Newsletter No 2

Change, Tilt & Turn

The Swing Change

I published this move in The Magigram in October of 1976. It came about when practising the Hugard One Hand Top Palm. In that sleight the little finger pushes the top card forward and it pops up into the palm. Except occasionally the move goes wrong and the card shoots out around the side of the deck. I turned that into a sleight that quickly moved the face card of the deck to the rear. This made for the secret reverse of the top card to the face of the deck. I wasn’t the first to discover this move. Mark Weston published it twenty years earlier in The Magic Wand (No 254) as the Weston ‘Pinkie Reverse’ having discovered, as I did, that it made for a good method to reverse a card. If you do it fast it also makes an interesting colour change.

Here’s the explanation for the ace production that appears above. In preparation for the trick the aces are alternated with contrasting indifferent cards at the face of the deck. The production is for demonstration purposes only. I wouldn’t normally do this move four times in a row.

The rapid shift of the top card around the deck does make a noise. Practise and trying it with different card stocks will help make it quieter. Sometimes the card seems to flip smoothly and noiselessly around the deck. A light shake of the deck results in a very magical transformation. It’s an odd thing and worth experimenting with.

You can use the move after an All Backs routine to print faces on the deck. Or after Triumph to visually right the deck. Let’s say that in the penultimate stage of your Triumph routine the deck is face-up with a single face-down card on top. You turn the apparently mixed deck over a couple of times in your hand, make the move and the deck instantly rights itself, the back that shows on top of the deck seemingly turning face-up. You can now spread all the cards face-up across the table.

Front Tilt

In the June 2011 issue of Genii magazine I published a version of Marlo’s Tilt/Vernon Depth Illusion. The difference being that the move was made at the front of the deck. As I said in the article, it is not that far removed from Edward Victor’s original depth illusion subtlety described and illustrated in his book Further Magic of the Hands (1946). Check out the Awkward Ace.

It’s a deceptive move if you throw it into the mix during your Ambitious Card Routine. Here’s what it looks like:

Key to the Door

I bought theDeluxe Haunted Key from Vanishing Inc. You can see the demo video here:

The trick is advertised as ‘a classic.’ This key was marketed by Martin Breese as The Key to Borley Rectory. It was the invention of Malcolm Davison and described in The New Pentagram magazine in 1988. Davison’s smart idea was that if you are going to perform the effect where a key turns over on your hand, it’s a lot easier to do if the key is engineered so it tips slowly and easily. The outfit marketed by Martin Breese came with a duplicate key that wouldn’t tip over so easily.

On receiving the key from Vanishing Inc my first thought was that if there is a key, where is the door? Wouldn’t it be good if, as the key on your hand turned over, a door opened? Now this could be a real door in your home or venue. Or it could be a door depicted in a painting hanging on your wall. Or in a framed photo on your table. Perhaps the door is on the cover of the book you have incorporated into the trick, an edition of Harry Price’s Borley Rectory The Most Haunted House in England. I’ll leave it to your imagination but there are no prizes for turning it into a packet trick. Until next time…

David