Card Trick 1
Effect:
The magician has three rows of cards. An audience volunteer picks a card in his/her head and tells the magician what row it's in. The magician does that three times and on the third time tells the volunteer what their card was. (or have the magic puppet whisper to you what the card was and then you tell the audience what the puppet said.)
Supplies:
21 cards, all different
Secret:
First lay out the cards, 3 a
ross and 7 down.
Have someone think of a card and tell you what row its in.
Pick up all the rows, row by row, making sure to pick up the row that the card is in 2nd.
EXAMPLE: Let's assume the volunteer secretly chose PINK-6 and then told us their card was in the second row. We would pick up the rows and we would make sure the pink row was picked up second so that it was in the middle of the deck.
Then lay out the cards again (the exact same way, 3 across & 7 down).
Put down one card per row.
* Ex: First do this *** (let's pretend the stars are cards).
* Then this: *** and so on (7 times).
In our example, we'd put down BLUE-1, BLUE-2, BLUE-3 then go down to the next row and place BLUE-4, BLUE-5, BLUE-6 and so on.
Then ask the volunteer where the card is in now.
Pick up the rows again, like before -- still making sure that you pick up the row that the card is in 2nd.
In our example, the volunteer would say their card was in the first row. You would make sure that row was in the middle of the deck
Lay them out again, the same way.
Then ask the volunteer which row the card is in now.
(You can get dramatic and tell them to think really hard about it... pretend to be reading their mind)
Then count four cards down in that row.
(It appears more magical if you count to yourself... people won't realize you're counting four cards down).
The fourth card is their card!!
In our example, the volunteer would have said their card was in the last row. Four cards down is PINK-6!
MAGIC!
Danny offered this variation to make the trick harder to figure out. He wrote:
"I would like to offer an extra solution for magic trick number 1. In this one you lay down 3 columns with 7 cards. And the spectator picks a card. The thing is, that it can become obvious that your always taking the one with the card in it, SECOND. So to ''hide it'' you can do this. Do the 1st phase of it, Now RANDOMLY take each column. and lay them down in the way of phase 2. Now there are 2 columns with 2 cards, and 1 column with 3 cards (those cards I mention are those that were located in the chosen column). Now all you do is gotta remember the cards in the column they choose. And then lay them out THAT way again (or reversed, going from left to right instead of right to left.) And then those cards will be split apart, so you can still magically get the right card, but the trick is harder to guess."