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Mathemagics By Mitchell Simmonds
After performing magic for many years, you learn that magic isn’t simply about sleight of hand; it also about probability and maths. Whilst many will be familiar with the standard: ‘Think of a number. Double it. Add 10. Halve it. Take away your original number. Your answer is five,’ there is more to Mathemagics than that. In fact, some of the best card tricks invented revolve around Mathematics. The best way to explain how theory can be used in magic is to reveal a trick itself. Again, many will be familiar with the 21 card trick in which three rows of seven cards are laid out and a volunteer picks a card. The volunteer tells the magician what row their card is in and this is repeated twice further. After this, the magician can name the card. In my opinion this trick lacks imagination. It is dull, boring and a waste of the audience’s time. Magic is all about amazing your spectators, and giving them that ‘Wow!’ moment. The only way to do this is to make it appear that maths is not part of the magic trick, even though it may be the very basis of the trick. Without further ado I will explain, Fitch Cheney’s Five-Card Twist, which I feel is a perfect example of Mathemagics. The magician exits the room leaving his assistant with the audience. She gives a full deck of ordinary playing cards to an audience member and asks him/her to shuffle it and then pick out any five cards. The assistant then takes the cards, looks at them and places one card face down and the four others face up. The magician is then allowed back in; he takes a look at the cards and in an instant names the card that is face down! How is it done? The explanation is simple; the assistant uses a pre-arranged code with the magician to tell him what the card is. As there are five cards and 4 suits, at least two of the cards have to be of the same suit. The assistant therefore chooses one of these cards to be the hidden one and places the others face up. For example, if there are two hearts, the assistant hides one of these hearts and the other heart is the first card on the left. Therefore, when the magician sees the first card, he instantly knows the suit. Now, the clever part - how does the magician use the other three cards to determine the value of the card? There are 13 values in a deck of cards. The order goes as follows: A,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,J,Q,K. You have to imagine these numbers as a clock. So after King comes Ace, for example. It is a rule, that if you pick any two cards, their values can be, at most, six positions apart. So, for example, if you pick 2 and 9, there is 9,10,J,Q,K,A,2- six positions apart. The lowest card must be revealed, when the assistant turns over one card, so that the card that is hidden is either 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 values above it. The magician must then deduce what value it is from the other three cards and count that number from the value of the first card to gain the value of the hidden card…simple!
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