WITH A FLOURISH - ISSUE 22

Fancy Moves and Revelations

Welcome to issue 22 of the Cardopolis Newsletter. If you are new to Cardopolis, you can still catch up on all the back issues online. In this issue we go back to the early 1980s when Marc Russell and I came up with a series of flourish ace productions. Although they’ve not been officially published, I have shown them around and they are out there. Cardicians like Babel use them in their work. And Yuji Wada came up with a wonderful version that really took the technique to extremes. But here we have the original move. Later, I’ll publish some further variations and applications.

RIVERBOAT ACES

This flourish is based on Mike Rogers’ Paddlewheel Flourish which was originally published in MUM Magazine (April 1965). Rogers’ original idea was a sort of flourish cutting or display of the deck. Riverboat Aces takes the flourish back to basics to enable you to pop a single card out of the deck. It can then be extended to produce two or more cards in a rather spectacular manner. You can see some of the different applications here.

I’ll explain the basic one and two card pop outs and how using reversed cards can extend the flourish to include three or four cards. There’s more that can be done with it but I won’t bore you.

The False Running Cut I use here was described in Cardopolis Newsletter 3. You can check it out there or substitute a different technique.

RUNNING CUT PRODUCTION

The dull title of this item relates to a card problem I was trying to solve. I wanted to devise a quick production of a Royal Flush from the deck. The goal was to start with the Royal Flush on top of the deck and somehow cut or shuffle the cards in position, ready for the production. I think I had Fantasy Aces in my mind from Paul Harris’ Card Fantasies Volume 1 because the overall feel of the production and final split of one cards into two is very like that routine.

THE GREAT EGYPTIAN FLOTO MYSTERY

Here is an item my friend Barry Murray discovered. Barry, who sadly died earlier this year, loved finding forgotten tricks. One day he came to the Melia White House Hotel where we would meet and asked if I’d heard of The Great Egyptian Floto Mystery. The title didn’t mean anything so Barry described the effect. A ball bearing is shown. It’s real and it’s heavy. Milk is poured from a bottle into an otherwise empty bowl. The ball bearing it put into the milk. But instead of sinking, the ball bearing floats. You can push the ball down to the bottom of the bowl but it’ll still float right back to the top. An odd trick I think you’ll agree and it was sold by dealers both here and in the USA.

I hazarded a guess at the method. ‘Maybe the bowl is filled with mercury and there’s just a top layer of milk.’ Unbelievably, this was the solution. It is very hard to imagine magic dealers selling mercury to customers. And then magicians taking this trick out in public and actually performing it. I’ve since read the inventor’s method in Lloyd W Chambers’ Original ideas in Magic (1941) where it also says, ‘A spectator may submerge the ball but it will arise and float again.’ Sounds more dangerous than the bullet catch.

SOMETHING COOL

My friend Marco Tempest alerted me to the following phone app. What a cool idea, and perfect for your Christmas gathering. I wonder how it could be redressed for magic. I imagine some kind of betcha or using a video that shows an animated photo of someone blowing out candles on a cake. If you can build such a thing, let me know.

FINALLY

This is a short issue of Cardopolis but I wanted to get something to you before Christmas. I began this newsletter as a pandemic project. And the pandemic is still with us. So is this newsletter. Thank you for your time, your comments and your support. It’s been a lot of fun putting the newsletter together, digging through the notebooks and even coming up with a few new ideas. I hope you find something of interest.

Best Wishes to all. Have a good Christmas. See you in 2022.

David