{"id":7420,"date":"2025-09-29T16:04:41","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T16:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/?p=7420"},"modified":"2025-09-29T20:30:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T20:30:17","slug":"self-working-card-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/self-working-card-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"Self working card trick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">I am a fan of Matt McGurk and his youtube channel where he teaches self-working card tricks. Here is one of them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-9-16 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"The BEST easy CARD TRICK EVER! You won\u2019t believe this works!\" width=\"443\" height=\"788\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/J43W-w1HDaU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I was interested in how this worked so I asked an AI to write a program to explore what is going on. That program is at <a href=\"http:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/cardtrickanalysis.html.\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">http:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/cardtrickanalysis.html.<\/a>  That program illustrates what the limitations are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Basically the effect can be presented in many different ways. Spelling the name of a card is one way, and as you can see by the program all that is doing is dealing the same number of cards down for each of the three deals. Alternatively you could spell the word &#8220;Impossible&#8221; three times. Or use the words &#8220;Impossible&#8221; then &#8220;Remarkable&#8221;,\u00a0 and &#8220;Surprising&#8221;.  Depending on the size of the packet, the number of letters can be from 10 to 15 letters.  Looking at the table generated by the program you can see that the only packet sizes that let you spell any card are packets from 16 to 20 cards.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Using words of 10 letters lets you use  packet sizes 11 to 20 cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">If you want to turn this into a card revelation you could control a selected card to the top of the deck and palm it off, or side-steal it.  Have the spectator then shuffle the deck and cut off about a third of the deck and hand you those cards.  Add the palmed card to the stock and overhand shuffle it to the bottom.  Then to the revelation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Another idea is to have the spectator cut a third of the deck to the table.  Do the trick using the word &#8220;Impossible&#8221;.  Then openly add a card to the stock and repeat the trick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">You can also turn this into a &#8220;Lie Detector&#8221; trick.  Control the selection to the top of the deck and then deal off 16 cards. This puts the selection at the bottom of the packet.  Patter about how the packet can by used as a &#8220;Lie Detector&#8221;.  Ask the spectator to name their card, but tell them that they can lie if the want to.  Then spell out the name of the card and drop the rest of the packet on top.  Explain that the &#8220;Lie Detector&#8221; readings were not conclusive.  Repeat the spelling a second time and then patter about seeing some signs like the spectators eyes dilating.  Do the final spelling which brings the selection to the top.  Glimpse the selection (if you didn&#8217;t see it earlier) and proclaim that the &#8220;Lie Detector&#8221; has made a determination.  Turn the top card over and state whether or not the spectator lied.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am a fan of Matt McGurk and his youtube channel where he teaches self-working card tricks. Here is one of them:<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-magic","category-self-working"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Bob","author_link":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/author\/admin\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7420"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7424,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7420\/revisions\/7424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}