Slot filling

rom Derek Dingle’s “We’ll Twist—If You Insist” (Derek Dingle’s Complete Works, one of Kaufman’s earliest—and best—works) to this handling of the same plot. Both, if we are to believe the his-torians, owe a tipped hat to Sam Schwartz’s “Backflip” sequence, an approach to twisting the pasteboards that raced through the card world like wildfire. Vernon started it all, though (perhaps to his dismay), for even today, twisters still continue to twist, turning cards up and down, changing them, multiplying them, transforming them . . . and if you think that there will never be enough routines, keep in mind Robert Walker’s alleged Crux manuscript, a private tome that Jon Racherbaumer has often made reference to over the years, which supposedly contains hundreds of twisted ideas.

Here, four cards (an Ace, Two, Three, and Four) each mysteriously turn face up within the packet. At the end, all the backs suddenly change. To do this, obtain an Ace, Two, and Three from a red-backed deck and a Four with a blue back. Also, you need one double-backed card with a blue back on one side and a red one on the other. With a heavy magic marker, draw a large capital “A” on the back of the Ace, a “2” on the back of the Two, a “3” on the back of the Three, and finally a “4” on the red-backed side of the

double-backed card.

The packet, from the top down, lies in this order: the face-up Four, the double-backed card (red side up), and then the face-up Three, Two, and Ace (Figure 1).

Hold the packet in left-hand dealing position, the double-backed card on top. Say, “When I was about twelve years old, my uncle had a game he used to play and he used only four cards. He used an Ace, a Two, a Three, and a Four.” Take the packet from above with your right hand so you can spread the cards from the rear of the packet with your left fingers, showing the faces of the cards (Figure 2).

The two face cards are squared as one. ^{Figure 1}

“What he’d do is he’d take one card behind his back and he’d reverse it.” Take the double card with your right hand and the remainder of the cards in your left. Take both hands behind your back for a moment, turn over the two cards in your right hand, and place them on the left hand’s packet. When you bring your hands forward again, the order of the packet should be double backer (blue-side up), face-down Four, face-up Three, Two, and Ace.

“Then he’d come back and say, ‘John, if you can tell me which card I’ve turned over in there, I’ll give you ten dollars. But if you name the wrong card, you have to mow the grass.’ Needless to say, we had the best-looking lawn in town. I’ll show you why. If I had named any card but the Ace, he’d show that the Ace was the one that was reversed, so I’d have to mow the grass.” Do the following modified Elmsley Count. Begin with the five cards in left-hand dealer’s grip. The palm-up right hand takes the packet at the inner-right corner with thumb on top and first and second fingers underneath. As this happens, the left thumb draws the first card off onto the left palm, while the right thumb does a multiple push-off of the second, third, and fourth cards. The multiple push-off is most easily accomplished by using the right-hand second and third fingers to draw the bottom card of the packet dia-gonally towards you and to the right. This helps to keep the block of cards in alignment and serves primarily as a get-ready for the next move. The palm-up left hand comes back under the packet and wedges the first card beneath the right-hand packet (between the right-hand thumb and fingers) and leaves it behind as it draws off the three-card block. As you count off the ostensibly third and fourth cards (but actually the fifth and first), outjog them in stepped fashion so they end as in Figure 3 (in a conven-tional Elmsley Count the last two cards would be stacked flush singly on top of the packet). It should appear as if the left hand is merely drawing cards from the right hand (which remains essentially still) into the left, displaying each card in the process.

To close this spread, pinch the rear cards with your right thumb and forefinger (thumb on top—Figure 4) and pull the top card of these three back slightly. Now push these rear cards forward, holding the one pinched card as you push the outjogged cards flush with your left first finger. As the packet comes square, pull out the pinched card and place it on top of the packet.

The face-up cards beneath it should remain concealed from the audience.

“Now I found out that my uncle was a cheat, you see, because if I had named the Ace, he’d say,

‘No, the one I reversed in there was the Two.’ And I’d lose and I’d have to mow the grass.” Repeat

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

the Elmsley Count technique to show the Two face up.

Displace a card to the top in the same manner as before, by stepping the cards and pinching the center card from the rear as you close the spread. Repeat the count and the displacement to show the Three face up as you say,

“If I had said the Two, he’d say, ‘No, I’m sorry, the one I reversed in there was the Three,’ and I’d lose and I’d have to mow the grass again.”

“Well, one day he said, ‘Hey, John, come here.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to play.’ He said, ‘Look, which one of these is reversed?’” Take the top card of the packet (the Four) and cleanly turn it face up onto the other cards. “I said, ‘Well, it’s the four.’ Then he did a little move like that and said, ‘No, they’re all reversed; go mow the grass.’” Make a gesture, then take the cards from above in your right hand as you spread them from the back with your left finger (holding the two on the face as one) to show all the cards face up.

“To make a long story short, I snuck into his room one day and I figured the entire trick out. See, he was actually using marked cards and that way he knew which card to flip face up. In fact, if you look on the backs of the cards, you can see the little marks he had.” Square the cards and turn the entire packet face down in your left hand. A red back will show. Take the cards from above with your right hand and peel them off singly with your left thumb into a spread (Figure 5) as you say, “There’s the Ace, there’s the Two, there’s the Three, and there’s the Four . . . and that’s the little trick with the four cards!” The last card will

be a double card, which you place on the face of the fan. Take the top two (really three) cards with your right hand, thumb on the double, and the bottom two with your left (Figure 6). Separate your hands and turn them over to also show the faces of the cards before you put them away.

Andrew J. Pinard suggests beginning the routine with the cards set in the fol-lowing order (from the top down): The face-up Ace, Two, Three, and Four, with the double-backed card (red-side up) on the bottom. This allows the back of the packet (as well as the second card) to be casually shown as having blue backs while minimizing the risk of premature flashing of the markings. Hold the packet face up in right-hand Biddle Grip and display the cards individually by drawing the Ace, Two, and Three with the left-hand thumb off into left-hand Dealer’s Grip (in the process reversing their order). The Four (actually a double, with the double-backer concealed) is then placed on top of the cards already in the left hand, end-ing up in the set-up as described on page 75. This display is virtually identical to a Flushtration Count without flashing the right-hand packets back each time (which you could do, but is completely unnecessary). He also suggests when marking the cards to align them in accordance with the direction of the pip on the Ace, such that when the time comes to display them, they will be appropriately aligned to-wards the audience.

Figure 5

Figure 6

The John Cornelius