CARD & AAAGIC TRICKS Eve Devereux and Peter Eldin Poof! You're a magician! Impress your family and friends with the 31 easy-to-learn, fun-to-perform clever acts in CARD & MAGIC TRICKS. The clear, step-by- step instructions and picture diagrams make each trick simple for the magician to follow and hard for the audience to figure out. Learn: •The Scurvy Knaves: How to make cards appear to switch position in a deck, all by themselves. • See-Through Production: How to pull a scarf out of an empty box. • Not in the Club: How to pick a card of a different suit from a group of 13 of the same suit—while blindfolded! • The Coin Fold: How to make a coin disappear. • Cards that Spell: Convince your audience you have taught your cards how to spell! Photographs and colorful illustrations chart every part of the way through a trick, showing aspiring magicians where their hands should be and how the objects should be held in each step of an act. Many of the tricks also include variations to help spice up the act and tips to keep your tricks from being discovered by even the most avid watcher. (Continued on back flap) GV 1549 .D46 2004 NOTOWN Card MOV 0 2 2005 CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY NOR m rC WN BRANCH M35N.CALiFOnNIA.AVE 60641 Card & Magic Tricks Over 30 easy-to-perform stunts to amaze and confound Eve Devereux and Peter Eldin Gramercy Books New York A QUANTUM BOOK Copyright © 2004 Quantum Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This 2004 edition is published by Gramercy Books, an imprint of Random House Value Publishing, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, by arrangement with Quantum Publishing Limited, London. Gramercy is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc. Random House New York • Toronto • London • Sydney • Auckland www.randomhouse.com QUMCMT This book is Produced by Quantum Publishing 6 Blundell Street London N7 9BH Manufactured in Singapore by Pica Digital Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Star Standard Industries Pte Ltd A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 0-517-22309-0 10 987654321 ROMDSHO^SE Contents CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY NOR 01 TOWN BRANCH •435 N. CALIFORNIA AVE 6064f Card Tricks Magic Tricks Introduction.....6 Introduction._...52 Basic Techniques...9 Magic through the Ages_54 Cards that Spell.__._.20 Coin in Ball of Wool__ 56 Not in the Club._.23 Card Control. 58 Cards that Count._____.24 Card through Handkerchief_61 The White Rabbit’s Card Trick._.27 Ring off Rope. 63 Holey Handkerchief_ 28 Ring on Pencil ._____._.66 Topsy-turvy Gamble.30 The Coin Fold.___... 69 The Vain Card_32 A Capital Prediction._...72 The Scurvy Knaves_ 34 Drink from Nowhere__74 Mutus Nomen Cocis Dedit _.36 The Rising Cards...77 Reciting the Deck.38 On the Tip of my Tongue_79 Conformist Jack.-.40 Sun and Moon.____._____.82 Joker’s Delight. 42 Solid through Solid._____...85 Swap._._.— 44 Cut and Restored Rope.__.88 Hopscotch from the Deck__46 Bank Night...___._____ 91 See-through Production _95 Twistins Card.48 Eve Devereux Introduction -V- No book can teach you how to be a magician: it can granted to the mass of humankind. At least, they are only teach you how to perform tricks. The rest is prepared to maintain this fiction so long as you entirely up to you. present your con tricks with sufficient charm (or, This is because performance magic - conjuring - rarely, anti-charm) and vivacity to persuade the is really one great big con trick, with the performer audience that you are keeping to your side of the being only one of the con artists involved. The unwritten bargain - that you are working very hard audience know that you are not using real magic, to keep them entertained. Successful criminal con that you are cheating them in some way, yet they are artists have almost always relied on this: they work prepared to maintain the fiction in their own minds with such charm and ingenuity that their dupes want that you are using abilities that have not been to believe in them! persuade your audience that they are anything but. notice (misdirection). Every card trick can be made PATTER Instead, therefore, you must arrange for all the to tell a story, and ideally it should be a story that This is your major aid, especially when performing a ostentatious magical effects to take place inside you have invented yourself. Indications of the type routine consisting entirely or largely of card tricks. your audience's heads: you must manipulate their of yarns you might tell are given in this book. Many Cards do not (usually) jump through hoops or burst minds - indeed, that is exactly what they want you tricks (eg, the scurvy Knaves tricks - see pages into flames, or any of the other things that more to do. 34-35) have traditionally had such tales attached to elaborate magical props can be called upon to do: Your best tool for doing this is patter, which is them. Best of all, though, is if you take the basis of a they are merely immobile pieces of pasteboard, also your main ally in directing the audience’s trick, adapt it as you want, and then invent your own although often enough you will be trying to attention away from things you do not wish them to story to go along with it. Also an important part of your patter is the relationship you establish with the audience. Usually you will want to make them laugh, to get them on your side,- you can even get them on your side by consistently insulting them, just as long as your insults are witty enough. However, do not be tempted to make humiliating jokes at the expense of those members of the audience you ask to help you (in this book always called volunteers). The volunteers have paid their entrance money just like everyone else, and may have conquered considerable nervousness to assist you in front of a hall of spectators, so to hurt their feelings would be unforgivably discourteous. Work on building up the sequence of tricks you want to perform to make a full routine. One line of patter should not end at the finish of one trick, to be replaced by a quite different line at the start of the next. All through the routine, the various elements of your patter should flow naturally into one another. Deciding on a theme is a good way of doing this,- a running joke can be helpful.