” As she answers, the knuckle of your left forefinger is sliding the bottom card towards you so that it ends up injogged (Fig.3 with right hand omitted)

Fig.2 Fig.3 .

Your right hand now changes its grip slightly so that the top end of the vertical card becomes held between your right index finger nail at the near (face) side and the pad of your second finger tip at the far side. Your right thumb is now free.

Look at the face of the card again, then lower the card to a horizontal position on top of the packet again, as you look at Bridget and say, “And I don’t suppose it would be a Heart?”

At the moment she answers, clip the injogged end of the bottom card between your right index finger (above) and thumb below (Fig.4 shows an exposed view). Your left hand instantly swings away with the rest of the packet (Fig.5), and flips it face-up. “And these are also cards you didn’t want, Alan, because you passed them all by.”

The face-down horizontal single card is still pinched delicately at the near end between your right index finger (above) and thumb (below).

6. Say, “And now comes the crunch. This is where we find whether you two are really compatible.” Your right hand raises the near end of the card for the third time, and you look at the face of the vertical card, whose far end is now resting on your left palm. “Alan, what does your card have in common with the one in Bridget’s head? Could they both be odd numbers? Both picture cards maybe? Or maybe the you two have nothing in common at all.” Shake your head and say, “The tension is just too much. This could all go horribly wrong. I don’t want to be part of it.”

Lay the single face-down card at right angles on top of Bridget’s face-up cards, then lay the remaining face-up cards on top of all and square with the other face-up cards, but injogged by about half the length of the cards. Alan’s face-down card is now lying crosswise, 17 cards down from the top of the face-up deck. Step back, well away from everything and everyone.

“Bridget—for the very first time—tell us the name of the card in your head.” She names her card as, for example, the nine of Hearts. Say, “I don’t even want to touch them. Alan—please take away the packet of cards you dealt off.” He lifts off the face-up packet on top, made easy by the large injog. Now Bridget turns the face-down card face-up. It is the nine of Hearts.

7. Perfect concord. And you’re left with everything and everybody well positioned for a visual reminder of what has taken place. Bridget still holds the bulk of the shuffled deck in one hand, and her thought-of card in the other. Alan is holding his dealt-off packet— and if he chooses to, he can count it and confirm that the number of cards is correct. And you are standing well back, away from it all, and obviously not responsible for anything that has happened.

End Notes

a) If you prefer a handling in which you do not do any of the dealing at all yourself, try this. Bridget spells her name (or anything else you like) by dealing single cards face- down on to your left hand. You then offer her the choice of the top card of either the dealt cards on your left hand, or the undealt cards she still holds.

When she has made her choice of one of the packets and taken a look at its top card, drop that packet on top of the other. This places her chosen card on top of the deck. Your right hand immediately lifts the entire deck from above in Biddle grip, and does an in-the-hands false cut.

In this position, the quickest and easiest of these is the turnover false cut, and there is nothing flourishy about it. That is, swing cut the top half of the deck into the thumb crotch of your left hand, separate the two halves, then each hand flips its half-deck face-up. Slap the right half on the left half, and flip the deck face-down again.

If you would rather keep all cards face-down throughout, I suggest the “Zenith Cut” (Seventh Heaven).

In either case, hand the face-down deck back to Bridget. You can now skip Alan’s spelling deal, and move straight on to his number deal.

b) If you would like to retain all three deals, but have them all performed by the spectators without any intervention by you at all, it is sometimes possible. It means you need to be alert to the number of letters in their names.

Most first names fall into quite a small range—between 3 and 9 letters—so once in a while, simply by chance, you will come across two spectators with names whose number of letters are the same, or differ by just one.

For example, Margery (7) and Jonathan (8) have names whose number of letters differ by one. Here’s how to take advantage of this.

The spectator with the shorter name (Margery) spell-deals her name in single face-down cards on to your left hand, then looks at and remembers the top card of the undealt packet she is still holding. You then drop the dealt cards back on top of her cards, completing the deck again.

Margery hands the deck directly to Jonathan, who deal-spells his name on to your left hand. You then drop these dealt cards back on top of Jonathan’s remaining cards, once again completing the deck.

The result is that Margery’s card is now on top of the deck, ,and you can proceed as in the original by asking for any number. All three deals have been performed by the spectators, and you have not intruded on the procedure by even a cut.

On the other hand, Lynne and Simon have names that contain the same number of letters (5). In this case, after Simon has deal-spelled his name on to your left hand, take the undealt cards from him and drop them on top of the dealt cards in your left hand. Once again, the selected card is on top of the deck, which you immediately hand back to Simon.