Bare Bones: The Stray Force

Last week I was reminded of a trick I postered here a few years ago called Stray the Daisy. That was primarily a Valentine’s Day trick and it required at 8 outs, so it wasn’t the sort of thing I did regularly. Although the handful of times I did it, it was a fun trick and people dug it.

I decided to break out the basic idea from that trick and perform it this weekend and it again got a really good response, even though I performed it in a very bare bones way. Normally I would wait to publish a trick (usually in the books) until I had a presentation that I thought was particularly interesting in some way. But I thought it might be worthwhile to see the trick at this stage, and then maybe revisit it again in the future if/when I have a presentation I’ve come up with for it.

One thing I like about this is that it’s a completely hands off trick. Not just a little bit hands-off—you literally don’t need to touch anything at all. Technically you could do this over Zoom (but you’d have to send them the deck, and Zoom shows are gross, so you probably wouldn’t want to).

When I did this, I did touch the deck, but you could choose not to.

You need a marked deck in Si Stebbins order. I also used a little playing-card-sized envelope, although that’s not absolutely necessary.

When I did it this weekend, I started by giving the deck a quick false shuffle, and then did a rough spread on the table face-up. I have zero concern of someone noticing a red-black pattern in a face-up spread. Especially not a rough, uneven spread.

I scooped up the deck and had my friend take the deck under the table and cut it a few times, remove the top card and put it in the envelope. And put the envelope in his pocket. This all happened completely in his hands and under the table where no one could see.

I had him set the deck on the table and I told him we were going to try and see if the deck itself could help identify the card he cut to. (Again, that’s not a presentation I would use other than in the early stages of testing out a trick.)

I told him to cut off a small packet of card. And that he would remove cards individually from the packet he cut off. Tossing them to the table and alternating saying red-black-red-black. Whatever color he was on at the time the last card in his hand was reached, that would be the color we would go forward with. “Sort of like, ‘she loves me, she loves me not’ with flower petals.” (To be clear, he’s not naming the actual color of the cards in his hand. Those cards are face down. The cards are just being used as objects for the back and forth nature of the selection. They’re standing in for the flower petals.)

So he spread the cards in his hand a little a started plucking cards out individually. Red-black-red-black. The card he ended on was black.

He cut off another packet and did the process again with spades and clubs. (Ended on clubs)

Then picture/number. (Number)

Odd/Even (Even)

High/Low (Low)

So we were at a black, club, low, even, number card.

With the final packet he alternated between the Two of Clubs and the Four of Clubs, landing on the Four.

I made the point (as I had made on some of the previous packets) that if he had cut just one more or one less card in this packet, he would have ended up on the Two of Clubs rather than the Four.

So I recapped. He cut to any card and put it in an envelope in his pocket. Then, using the deck of cards and a random process he narrowed all the cards in a deck to the black cards, the clubs, the number clubs, the even number clubs, the low even number clubs, and finally the two of clubs. At any step of the way, a single card difference would have pushed us down a completely different path to a completely different card.

He removed the card from the envelope in his pocket and of course it matched.

You have the general idea on this already.

As I mentioned, the deck is marked and in Stebbins order so you know what card is in his pocket when the deck is brought back out. It’s going to be the one before (or after, depending on how you set up your deck) the card that’s currently on top of the deck.

Now it’s just a matter of “forcing” the outcome to match the card that’s in the envelope.

So you’re going to narrow down the cards in binary options, and force the outcome of each option. To do this, you just need to know if the spectator cuts off an odd or even number of cards each time.

So you look at the marking on the top card of the deck and notice if it’s a red or black card. Then, after they cut, you make note of the new top card’s color.

If the color of the original top card and the one they cut to are the same, then you have them start the “plucking of cards” elimination, on the option you don’t want them to end up with.

If the color of the original top card and the one they cut to are different, then you have them start the elimination procedure, on the option you do want them to end up with.

For example, the top two cards are the same color and you want to force the “low” option.

You: “Okay, now just pluck them one at a time from your hand, alternating between high and low. So toss one. High. Another. Low. And keep going like that until you have one card left.”

Them: “High, Low, High, Low, High… and the last one is Low.”

If the top two cards were different colors, that means they have an odd number, and so you’d have them start with the force option. “Low, High, Low, High… and this one is Low.”

For it to seem as fair as possible, you need to tell them how to count before they spread the cards in their hand. So it seems you can’t possibly know how many cards they hold. You may want to turn away while they cut the cards and then have them hold the cut off portion between their hands when you turn back.

Here are the binaries you would use. They’re pretty straightforward. There are only couple exceptions.

If they selected a J, Q, K

Red/Black - Suit A/Suit B - Number/Picture - Male/Female - Jack/King (if not a queen)

If they selected a 2-9

Red/Black - Suit A/Suit B - Number Picture - Odd/Even - High/Low - 1st Option/2nd Option

In this case High is “6 and above” and Low is “5 and below,” because the court cards were already ruled out.

If they selected a 10

Red/Black - 1st Suit/2nd Suit - High/Low - Number Picture - Odd/Even - 1st Option/2nd Option

In this case High is “7 and above” and Low is “6 and below,” because here the court cards are still seemingly in play.

The one value that I find hard to whittle my way down to in a natural way is the Ace. You could narrow them down to “cards with letters” (as opposed to cards with numbers). And then you could split them between the “higher value” letter cards and the “lower value” letter cards, and let them decide if the Ace is high (getting paired with the king for the next round) or low (pairing it with the jack). Giving them that choice is a nice additional bit of freedom. Although I’m still not 100% sure that’s how I’d handle it.

You’ll want to make sure they understand to pick up a “small packet” each time, or you’ll run out of cards. If they’ve been discarding cards neatly into a pile, you can re-use the discard pile for the same process, but I would try to avoid it.

The good news is, even if things get screwed up along the way, you still know what card the person put in the envelope under the table. That would be a pretty strong trick even if you just have to abandon everything and figure it out “by magic” or whatever.