The following effect is incredibly simple, yet hard to reconstruct. The first few times you perform it, it will even puzzle you.
This is the perfect trick for this chapter since you don't locate the selection, you reveal it.
Effect. The magician has a spectator cut the pack and remove the card to which he cut. It is placed face down on the table without being looked at by the spectator. "The first thing we must determine is the color of your card." Giving the pack a quick cut, he spells C-O-L-O-R by thumbing off a card for each letter from his left into his right hand.
The five card packet is tabled and the next card, a red card, is turned over. "Isee that your card is red." The red card is placed face up on the tabled packet. "Now we want to know the value, or number of your card." He spells
"N-U-M-B-E-R" thumbing cards over into his right hand. These cards are tabled and the next card, a nine is turned face up. "Your card is a nine." The nine is tabled face up on top of the second pile.
"That means your card is either the nine of hearts or the nine of diamonds because we know it's red. Your card is not in the deck, so
we' 11find the matching card." The magician
spells, "M-A-T-C-H-I-N-G C-A-R-D as be-fore and he turns the next card face up, the nine of diamonds.
"Show us the card you selected. It must be the nine of hearts!" The spectator turns his selection face up, the nine of hearts.
The Work. While this can be per-formed with a borrowed and shuffled pack (see Leftovers) it uses the Si Stebbins setup. This is the setup shown in the chart on the next page where the suits are rotated in "CHaSeD" order and each card is three higher in value in numeri-cal rotation than its predecessor. This effect has the added benefit of retaining the order so that
you can proceed into another effect utilizing the setup.
After a few false shuffles (see The Un-derhand Shuffle) table the prearranged pack.
Ask a spectator to cut it and remove the card he cut to. Complete the cut for him. Now give the pack a quick false cut if you wish and hold it in the left hand in dealing position. (You can follow the above example by cutting the setup pack at the nine of hearts and removing it.) You can proceed to spell color, number, and match-ing card by thumbmatch-ing cards from your left hand into your right without reversing the order of the card. After spelling each word or phrase, table the packet and turn over the next card.
Each time because of the setup, you will arrive at the proper card you require to answer the question asked by spelling.
When finished, simply retrace your steps by sliding the top card of each packet face down underneath its packet and replace the packets on top of the pack in reverse order (last dealt, first replaced). Finish by placing the selection on top of the pack, resetting the entire stack.
Leftovers. I really like this effect. It is my favorite trick utilizing the Si Stebbins setup. I do it slightly differently. First, it dawned on me that the trick will work exactly the same whether the pack is face up or face down during the spelling. When performing for magicians or laymen I think will appreciate it, I offer to spell with the deck face up or face down, their choice. While this seems to make the results more impossible, the stack allows for it without any additional effort. It is also quite disarming to see the desired answers ap-pear at the desired locations with the pack face up. It tends to communicate (without saying so) that the cards are in no particular order. It has the added advantage of confusing magicians who might try to come up with a stack that
accomplishes the above results. It seems far more difficult to have a stack that works in both directions. However, the cyclical nature of the stack accomplishes everything.
I also have added a question to the three existing ones. I spell, color, number, answer, andmatch. After spelling the color and num-ber, I explain that we know that (using the above example) the card was a red nine, but the remaining question is whether it is a heart or a diamond. "To find the answer, l will spell `A-N-S-W-E-R.' The next card will be the desired suit, a heart in this example. I finish by saying that we can't spell to the selection since it is not in the deck. However, we might be able to locate that card's match. Spell M-A-T-C-H and turn over the next card, the nine of dia-monds in this example. Finish by revealing the identity of the selection.
Not necessarily useful in this trick other than in the preparation of the setup, it might prove valuable to those of you who have not worked much with the Si Stebbins setup.
At first you will find that you have trouble arriving at the next value when you get past the court cards. This is because for the lower values, you simply add three to arrive at the next value in the sequence.
How do you add three to a court card to arrive at a lower number? Remember that the jack, queen, and king have a value of eleven, twelve, and thirteen respectively. The ace has a value of one. To calculate the next value from a court card, think of it in terms of its numeric value. Then subtract ten or just eliminate the first digit in the number. Thus, the value which follows a jack would be an ace. (Eleven minus ten equals one.) A queen and king are followed in the setup by a two and a three respectively.
irteen minus ten and twelve minus ten.) It is possible to arrive at the Si Stebbins setup in seconds (versus a couple of minutes) if you start with a brand new deck. This can be a borrowed and magician-shuffled deck. For the best method (which requires sleight of hand) consultThe Si Stebbins Secretin Darwin Ortiz's
SI STEBBINS SET-UP
Its predecessors include Rusduck's version (Cardiste No. 3) and Marlo's experiments in Hierophant #2.
Finally, while I haven't decided what I will do with this idea, you could alter the handling considerably by not tabling the se-lected card. Simply have the card peeked at by a spectator and pick up a break beneath it.
Double cut the pack, sending the selection to the bottom while retaining the order of the pack. (The pack is cut, but the rotating se-quence is not disturbed. This is easy to compre-hend if you view the pack as an endless chain or loop with the top card linked to the bottom.
You have broken the chain at a different point, but the order of the links is still intact.)
From this point, do the spelling with the pack face down, arriving at the card which matches the selection. With the selection still on bottom, you can reveal it in a number of ways. You may wish to take advantage of the fact that the pack is still in Si Stebbins order and you have two halves of exactly twenty-six cards (assuming a full deck without jokers).
Background. Since its origination in 1898, the Si Stebbins setup has become the most popularly used prearrangement among American magicians. With a nod (rather than credit) to Si Stebbins, a version of the setup was published in 1901 in Howard Thurston's Card Tricks as The "Thurston System" of Expert Card Manipulation. However, that version al-ternated pairs of colors rather than colors. In other words, the sequence consisted of "R-R-B-B-R-R-B-B" rather than "R-B-R-B-R-B." The suit order was clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds.
This made the face up display of the cards riskier since the colors were paired. The im-proved version has been published in numerous sources since. (One of the advantages of the popular method with the colors alternating is
that you are set to move into tricks using the Gilbreath Principle such as those in the first chapter of Volume One.)
Allan's effect is a further development
Will Tell. Both effects were inspired by Francois Ziegler and Richard Volimer's, Ask The Deck which appeared in the November 1988 issue of Apocalypse. I wonder if I would be borrowing further from that source when I say that this new trick is worth the price of this book.
A precursor to both of Allan's effects was Stewart James' Spell of Mystery which he marketed in 1929. It was the first card trick Stewart produced for the world and it is still considered one of his best.
Allan Slaight. Allan is well known in Canada and the United States. He is the President and CEO of Standard Broadcasting Corporation Ltd. in Toronto. In magic, most know him from his contributions to Apoca-lypse, Pallbearer's Review, and The Trap-door. He is also the co-editor with Howard Lyons of Ibidem of one of my all-time favorite magic books, Stewart James In Print, The First Fifty Years. Finally, he serves as the co-host with Stewart of the Stewart James Gettogether (akaFechters North) in a suburb of Courtright, Ontario. This is a cozy annual gathering of forty to fifty of the faithful from southern Canada and the north central United States.
For those of you who are anxiously awaiting the sequel to the first James book, The James File is already far along in the process.
At the 1994 rendition of Bob Weill's Inn Event in Niagara Falls, Canada, Allan dropped three three-inch thick notebooks in my lap which were packed with the draft form of the book as it stands now. (Fortunately, Dawn and I have since decided that three kids are plenty for us.) Currently the count is well over five hundred tricks with 95% of them unpublished. Rumor had it that I disappeared into my hotel room for the rest of the evening. Rumors are seldom true.
I spent the entire afternoon, evening, and most of the night pouring over the pages. When the book finally hits print in a couple of years, take your crane with you to the magic store and purchase at least one copy. Your biceps will
swell with appreciation.