(no subject)

[robinbloke]

Think of a number. Remember this number and then add the year of your birth. Now subtract the number of miles you travel to work and then divide by 11.
Take the remainer from this division and add the day number you were born, adding 2 if it was a leap year. Add to this the number of letters in the name of your favourite colour.
Return your card to the deck and reshuffle it. Count down through the deck until you get to the number you've worked out. Your card is the six of clubs, and that's magic.

Comments

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

A what of the who now?

[gerald_duck]

A Svengali deck. Once, a very effective way of forcing a card in magic tricks, but now a lot of people know about it. The deck consists of 52 cards, 26 random ones, and 26 identical to one another. The identical cards are a little longer than the random ones, so when someone cuts the deck, they'll always get one of the force cards.

TTOTD: Piss off magicians by grasping the long edges not the short ones when cutting a deck of cards.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Nifty, ta!

Oh, any chance of getting my strimmer back; someone else wants to borrow it now!

[gerald_duck]

Curses; foiled! I was secretly hoping to hang on to it until after this weekend. I think we managed to clear all the brambles, but I can bet we'd find more if and only if there was no hedge trimmer to deal with them. (-8

If you need it back, is Wednesday OK? My car is going into the garage tomorrow, so it's a bad day for moving big things around.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

No amazing rush matey, next week is good. :)

I shouldn't be telling you this but ...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... since so many people know about Svengali (and Wizard) decks, they now make ones with wide/narrow rather than long/short (though they are much rarer) ... and since I started with Hugard & Braue's Expert Card Technique, I've very rarely resorted to trick decks for my effects (sometimes it is fun to switch one in after using a normal deck for a few tricks, because you can sometimes accomplish things that are totally "impossible" ... e.g. after doing tricks with the normal deck that show that there are 52 different cards ... getting four people to stand up and each take a card and hold it until all four are holding a "different" card and then have them put the cards back in the deck and remain standing. You tell the audience you're going to read the minds of the selectors and as you name each card the person should sit, and then when you say "six of clubs" all four people sit down, and then there is general puzzlement as they realise they *all* have selected the six of clubs, and you confirm that yes, the deck is indeed all the same card, and you show the deck to be entirely Ace of Hearts! Or something like that ... magician's are easily pleased with themselves (grin!)

Re: I shouldn't be telling you this but ...

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Smoke and mirrors!