Find your friend’s mentally selected card out of 21 cards.
Effect:
Find a mentally selected card in an impossible way.
Routine:
Ask your friend to shuffle a deck of cards (52). After your
friend has finished, ask him to deal out 21 cards in a separate pile. You take
the pile of 21 cards and deal them out in rows and columns. Ask your friend to
mentally pick a card and tell you what column it is in. You scoop up the 3
columns sandwiching the selected columns between the others. Lay them down the
same way, in rows and columns. Again you ask your friend to tell you what column
it’s in now. Again you scoop up and sandwich the 3 columns and lay them out.
For the last time you ask your friend to tell you what column it’s in. You
scoop up the column, start dealing them face down, stop and tell your friend to
flip over the card you just dealt out. It’s your friend’s card!
Props:
Step
|
Method
|
How It Works
|
How the Cards Look
|
| One |
Have your friend shuffle the full deck and deal out 21
cards, place them in front of you in a separate pile. Lay out the cards in
the order as shown.
- Take the first card and lay it in column A
- Take the second card and lay it in column B
- Take the third card and lay it in column C
- Take the fourth card and lay it half way on the first card in column
A
- Take the fifth card and lay it half way on the first card in column
B
- And so on
|
You just laid out your first set of
columns and your friend mentally picked a card and tells you what column
it is in.
Let’s say your friend’s card is 19, so your friend will tell you it
was in column A (yellow highlighted). |
A |
B |
C |
| 1 |
2 |
3 |
| 4 |
5 |
6 |
| 7 |
8 |
9 |
| 10 |
11 |
12 |
| 13 |
14 |
15 |
| 16 |
17 |
18 |
| 19 |
20 |
21 |
|
|
|
|
| Two |
After your friend has mentally
picked a card and told you what column it is in, scoop up one of the
un-selected columns. Now you scoop up the selected column and lay it on
top, face down, on the column you just picked up. Then sandwich the
selected column in between the two non-selected columns. |
You sandwich the selected column
between the two un-selected columns. Let’s say you put column C on top,
A in the middle and B on the bottom. It should look like this. |
Unselected
column |
| Selected
column |
| Unselected
column |
|
|
|
|
| Three |
After you are done making the pile, make sure the cards
are facing down. Deal out the cards the same way as step one. Again ask
your friend to tell you what column the card is in. Again scoop up the
cards the same way as step two. |
Deal out the cards the same way
shown in step one. Now it should look like this.
The yellow is your friend’s first
selected column.
In blue is your friend’s second
selected column. Now his card is in column B.
In green is the intersection of the first
and second selected columns; these are the possible mentally selected
cards. All together it should look like this. |
A |
B |
C |
| 3 |
6 |
9 |
| 12 |
15 |
18 |
| 21 |
1 |
4 |
| 7 |
10 |
13 |
| 16 |
19 |
2 |
| 5 |
8 |
11 |
| 14 |
17 |
20 |
|
|
|
|
| Four |
(Deal out the cards the same way as
step one.) Again ask your friend to tell you what column the card is in.
Scoop the column up and turn the pile you just made face down. Start
dealing the cards out. Stop at the fourth card, give it to your friend and
ask if that is their card. They’ll be amazed! |
You laid the cards out the same way
again, for the last time. It should look like this.
In green are the possible cards.
In peach is your friend’s last selected
column.
In orange is your friend’s mentally
selected card. All together it should look like this. |
A |
B |
C |
| 9 |
18 |
4 |
| 13 |
2 |
11 |
| 20 |
6 |
15 |
| 1 |
10 |
19 |
| 8 |
17 |
3 |
| 12 |
21 |
7 |
| 18 |
4 |
14 |
