Debo admitir que soy usuario de Facebook. El otro día, el algoritmo de Facebook decidió mostrarme un video de Jason Ladanye realizando un truco de cartas automático que usa una cuadrícula de 4x4. Ver https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-PWpDE6w-Ns?feature=shareEs un gran truco que funciona solo, pero rara vez tengo espacio suficiente para realizar un diseño de cartas de 4×4.
Así que hago el mismo efecto con una cuadrícula de 2×2. Aquí están las instrucciones.
🃏 The Grid Lock Trick
“You shuffled the deck. You chose every action. Yet I’ll still find your card—and even bring it to the top.”
🎭 Patter Introduction
“Card cheats claim they can follow a single card through any number of moves—even with free choices and random dealing. Let’s see if that’s possible. You’ll shuffle the deck, make all the decisions, and I’ll just try to keep track.”
🪄 Step-by-Step Performance
🔢 Step 1: Spectator Shuffles the Deck
- Hand the full deck (52 cards) to the spectator.
- Ask them to shuffle thoroughly.
- Take the deck back and say:
“Now I’ll set a foundation we’ll build on.”
🧱 Step 2: Deal the Initial Grid
- Deal 4 cards face down into a 2×2 grid:
[1] [2]
[3] [4]
Label piles mentally as:
- 1 = top-left
- 2 = top-right
- 3 = bottom-left
- 4 = bottom-right
“These four piles are our grid—northwest, northeast, southwest, and southeast.”
🎲 Step 3: Spectator-Directed Pair Dealing
- Hold the remaining deck and say:
“You’ll now tell me where to deal pairs of cards—either to a row or a column. And you’ll say how many times to deal to it.”
✔️ Row and Column Definitions:
- Top row: piles 1 & 2
- Bottom row: piles 3 & 4
- Left column: piles 1 & 3
- Right column: piles 2 & 4
🔄 Example Dealing Round:
“You pointed to pile 1 and said ‘column, 3 times’? That means we’re dealing to the left column.”
- Deal three pairs (total of 6 cards):
- First pair: one card to pile 1, one to pile 3
- Second pair: again
- Third pair: again
✅ Order within each pair doesn’t matter—pile 3 first or pile 1 first is fine.
Repeat until all cards in the deck are dealt (you’ll use 24 total pairs).
👀 Step 4: Point Out Pile Differences
- Say:
“Now we can see that some piles have more cards than others—that’s entirely from your choices.”
- Spread the pile with the fewest cards y the one with the most, to emphasize this randomness.
- Then square up both piles neatly.
- If you want, you can let the spectator shuffle each pile.
🎯 Step 5: Spectator Selects a Pile
- Say:
“Point to any one pile and look at the top card. That’s your card. Remember it, don’t tell me.”
📚 Step 6: Bury the Card with Grid Logic
- Identify the row and column that include the chosen pile. There are two other piles involved.
- Example: if pile 1 is chosen (top-left), then:
- Top row = piles 1 & 2
- Left column = piles 1 & 3
- Other piles = piles 2 and 3
- Pick up the two other piles (row & column piles not including the chosen pile) and drop them on top of the chosen pile.
- Then drop this combined pile on top of the remaining 4th pile (the one not involved yet).
- This should be done in a careless manner.
“We’ll collapse this grid into a single pile, keeping everything buried just the way you set it up.”
Now you have the full deck in one stack, with the spectator’s card in a known position.
🔀 Step 7: The Faro Shuffle (Controlled Mix)
- Say:
“You made all the choices. You shuffled. You dealt. You picked the card. And still… I’ll find it. In fact, I’ll shuffle it up even more first.”
- Perform a perfect in-faro shuffle (in-shuffle: first card stays on bottom, top card ends up second).
- After the in-faro, say:
“And yet, despite your random choices, I still know exactly where your card is…”
🃏 Step 8: Reveal
- Flip over the top card of the deck.
- Dramatic pause.
“Is that your card?”
✔️ It is.