CARDOPOLIS 34

CUTTING, DEALING, JUMPING, AND THE MASTER MOVE

It’s December, Happy Christmas! This is Cardopolis 34 going out to paid and free subscribers. If you are not a paid subscriber, you might consider it now while the launch price of $30 still holds. Paid subscribers receive a newsletter every month. If you want to stay a Free Subscriber, you’ll still receive two or three newsletters a year.

We are taking things easy as the holiday season approaches with a mix of relatively effortless card magic. There’s a crafty version of Paul Curry’s The Case of the Missing Hat called The Convention. Nope is a reworking of an old elimination trick with a new dressing. Nice party trick to perform for a couple. Aces Up! is my version of a Lin Searles gem in which the performer loses and finds four aces. Jump! is a version of a version of the old card hopping out of a hat trick. And, no, you don’t need a hat. For anyone feeling the need to indulge in a bit of sleight of hand there is a novel handling of Joseph Ovette’s magnificently efficient card control The Master Move.

THE CONVENTION

This is a version of Paul Curry's Case of the Missing Hat. (Magician's Magic, 1965). It was one of the first tricks I made up when I read Curry’s book. I published an ‘improved’ version in The Magigram (March 1974) and again in Spellbinder (Vol 3, No 30, 1983). Ha! The hubris!

The paradox the Curry trick is based on goes back to the 1800s. One source cited is The Nine Rooms Paradox, a rhyme, published in Current Literature vol. 2 (April 1889). But I found an earlier source in Harper's Young People (May 15, 1883).

Magicians have long been attracted to the idea and enhanced it with a little magic. See Herb Runge's The Weird Inn (Jinx no 128). I revisited that trick in Genii (December 2020).

The following version of the Curry routine returns to playing cards, though specially printed cards could also be used. The method is different and there are a few psychological touches that I think help conceal the miscount.

NOPE!

This is a handling of R. M. Jamison's Elimination (The Sphinx, May 1935). When Jamison published it he wrote, ‘Here is a clever interlude at any card table that has proven to be a real mystifier to all. I do not know the origin. I call it the Thirty Card Elimination.’ Jamison used an equivoque after each deal. I’ve replaced it with a onetime ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ equivoque at the start of the routine emulating ‘swipe left’ as used in dating apps.

The dealing procedure is similar to The Tantalizer which you might recall from The Royal Road to Card Magic (1948). Two other touchstones for this type of trick are Coincidence published in Rufus Steele’s Card Tricks that are Easy to Learn, Easy to Do (1935), and Stewart Judah’s The Spectator’s Choice (The Jinx, Feb 1936). Lynn Searles added a kicker to the Jamison process in his Ace Control (The Card Expert, 1938). Searles uses the process to produce four aces during an exhibition of 'controlled dealing.' The production of the other two aces makes for a nice kicker.

JUMP!

I first read this effect, a card jumping out of a hat, in The Royal Road to Card Magic (1948) where it is described under the title of Off Agin, On Agin, Finnegin! According to Greater Magic, this trick goes back to Cardini. See Method No. 8 The Cardini Rise (Greater Magic, 1945). I had imagined it older than that perhaps because mechanical versions of the effect go back further. Will L. Lindhorst has an earlier publication date of 1934 with How to Make a Selected Card Jump from a Hat in Tricks and Magic: A New Bag of Tricks but I wonder if there are even earlier versions.

Dingding’s Flick Out, marketed a year ago as a download, inspired the version here. That version used a gimmicked card case. In this version, everything can be examined.

LIN SEARLES’ ACES UP!

Recently, Bob Farmer reminded me of an excellent trick by Lin Searles called Aces Up. It was briefly described in the Lin Searles Folio of Pallbearers Review (1973). Searles had changed the spelling of his name from Lynn to Lin by this time. I hadn’t realised until Bob mentioned the trick that I’d been doing it slightly differently to the original. Anyway, here it is, a simple method for controlling aces that gives the impression you are a real card expert.

JOSEPH OVETTE’S THE MASTER MOVE

You might know this as Frank Kelly’s Bottom Placement, a title that seems overly surgical. Joseph Ovette, who had many good ideas, seems to have discovered it first, but essentially the two techniques are the same. The version demonstrated here is particularly suited to the table, but there’s no reason you can’t use it while standing.

AND FINALLY

If you watched British TV in the 70s, you might remember Romark. Romark, real name Ronald Markham, was described in the press, perhaps with a slight sneer, as a ‘former salesman from Newcastle.’ However, by the time he appeared on British TV he had considerable experience as a professional hypnotist and mentalist. David Berglas met Romark in South Africa where Romark had a successful and long-running show at the Lyric Theatre, Durban. Prior to his BBC TV series, which debuted on 30^th December 1973, he had also been performing in the US where he later appeared in an episode of Mannix, another detective show created by magic afficianados Richard Levinson and William Link. You can see Romark’s hypnosis spot on Mannix here.

For me, Romark was fascinating to watch. He was clearly a mentalist of the Thirteen Steps variety, and I recognised many of the tricks he used. However, he also had some very nice off-stage work that turned even a familiar routine into something completely baffling.

He was, I’d say, not the most charming of performers, and yet his audience seemed to find his caustic comedic approach entertaining. His presentational style might simply have reflected the culture of the 1970s, the era that Paul Daniels also began his TV career.

Romark’s television fame led to the publication of two books: The Sins of the Fathers, and The Curse of the Children. Published in 1974 these were promoted as being case studies from his 25 years as a clinical hypnotist. He wasn’t the first mentalist to stray from the stage into self-help and he won’t be the last.

Romark’s career came to an ungracious end, a combination of unwanted publicity and a conviction and prison sentence for fraud. He was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, and died in 1982.

If you haven’t seen Romark work, here is an appearance he made on the Flip Wilson show in 1973. Classic mentalism comprising nail writer, torn centre, billet knife and a little of that off-stage work I mentioned. All very well done. Try to look past the frilly shirt.

That’s all for now. See you in 2025.

David