Joshua Foer is the author of “Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything,” from which this article is adapted, to be published by Penguin Press next month:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/......ets.html

The memory exhibitions I've read about all involved the person staring at the deck spread face-up for a relatively long period while concentrating. Even only 30 seconds would be a long wait for a magic audience, although an audience might wait that long if the understood they were seeing a memory demonstration.

Thus, memorizing a specific deck order in advance is far more practical if the goal is to create magic. Then, if false shuffles are done, or even real shuffles that are specific controls, the deck can end up in memorized deck order. Then the individual card positions will be known without looking at any of the faces of the cards.

Having a good memory is useful. There are plenty of routines where memorizing a short sequence of several cards is required, and that can be done relatively quickly.

And, please understand, I am not diminishing that memory feat; it is very impressive.

Hey Panlives,

I just forgot what I was going to say.

Oh yeah, thanks for sharing that very interesting article.

Imagicatively yours,

T. G. Murphy

This is already out and was released on March 4th (finished it last week).

Great read, big reason I am starting to work on my Dominic system PAO pegs. Given an hour a day with a 3 card image I would think most of us could get to 2 minutes within 6months-1year.

I think the applications for book tests, magazine memory tests, phone number / names and partial stack work make this very useful.

Memorize 13 cards from top, 2 faro's and now you have every 4th card memorized ready for Marlo's routine (from Marlo In Spades), or even just Aronson's Lazy effect without needing to stack.

If you do want to go into magic with a borrowed, shuffled deck, check out Bob Miller's BAM: Borrowed and Memorized Deck.

Scott, was not able to find any review on the book you mention. any pointer ?

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a review of it myself.

Lorayne can do it faster.... and get a standing ovation.

How fast can lorayne do it?....

Looks like the international record for a single deck is down to 21.9 seconds:

http://web.aanet.com.au/memorysports/dis......spdcards

http://www.worldmemorychampionships.com/......ents.asp

Well, I finished reading the book today and I found it to be quite enjoyable and interesting.

Like yourself, I've started developing a PAO system to use. I already use the memory palace / method of loci to memorise shuffled decks, but have always just used 52 locations and kept one card in each.

About the book, one thing that astonished me were the ways in which some savant skills can be physically induced. E.g., with a solid blow to the head or - even better - via transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Another astonishment to me, a point made by the author a few times, was how poor most of the USA Memory Champions are compared to their European counterparts. E.g., the USA record for 52 cards is 1:03. (Almost 3 times slower than the world record.)

http://www.usamemorychampionship.com/records

Daegs, maybe you should have a go! Certainly, I would think that someone here could break that with a bit of practice.

Some video of last month's USA Memory Championship.

http://www.marketwatch.com/video/asset/m......248CD8EA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfHK0eOe1rQ
Bob Miller performing a memory (not a magic) routine with half of deck