Effect:

A card is selected and returned and the pack is freely shuffled and cut by several spectators and placed on the floor. It was then covered by a tabloid size newspaper and the cards were commanded to cut themselves at the selected card. The spectator removed the paper and the cards were seen to be cut a right angles in the form of a cross and when the top half of the pack was removed, the chosen card was revealed on top of the lower half.

This simple plot succeeded because of Alex’s reputation and the build-up that he used to surround the presentation (Read his book “The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley” if you want more depth to his ideas on how to present an effect).

Method:

There is no method. As mentioned it was sheer audacity. Alex was sitting beside a table on which rested a glass of his favourite falling down water and his evening paper. Some time earlier he had deposited about a quarter of the pack face down under the newspaper and left it there. (John Ramsay also used to get up to this same kind of subterfuge from time to time. He’d sit with coins palmed in his hands for half an hour, knowing that at some time someone would ask him to do a trick.)

Inevitably someone asked Alex to do a trick so he produced a pack of cards (less the cards already under the newspaper), had a card selected, controlled, palmed out whilst the pack was split in two and given to two spectators to shuffle and cut. This covered the fact that it was a short pack. The cards were assembled and the card was secretly re-introduced on top of the pack.

The pack was placed on the floor and the newspaper picked up with one hand, together with the cards underneath and casually tossed over the pack making sure that the added pack was roughly at right angles to the cards on the floor.

A sip of whisky and Alex extolled the impossible conditions and the presence of a ghostly gambler who could always cut a pack to any position. A spectator was asked to lift the paper to reveal the cut pack in a cross. The top half was removed and the next card turned over to reveal the chosen card.

Many people that evening were fooled because their minds were conditioned to believe that Alex possessed some super new idea involving one of his cunning methods. But he was just as adept at presenting an effect as performing a difficult method.

I believe it was Max Maven who said that doing a mental effect was easy – it’s the presentation that is the hard part. Alex later said his inspiration for this casual piece of foolery came from the coin tray whereby coins on a small metal tray were poured into the spectators hand whilst extra coins hidden underneath the tray were added in the move.

If you want inspiration think simple – think of the magic of past years.

Yet whilst he was entertaining on a cruise ship which called at Acapulco he was asked by the staff captain to show some magic to the local press and dignitaries at a cocktail party on the stern of the ship. This is what he did

He had a card selected and shuffled back in the pack by the spectator. He then threw the whole pack over the side so that all the cards fluttered down and settled on the surface of the sea.

They all looked over the side and saw that all the cards were face down except one. The selected card! And all the evidence was floating out to sea.

The point of the story is this. If one of the greatest sleight of hand magicians of all time chose to force a card and switch the pack for a deck of double back cards and a double face card – why can’t we?

Vernon was a master of sleight of hand but he knew the guaranteed impact that could be achieved by using fake cards. He was an astute all round magician who was as adept at dealing a bottom card as he was in using a hook coin, if the effect was achieved more easily.

I saw and met Vernon in the 50s/60s and witnessed him using fake cards, pulls and other gizmos as well as his famed sleight of hand but by keeping one guessing as to his method he was always one ahead of you. He was a great magician.

Incidentally I understand that the cards in the water was recently presented on TV in a swimming pool. So what’s new?John Ramsay was another who used this ploy but more of that later.