The Magic Change

The magic Change is an excellent trick, easy to perform, yet wholly puzzling.

Hand the pack of cards to someone-Dorothy, perhaps,-and say to her, "I shall leave the room. While I am gone, shuffle the pack and cut it. Then think of some number from 1 to 14. Count down to that number in the pack; note what card it is-if you think of 9, count down to the 9th card and look at it; if you think of 13, count down to the 13th card. Then replace the cards as

they were, so your card is still the 9th or the 13th-or whatever number you thought of."

You leave the room. Dorothy thinks of 6, say, and when she counts down she sees that the 6th card is the Jack of Spades. She leaves it in its position as the 6th card.

You return, take the pack and say to someone else, "While I am out of the room again, Richard, you write down some number from 15 to 20. When I return, I will make Dorothy's card magically change its place, from her number to yours."

Leave the room, taking the pack with you. Now rapidly but very carefully deal off, one by one, and face-down, the top sixteen cards, placing one on top of the other as you count them off. Then replace the pile of sixteen, in their new order, on top of the face-down pack. These sixteen cards will be exactly reversed. The card that was on top will now be the sixteenth, the former second card is now the fifteenth, and so on.

You return to the room and ask Richard what number he wrote down.

If he says 17, all right. If he says 16, you must slip one card from the top of the pack to the bottom; if 15, two cards from the top to the bottom. If he says 18, slip one card from the bottom of the pack to the top; if 19, two cards from the bottom to the top; if 20, three cards from the bottom to the top.

As your audience will see you do this, you can say, "For luck!" or, "To make it more confusing," or anything of the sort.

Now ask Dorothy what number she thought of.

If she says 6 (and Richard has said 19 and you have put two cards from the bottom on top ), give a few taps on top of the pack and say, "Card, I command you to skip from Dorothy's number to Richard's

Then to Dorothy: "Now I will count from 6 to 19, and there it will be!"

Count aloud, "Six"; then throw the first card face-up on the table as you say "Seven"; then the next card for "Eight"; then "Nine," and soon. (Be sure to say the number thought of, but begin your count with the next number after that; if Dorothy's number was 10, say

"Ten," and count the first card "Eleven.")

Count all the numbers aloud as you deal off the cards, and when you reach

"Eighteen"-the one before Richard's number-you can pause dramatically and say, "The next one, if it skipped down when I told it to, will be Dorothy's card." Turn it over as you say, "Nineteen" and lo, it is the Jack of Spades!

Dorothy and everyone else saw it as the 6th card. How could it become the 19th ? You could not have "placed" it when you had the pack out of the room, because you could not possibly know what card Dorothy saw, nor what number she thought of, nor what number Richard wrote down.

It is all very baffling !