Mark Leveridge Magic

A Wrinkle On - The Deck Of Cars

Paul Hallas

My inspirational starting point for this is probably Jim Ryan’s “Red Hot Mamma” but you’ll see we take a different route and the nature of the cards allows for some cheeky handling. It involves two spectators, preferably a couple.

The starting position is simply to have a speed camera sticker on the back of the face card of the deck. Spread the cars and show them, then shuffle the cards but in doing so end up with the face card back in position. This is simple if you overhand shuffle, simply draw off the face card and shuffle the rest on top, then repeat and as you near the last few cards pull them off singly and you are left with the original face card back in position.

Motivation? You’re lulling them into a false sense of security but as this all takes place you comment along the lines, “This is my car collection, you’ll notice they all look alike. I can mix them up, but you’d never notice the difference. I shuffle but it still looks the same.”

Flip the deck blank side up. Overhand shuffle again but this time as you pull away the first group of cards you also pull away the face card and a few others from the bottom then shuffle the rest on top. Once again the face card stayed in position at the face. Spread the face down cards (though not all the way through) showing the blank banks, “All the backs even look the same.” Square the deck and turn it car side up. Request the first person to sign his name in the windscreen of the face card so his car will be different to the others.

In supposedly losing his car in the traffic, you double (or triple) undercut the bottom card of the deck to the face. Place the deck in front of the second person and have them sign the face card. Genuinely cut the deck and complete the cut or let the spectator do this. You point out that it would be easy for you to find the cars as all you have to do is spread through and look for their names, but instead you will try it a magical way with the cards face down.

Spread through the cards until you come to the speed camera and cut the cards at this point bringing it to the top of the face down deck. “Looks like someone got caught with a lead foot.” Double turnover the top two cards and a signature is seen. Turn the double down then table it to one side asking the participant “Is that the first time you got caught speeding again?”

As they answer get a break under the top card of the deck and perform a Concealed Reversal (Mentzer’s “Cards, Cuts, Moves and Subtleties). Basically the bottom half of the deck is turned face up onto the top of the deck and then the cards below the break are turned face up and replaced in position. This gives you a face up deck with a selection reversed in the middle.

Turn to face the other participant. “Okay, lets see what you’ve been up to on your drive, lets look for your named car.” Spread the cards slowly from hand to hand saying, “You’ll notice all the cards are facing the same way, must be a one way street!” Outjog the reversed card as you come to it and keep spreading, commenting, “Looks like one driver is going the wrong way down the one way street, I wonder who that could be?”

The first person is now usually smiling at the second person thinking it is their car, but you quickly turn the tables saying, “I don’t know why you’re smiling that’s your second offense in less than a minute!” Turn over the card to show it is his again, then immediately turn over the camera card saying to the second person “And now YOU’VE been caught speeding!”

Arthur MacTier

Arthur wrote to me with some suggestions for the Car Named Fred routine supplied in the instructions, and so I am happy to pass those on here now. In Arthur's own words...

1. To be consistent with other card effects, I prefer to use what appears to be a full Deck of Cars.

2. To achieve that, I simply added: Mercedes, Jordan, Citroen, Mini, Daiwoo, Jaguar, Chevrolet, Cadillac, and VW Golf, to the 35 cars already listed in the instructions.

3. Another benefit of notes 1 & 2 above, is that when doing the casual jog shuffle as per Steps 4, 5, & 6, in Mark's Instructions, you can take up a bigger chunk of cards from behind the stacked segment of the deck; thus further hiding the dormancy of that stack, during the shuffle.

4. As I felt that the effect lacked a final punch, I actually get the spectator to read out my prediction aloud, which is as follows:

Being a good judge of character, I feel that if you were given a random choice, you would pick

A SKODA

as it's the only car where you'd have no trouble finding the dipstick, as it's always in the driving seat!

This always gets a chuckle, and finally the spectator's selection is then turned face up, to reveal that the prediction proved to be correct. One further clarification that I omitted to mention above was that although I do reveal [as per the instructions] the makes of car that were above and below the spectator's selection, I ensure that the [unrevealed] spectator's selection, is placed face down on to the table, until my prediction card message has been read by the spectator.

Another thought that you might like to incorporate within your Deck of Cars routine, is an 'out' to cover the situation when the spectator delays calling stop until after the dealing of cars to the table has passed the last Skoda card!

In such a situation, all I do once the spectator has eventually called 'stop', is to square up the pile of dealt cards, and say: 'O.K., we'll now give your batch a cut'. Accordingly, because you know the position of the block of alternating Skoda cards, within that squared up packet, you simply cut into that Skoda group, and if the face card of the cut off portion is a Skoda, you then get the spectator to read the prediction, but equally, if it is not a Skoda, you simply turn the top card of the portion still on the table, face up, which of course, will be a Skoda. Either way, you can't go wrong, and thus you no longer have to worry about being lumbered with a dilatory spectator.