#card problem

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What is it about conditions that we're drawn to?  Card problems are curious things.  They're only ever really a problem for card magicians. The laity is (or should be) oblivious to them.  Yet we always stress the conditions to them: "You shuffled, right," "I haven't gone near the deck," "they were inserted into separate parts of the deck," "the packets never came into contact," etc, ad infinitum...

But conditions do matter, perhaps not explicitly, but implicitly.  The effect is better if the packets never come into contact with one-another, if there's no palming then we may feel cleaner and then present it thusly.  If an audience member shuffled the cards, then they should know what that implies--that they are somehow in control of what's happening, that they have a stake in what happens because of the result of their actions.

So then what is it about card problems?  I historically have thought of them as mental exercises, not dissimilar to mathematicians finding new sorts of proofs--they may not be anything more than shortcuts in methodology, by no means groundbreaking.  But what do the conditions of card problems mean to an audience member?

Let's look at some examples.  Steve Reynolds's book "Route 52" poses a lot of solutions to card problems.  One effect, "Trist on Twost" is based on a problem posed by Jon Racherbaumer to do a Twisting the Aces with "no Elmsley counts, just spreads"  Reynolds additionally sets out to eliminate displacements and half-passes.

So the first question to address is, what's wrong with Elmsley counts?  Well, I'll venture that nothing is wrong with Elmsley counts.  Within the context of the routine Twisting the Aces, it works perfectly--it appears to be a fair display of the cards and method-wise, it is far enough removed from the effect that there is no suspicion (recently read something along these same lines, but I can't for the life of me remember where).

But the point is, Elmsley counts work.  The effect doesn't need to be fixed: to the audience everything is copacetic--everything looks the way it rightfully should.

But then there's that one tiny little miniscule detail of if you handed a packet of 4 cards to a lay person and asked them to show you that all 4 cards are face down, they probably wouldn't count the cards one at a time.  In all likelihood, they would spread the cards. Spreading the cards is an efficient action--it accomplishes precisely what the objective is.  And it feels more open, doesn't it?

So a method to accomplish Twisting the Aces with spreads would appeal to those individuals who are interested primarily in the overall impression of naturalness to the audience.

A brief tangent:  We like to say that method is important only in how it affects the effect.  I agree with this.  The method to an effect could use half-passes, six kinds of palms, magnets, mirrors, counter-balanced weights, and a gerbil on an exercise wheel and as long as all the audience sees are cards invisibly reversing themselves, you're golden.  If a method will require the magician to put his hand in an unnatural position, he should want to strive for a method that eliminates that awkwardness, simply so that the audience is unaware that anything has happened.  With me so far?

Therefore, theoretically, an effect that uses a pass to cause the card to magically jump to the top should be no different from an effect that uses duplicates because (if the magician's done his job) the pass should be just as invisible as doing nothing--the impression on the audience should be that their card goes into the center and now is on top and that nothing has happened.  Are we in agreement?

Now, when I do the aforementioned effect, I don't use duplicates, nor do I use a pass.  And I don't use a side-steal.  The reason I don't do any of these is that the visible objective of these moves is to cause a card to end up on top of the deck.  To me, showing this as an effect would be the same thing as demonstrating my side-steal to the audience.  Instead, I want to be ahead of them, not playing catch-up.  This is why I think switches such as top changes and multiple lifts or subterfuges like using tilt, work far better for the effect.  I'd love to live in a perfect world where all of my sleights are perfect, but they're not and I'm not.  I've got to cheat a bit.

I was going somewhere with this... 

shit...

Well, getting back to Twisting the Aces.  What's wrong with using half-passes to reverse the cards?  If you've got an invisible half-pass, then what does it matter?  I think it's the exact same problem I have with using a pass during an ambitious card routine.  When I've had people try to explain to me how they thought I accomplished an effect, it usually went something along the lines of "you did [such and such thing] really fast."  "You just pulled my card out really fast,"  or "you just turned it over."  The standard audience member will generally go with the most obvious efficient method to accomplish what he saw (and I base this on a huge lack of scientific findings).

The reason I think the Asher Twist is crapola is because the method is precisely what the effect is.  A Blog About Card Magic touched on this in a really great post. 

Also, I think I've just now discovered the secret that most great sleight-of-hand artists use to make all of their handling invisible.  The don't fucking do the sleights how or when one thinks they ought to.  I know. Groundbreaking. You can send me money later.  The reason Twisting the Aces is so great is because all of the principal sleights occur when the effect isn't.  Elmsley counts have nothing to do with the cards turning over--they only hide other reversed cards--so even if someone suspected that Elmsley counts were happening, they would be unable to connect it to the method of how the cards were being reversed.

Wow. That was a long tangent. Back to fixing effects.

Magicians like to stipulate conditions for effects.  I think it's because each one has a very specific feel they're looking for.  Why don't you want to do Elmsley counts?  Because it doesn't feel right.  It feels better to do spreads.  Or it feels more open to have the spectator shuffle the deck first (or whatever).  That card problem I brought up a couple weeks ago--I don't think I was really searching for a method, but a certain hands-off feel.

This is something SR has talked to me a great deal about, how he wants to eliminate sleights and replace them with subtleties so he can achieve a certain objective hands-off look to the effect--so that the impression on the audience is that he didn't (or couldn't have) done anything fishy.  And perhaps therein lies an answer to what conditions mean to audience members: they are unstated impressions of an effect.  It's an anomalous thing.  I can't actually define what I mean by impression--only insofar as to say that it's intangible and you should know when the proper one has been impressed upon your audience.

But shit, what do I know?

The temperature's in the mid 70's, gentle breezes are blowing, the hipsters are breaking out the tank tops and jean cut-offs.  It's nearly Summer and finals are approaching.

Not that I'm going to be doing any studying. I don't really like working hard. I take film classes because I like them and because making movies isn't really "work" to me.  And also I don't have to write any fucking papers. Fuck writing papers.

So in honor of not participating in Academia, here's a little card problem to pass the time until I can get out of this godforsaken region of America and return to the south to hang out with all the proper potheads, alcoholics, homosexuals and other degenerates who I call my friends.

I got this idea (stole) from "Charles Jordan's Best Card Tricks" by Darth Fulves.  Great fucking book.  If you have ten dollars (and I know you do) you should pick this up and get to reading.

So here's the problem adapted from (again, stolen) from an effect entitled "Leave it to the Aces" which can be found on page 138.

Borrowed shuffled deck. Aces on table.  Card is peeked at, lost in the deck. The spectator is allowed to insert the aces face up into separate parts of the face down pack. Only after he's done this does he name his favorite ace.  The cards are spread and the ace he's named has found his selection.  Bonus points for a minimal handling.

Another idea: after the aces are inserted, he names either the reds or the blacks. The nominated colors have sandwiched his selection.