I'Ll Read Your Mind

Effect

Here is a variation of the “You Do as I Do” card trick that borders on the miraculous. A spectator thoroughly shuffles a deck of cards and steps into a corner of the room. There he turns his back on the performer and the audience, while he fans out the deck. He is invited to select any two cards he likes and to reverse them in the deck.

While the spectator is making up his mind - and incidentally trying his darndest to select the two cards most unlikely to be known to the magician - the performer picks up a second deck and announces that he will likewise turn his back and reverse the same two cards in his deck, that the spectator is now _______________ * (Editor's Note: This remarkable card feat has a most Interesting history. Research indicates that this feat of causing a mentally chosen card tore verse Itself automatically In the deck was first marketed by Bagshawe of London, England, when he Introduced his “Reverso” deck.

This English deck relied for its working on pairs of cards, set up as described above, but an Ingenious and mechanical arrangement was depended upon to hold them together. One card had a small projection on its bach that caught into a declivity in the card above it thus causing each pair to slide off the deck as one card. Max Holden. then in England, purchased one of these decks and a short time later Introduced the trick to America's magic circles.

For quite some time he had such card manipulators as Nate Leipzig and T. Nelson Downs running around in circles, until he finally presented the deck to T. Nelson Downs. About this time Mr. Holden opened the first of his now well known magic stores and featured this deck as one of his most exclusive tricks. Finding that the English make was too difficult to have manufactured, he hit on the idea of holding the pairs together with wax. This was roost satisfactory and for years he advertised the trick in his catalog as the “Sympathetic Reversed Cards.”

In both the Bagshawe and Holden version the deck was held with backs up throughout the trick. Subsequently Dai Vernon was working with the same principle and really popularized the deck. In his version, he used beeswax to hold the pairs together, and treated each card on its back so that he worked with a face up deck. Needless to say, the finesse with which he handled the deck, soon elevated the trick to a place unsurpassed in its field.

Paul Fox suggested the variation of using a red and blue backed pack, and then with the advent of roughing fluid Dai Vernon finally perfected the trick as we have it today.) selecting. When the spectator announces that he is ready, both he and the magician face the audience and fan their decks. Impossible as it seems, both the spectator and the magician have reversed the same two cards. The effect may be repeated immediately with another spectator.

When you consider the startling effect, the absolute fairness of the procedure and the futile effort of the spectator to outsmart the performer, the effect comes pretty near being a perfect mental masterpiece.