Monday Mailbag #36 - Santa's Super Sack Edition

This is the last week of posting for the 2020 Jerx Season. And 2021 won’t kick off with regular posting until February (assuming the supporters decide to go for another yerar), so I figured I’d go with an extra-large mailbag post today.

Love your rabbit's foot angle for the trick (a huge improvement) but for me HIT has another, bigger problem. Anyone who plays blackjack even a little will be put off by the weirdness of trying to decide a "winner" based on only two cards. Literally a major component of blackjack is that you can "HIT" your hand to get another card, with the chance of busting out over 21.

The blackjack theme is kind of built into the premise of the trick. I suppose you could just say, whichever of us has a higher total of two cards wins...but then you just have a random procedure untethered to a real gambling game.

So for me it feels awkward and contrived regardless, a fatal flaw. Plus, you need two full arm sleeves and ink up your neck to really sell it. —JS

Yeah, I found that fairly confusing as well. In the demo he talks about how blackjack is a game where the winner is the person closest to 21 “without going over.” But they only ever get two cards so the possibility of going over 21 doesn’t exist (so why bring it up?). Anyone who has played a single blackjack hand would not say, “Ah, your hand of 12 beats my 11.” They would say, “Hit me.”

It’s odd that the trick is called “HIT” when that’s the one thing you don’t do in the trick.

As I mentioned in that post, I don’t own this trick, but I know Luke is a pretty thorough teacher, so I assume he goes over this issue in the download.

Here is the tactic I would use for the “lucky charm” version I described in the previous post.

“We’ll play a game to demonstrate the power of this rabbit’s foot. It’s sort of like Beginner’s Blackjack. In Beginner’s Blackjack, each player gets two cards. The person with the highest total wins. Usually it’s a game to teach addition to kids. There is no hitting, there is no strategy, there is no card counting. It’s barely a game, but to the extent that it is a game, it’s one based solely on luck. So you’ll really get a feel for how this charm influences the game.”

In the spirit of “take your weaknesses and make them strengths,” this presentation would make the lack of hitting an enhancement to the effect. We want to see the power of this lucky object, so we’re going to simplify the game so that it is just a matter of luck. We’re going to take out all the other variables.

In last week’s mailbag post, JT was looking for some options on how to unload some magic. Below are a couple ideas that were sent to me in regards to that.

Responding to JT's question in today's Mailbag about offloading a lot of old magic: I recommend the Facebook group Surplus Magic Exchange. (groups/surplusmagicexchange). Lots of people there sell in bundles like "these fifteen decks for $X.XX" or "five Tenyo item for $Y.YY" or "twelve unassembled Sans Minds tricks for eight cents." —EK

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In response to your reader who asked about donating magic tricks to a charity, our magic club in Omaha, Nebraska is a 501c3 non-profit that accepts gently used magic tricks which are then tax deductible at fair market value on the giver’s taxes.

We use many of the tricks with our Junior Magician’s programs and/or our after-school onsite programs. Some we sell to help fund those programs which can be read about on our website: https://TheOmahaMagicalsociety.org —DA

Regarding the post And Found

I was wondering, is it stronger to perform the ritual in the likely location of the lost objects (i.e. in your home, if the items were last seen there) or would it be better to do the ritual somewhere else? Of course, that's merely academic until we can actually go somewhere else, but just planning ahead... —CK

I think either option will work fine. If I had my druthers, it would probably be stronger to make someone’s cufflink—which they lost at their home in Reston, Virginia—reappear in a card box some months later when we’re vacationing in Aruba while I’m casually showing them a card trick late one night. That’s going to hit harder than if it reappeared back in Virginia. But I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

There are two variables here that will impact the strength of the trick: time and distance. So, how long ago the object was lost, and how far away the object was lost. But the most impactful variable is the time one. If I make a pin you lost reappear 5 years later—even if we’re in the same place you lost it—that’s going to be very powerful.

But if you lose your cufflink while we’re packing to go to Aruba and the next day I make it appear in Aruba, that won’t be anywhere near as strong.

So time is the necessary variable and distance is a “nice to have” option.

Finding missing objects alongside a missing card is very magical. I think that Martin Gardner wrote about searching your friends' couches for lost objects in his encyclopedia. If you're looking to improve the odds of performing Leigh's trick without really stealing anything, it's probably a good place to start. —IM

Great idea. Thanks, IM. And thanks, Marty G.

In the interest of handling cards like a regular human (i.e. Neolift)….have you made any adjustments to how you false count/steal the cards for Las Vegas Leaper? Counting with the Biddle grip just seems unnatural in that regard. —ZA

No, I don’t. Here’s why…in most instances, with a double-lift, you want to draw no attention to the moment, so it makes sense that the handling should be natural to the point of being invisible (in my opinion, that is—I know other people prefer flourishy double-lifts, but I’m not sure what their rationale for that is).

But this moment in LVL is not one we want to go by unnoticed. So it doesn’t really matter if the count is unusual, what matters is that the unusual-ness is justified.

How would someone normally count cards? They’d spread them from hand to hand or count them on the table. What are the potential vulnerabilities in those ways of counting? Well, you could miss cards spreading from hand to hand. And if you count into a pile, I could maybe do something to the pile when you aren’t looking.

So, while I don’t mention those potential issues out loud, I frame the counting procedure in a manner where if someone were to give it some thought, they might conclude the counting procedure I’m suggesting is more sure-fire than the “natural” way to count cards. “I want you to hold the cards like this and we’re going to count them one at a time and in your own hands.” So I’m stressing the idea that each card will be dealt with singly and will never leave their hands (unlike the other unspoken options of spreading or dealing the cards). I don’t think this normalizes the counting procedure, but I think it justifies it enough. And later in the effect they will just count the cards into a pile on the table and we’ll get a repeat of the effect, which I think takes any residual heat off the counting process.

What I don’t do is say—as Paul Harris does—”This is how they count cards in Vegas.” Anyone who has been within 500 miles of a casino, knows that’s not true.

I was playing with a tiny blank book I bought a year or so back. (The idea was a 1x1.5 inch mini erdnase, with real Erdnase text and pictures shrunk down.)

And I thought, what if I have some old magic manuscript -- some rare magic trick a weird magician once sold. And the instructions were written in code, so you have to figure them out. And you went through it all, decrypted the instructions, and it ended up being a pretty good trick. Not great, and maybe not worth all the effort, but it was fun to figure it out. Do they want to see it?

The overall idea is to specifically and openly downplay the trick part of the experience in favor of the story of how you learned it. But still there’s a trick, which the audience is underestimating a little. And you can use it to intro any trick that uses common objects.

Also you can have parts where you are not sure of your decryption. That could produce some good moments. —PM

Yeah, I like it.

I would probably have a point where, as you suggested, your decryption isn't exact. So you may have two possible interpretations for a certain step, you try it the first way and nothing happens, then you try it the second way and you get some sort of result that tells you you're on the right track.

Or perhaps something happens slightly when you do it the first way and then you “perfect” it the second way.

For example, let’s take a look at the trick in the previous email, “Las Vegas Leaper.” Imagine you’re reading some instructions you decoded (“Fore Which To Tranz-pose Gaming Cards Betwixt Packets”). You ask the person to count their cards. Then they hold them in their hands. You have them name a number between 1 and 5. They say 3. You tell them to rotate their packet around clockwise while you turn your packet counter-clockwise.

“Okay,” you say, “I think that’s all we need to do. Count your cards, do you have three more now?”

They count their cards. They have 11. You have 9.

You go back to the instructions. “Okay, yeah, I thought maybe this is what we needed to do, but I wasn’t sure. I think we need to rotate our packets around one time for each card that we want to go.”

Now the other person rotates his pack three times clockwise, while you do yours three times counter-clockwise.

This time, three (more) cards have transported. So they now have 14 and you have 6.

This type of thing always goes over well. Any manner in which you can flesh out the world of how tricks are learned and passed on and how you learned this particular trick can do nothing but enhance something that might otherwise just be a good but “standard” magic trick.