Pick a Card – A Phone Magic Trick

Phone tricks baffle and delight because people don’t expect them to work. Take a look at this baffling and outrageous phone hack.

This trick looks like your typical “pick a card” trick, except the magician and spectator are separated by the phone.

THE TRICK

I call a friend on the phone and explain that I intend to do a magic trick over the phone.

I ask you to shuffle and divide a deck into 2 equal piles, pick a card from one pile, write it down, and place it on the bottom of the other pile; this is your Choice card.

I ask you to slowly deal and call the cards on top of the pile that contains your Choice card. She says the first letter and I stop her, apologizing that I made a mistake; she must cut the cover first. She puts the card back on top. I ask him to cut the deck completely.

I now ask you to slowly deal the cards from the bottom of the pile containing your Choice card, calling them out as you turn them over. He hands out the entire pile and I ask him to do it again.

It starts again and suddenly I ask it to stop. I tell him the identity of his Choice card and that it is the next to be tapped. He flips over the next card, revealing his Chosen card.

PLEASE GUESS HOW YOU THINK YOU COULD ACHIEVE THIS TRAP. It can help if you answer the following questions about this particularly interesting trick: Why did I ask you to split the deck? Did I really make a mistake when I asked him to deal and call cards the first time? Why did I ask you to cut the stack? Why did I ask him to deal and shout the cards above? Why not try from below? How did I know the identity and location of your Chosen card?

Congratulate yourself if you generated a reasonable plan to do this trick. The magician thanks you. He did the trick this way.

THE SECRET

First I asked her to split the deck, so we wouldn’t have to wait while she said all the cards into a full deck,

To do this phone hack, I needed a way to create a key card on the phone. By asking him to deal and call the top cards, and then pretending I made a mistake after he told me the identity of the top card in his pile, I made that card my key card and wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget it.

The rest of this self-contained, mechanical gimmick proceeded as described above. The first time he dealt the cards from the top of the pile, I heard my Key card and knew his Choice card was the next card. I wrote your Chosen letter.

Then when she dealt again I stopped her when she said my key card. I then told her the identity of her Chosen card and predicted what would appear next. She did it.

This great telephone trick mystifies, amazes and delights. WOW.

MAGICAL PRINCIPLES TELEPHONE TRICKS

In my Family Magic books, I cover the concept of card tricks so easy to do that the magician doesn’t have to touch the cards. Instead, he hands the cards to a spectator-volunteer and trains her to do the trick. The audience is truly impressed when I point out that ‘I didn’t touch the cards’.

Phone tricks take the ‘magician didn’t touch the cards’ idea one step further; the magician not only does not touch the cards, he does not do the trick in the same room, city, state or country as the spectator-volunteer.

In some respects, I find this idea decidedly creepy. However, it works. This magic initiates, amazes and entertains everyone. Adapt phone tricks like this to your computer: communicate via email, webmail, Skype, instant messaging, etc.