Would you believe tha another of my contributions has made it on to Scam School again? It was 2 other recent Scam School submissions that spurred me to restart Grey Matters, so it's looking like that was the right move.
Even if you've seen this week's Scam School episode, you may want to take a look at this post, as I'm going to give a few tips that may make this routine easier to learn.
Let's get started right away with this week's Scam School episode with a trick I dubbed “Out of Control”!
Quick side note: On one hand, I love being promoted as "the genius". On the other hand, I can't help but think of “genius” in this context.
This trick is actually a combination of two idea from two men who have far more a right to be called genius than me. The dealing procedure comes straight from Jim Steinmeyer's routine Remote Control, as published in Invocation #43 and the May 1993 issue of MAGIC Magazine. If you check those sources out, you'll see that not much has changed, as the original involves spelling the word C-O-L-O-R, and using the 9th card.
I combined this trick with a technique from Simon Aronson's “Try The Impossible” called Simon's Flash Speller. It's this part that may help make it easier to work out what you need to do. First, you'll need to quickly work out how many letters are in the name of the turned-up card. Here's the starting point:
- For clubs, remember: 11 letters
- For hearts or spades, remember: 12 letters
- For diamonds, remember: 14 letters
- If the value spells with 4 letters (four, five, nine, jack or king): Don't make any adjustment to the number of letters.
- If the value spells with 3 letters (ace, two, six, or ten): Subtract 1 from the number of letters.
- If the value spells with 5 letters (three, seven, eight or queen): Add 1 to the number of letters.
From here, there are 6 ways the trick can go, so you have to quickly recall which out to use. There's really only 2 substantially different outs, with 12 and 13 letters. All the other outs are just modifications of those two. First, how do you handle cards whose names spell with 12 and 13 letters?
- For 12 letters: Spell the name, and take the top card of those still in your hand.
- For 13 letters: Spell the name, and take the last card that was dealt off.
The last two possibilities involve 10- and 11-letter card names:
- For 10 letters: Spell T-H-E before the card name (such as T-H-E-A-C-E-O-F-C-L-U-B-S), resulting in 13 letters.
- For 11 letters: Deal the turned up card aside, and spell its name with the next 11 cards, resulting in 12 cards being used.
For those who are wondering how the math of this trick works, the first deal is obvious. The selected card starts at the 10th position, of which 4 are dealt off, so it winds up at the 6th position. It's the second deal that is highly counterintuitive. In fact, watch the video starting at the 3:30 mark, and when they realize that the card winds up as the 13th card despite the two different spellings, Matt (the gentleman with the long beard, who has created his own original magic, as well!) comments, “My brain's breaking a little bit now!”
To explain, imagine you're doing this trick with cards numbered from 1 to 18, in order, with card 1 on top. If you deal 7 cards, as in the R-E-D-S-U-I-T possibility, as calculated on Wolfram|Alpha, you see that the 6th card from the top winds up being the 6th card from the bottom. If you deal 9 cards, as in the B-L-A-C-K-S-U-I-T possibility, Wolfram|Alpha tells us that, once again, the 6th card from the top winds up as the 6th card from the bottom.
It only seems like the different amount of letters should change the location of the card, but it actually has the same effect, as long as you deal past the selected card! If you have any further questions about this routine, or anything else on this blog, let me know in the comments below.
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