I would never claim that my version is the "best" solution. Certainly the fact that the cards are both cut and shuffled can be considered a weakness. The ideal solution might look like you do not move cards around at all. I suppose you could simulate that using two techniques. If you can cut dead on to any location you wish to obtain a break, and then do an invisible pass at that break, then you apparently just spell the name of the card and the card is on top. Many magicians do pretty good passes, a few do invisible passes. (Steve Forte comes to mind.) And, a few magicians are good at estimated cuts. (Mike Close is the first name I think of.)

You might have a spectator name the card, and do this effect only when the card is at the proper position or closer to the top of the deck. If the card is in the proper position, you have a miracle, but that's only going to happen six times in 52 if you're working with the Aronson Stack. (The cards in position 10 to 15 are automatically in position to spell.) If the card happens to fall in the top 9 cards, you simply deal cards onto the table until the named card is on top, and then deal seconds until you finish the spell of cards.

As to the difficulty of doing math while performing: how difficult this depends on how much time you are willing to spend working on it. Many of Simon Aronson's effects require a little math. In the case of my spelling routine it's pretty straight forward, but like everything else, the more practice you do the easier it will become.

Here's an easy example. Say the spectator names the Seven of Spades. If you regularly work with the Aronson Stack you should know immediately that the card is at position 19 from the top. With Simon's flash speller, you can very quickly calculate that the card spells with 13 letters. You simply subtract 13 from 19 and you know that you have to move 6 cards from the top of the deck. This will not require a cut at all and you can immediately go into my version of the Haymow Shuffle to get the job done. Trust me, this is very fast and easy. (With some practice.) You now simply spell out S-E-V-E-N-O-F-S-P-A-D-E-S. With each letter you can deal the cards into a face up pile if you have a table handy. (Dealing face up retains your stack order.) On the final S you reach the named card, the Seven of Spades. With no table, you transfer cards one at a time from the top to the bottom and on the final letter you will have the Seven of Spades.

Here's another example: Let's say they name the Ten of Hearts. You immediately know that it's at position 38, and can calculate quickly and easily that it spells with 11 cards. You subtract 11 from 38 and you know that you need to move 27 cards from the top to the bottom. While you can do it with just a Haymow, you will probably prefer to get much closer with a single cut. My preference would be to cut about 15 to 18 cards from top to bottom in a single cut. (This assumes that you are in home position with the Aronson Stack, of course.) So, I estimate that and cut the deck, doing an all around square glimpse of the bottom card. Just now I did this and I glimpsed the 7 of diamonds on the bottom. This means I just moved 15 cards, so I know that I need to move 12 more. I do my Haymow shuffle, sighting and moving 12 cards. Now I'm in position to spell T-E-N-O-F-H-E-A-R-T-S. The card on the last letter will be the Ten of Hearts.

There will be a slight additional calculation if the card named is near the top of the deck. Since the stack is a Daisy-Chain you will have to go "around the corner" from 52 to one which adds one more calculation. For example, lets say the Two of Hearts is named. It spells with 11 letters, but it's at position 4 in the deck. You cannot subtract 7 from 4 without getting into negative numbers. So, you must first add 52 to 4 making 56 and then subtract 11, making 45. That tells you that if the Four of Clubs is on the bottom of the deck, you can then spell T-W-O-O-F-H-E-A-R-T-S and the card on the final letter will be the Two of Hearts. With what I've outlined you should already know how you will proceed to get the Four of Clubs to the bottom.

I know this sounds like a lot, but each step is really quite easy, as you can convince yourself if you already use the Aronson Stack and you just sit down and work through a few examples. As you practice this trick, you will be getting practice with:

1. The Aronson Stack
2. Simon's Flash Speller
3. Estimating Cuts (This is a forgiving procedure, even if you are way off you can bring the trick to a successful conclusion.)
4. My Haymow variation for controlling cards.
5. The All Around Square Glimpse.
6. Doing some very easy math in your head.

Spend an evening with this and I think you'll see that it's not as hard as you're thinking and you will be well on your way to adding a valuable trick to your repertoire. And you may be adding several other valuable techniques to your card arsenal as well depending on how many of the techniques listed above you already do.

Dennis Loomis

If you wish to short circuit all of the math and are willing to do some memory work, here's another technique.

Sit down and make out a list of the 52 cards in the stack order you are using. Now calculate where you must start to spell to that card. (Which card has to be on the bottom of the deck.) Write the name of the "Start Card" along side of the target card. You will now have 52 pairs of cards.

Use mnemonics to associate the two cards in each of the pairs so that, for example if the Ace of Clubs is named, you know that the Nine of Diamonds is on the bottom. For me, mnemonics is fun and easy, as it is for most people that are willing to spend some time working with it.

Count Zapik, I'm sure there are other besides me that are interested in knowing the rest of your procedure. Care to share it either here, or through email?

Dennis Loomis

There's a big difference between calculation and memory. But you still must have a way to cut the "Start Card" to the bottom of the deck. I would use the same procedures I outlined above, so it amounts to eliminating the Flash Speller and subtraction to my procedure.

I suppose different things work best for different people.
I wanted a method that was as simple as possible.
I call it ‘Spell to it’.

I don’t include the top three cards or the bottom card in the spelling sequence [4]. I mentioned why earlier in this thread.

There are a substantial number of cards [23] that spell without cutting the deck. Many more than Simon indicates in his original manuscript as published in whichever book it appears. These cards are also conveniently placed together in two parts of the deck. They form an easily memorable group.

Where I do need to cut, I use an ability to cut to any card in the deck with certainty, therefore allowing me to place a key card on the bottom. There are very viable ‘shortcuts’ to achieving this skill if necessary. I don’t use them.

Where possible an invisible pass is good. However, in my experience, spectators don’t seem to associate shuffling activities with card placement. Especially when naming a card, and ‘shuffling or toying’ with the deck occur concurrently and appears to stop at the moment the card is named.

Knowing where to cut and working out as many convenient cards to spell from that position is the trick.

Ideally we don’t want too many key cards involved, each one needs to be remembered after all. If we needed 52 key cards it becomes an inelegant and tedious solution. If it only required one it would be wonderful.

I seem to have managed to get it down to six. Each has a kind of distinction that leaves a particular impression in the mind that aids the required memory work.

For example placing the Ace of Diamonds on the bottom, allows me to get all the ‘embedded’ Jacks in one swoop, by spelling ‘The Jack of Clubs’ ‘The Jack of Hearts’ ‘The Jack of Diamonds’ as well as ‘Ten of Diamonds’. With this key card I get four cards to spell.

The spelling of each card is important, notice I don’t spell ‘the’ before Ten of Diamonds. The rote learning involved is remembering the keycard and learning the title of the card to be spelt. Not very complex in the realm of things & ultimately less work than was required to learn the stack initially, IMO. It’s also an ‘automatic indicator’ once learned, [no arithmetic involved].

With the other key cards I get to group differing amounts of cards together. The other key cards batch the cards into sets of [3], [6], [1], [3], [4], [2], [6]. The set of one card on its own is annoying, so I ignore it. Having to remember one key card for one card I want to spell to is totally inefficient, and I blame Simon Aronson for this, whilst also worshipping the ground on which he walks.

This is as far as I have got. In truth, for me it works well. It uses patterns that suit my way of thinking. Although I do wonder whether there may be more elegant or obvious ways of organizing the key cards. I may have missed something that others might more easily notice perhaps.
It’s maybe time to share ideas with a few stack magicians and see if we can’t improve the thing further.
Maybe reading this will be the spur for others to work out better methods.

Zapik

Count Zapik,
Thanks for sharing. I agree that most spectators probably don't associate the card shuffling and cutting to card placement. That's why my method works. Of course, when you just ask a spectator to name a card, they do not know what you are going to do and you are free to spell to it or not. For example, when the Queen of Hearts is named I usually do my Prediction a la Kruskal effect.

Let me refer you to my web site and Article 10 in the memorized deck section: Preconceived Jazzing with the Aronson Stack. This article give ways to get to every card in the deck. Most are done by spelling from the top or the face. This combines ideas from many different people including Bill Nagler, Scott Cram, Eric Anderson, Patrick Page, and myself. None of these "outs" require that the deck by cut or shuffled: you start either from the top of face every time. (The deck starts in home position.) For the most part there is no sleight of hand involved, but for the cards second from the top or face you will use a double lift or glide, and in many situations a top change or Erdnase Color Change are used, but these are optional. To learn this you will have to work on your memory of how to spell to each card. This will take some time but is probably roughly equivalent to the key cards and outs you would need to learn Count Zapik's method. The tough cards are the ones from 18 to 36 which use phrases like "My favorite Card" or "Your very favorite card." But Scott Cram has given us some memory aids for these. Particularly interesting are cards 37 to 48. In every case you spell the name of the card in full or in part. You will need to learn whether you use "The" or "of" and in the case of cards close to the face you may spell only the suit or only the value. This will take some time to learn, but if you do, you will have a powerful tool. Anyone can name any card and you immediately produce it by spelling it's name or a magic word of phrase and produce the named card.

Dennis Loomis
P.S. I agree with the Count: it would be wonderful if some other readers might jump in and help.

Inspired by your writings here, I have spent some time with the Try The Impossible today, trying to work out a practical Flash Spelling variation for my language, in which you get completely different numbers.

I think I have it roughly translated already, but it may be more practical to look for other formulas that utilize lucky coincidences in my language, such as all the basic card numbers without the suits being low odd numbers, A, 3, 5, 7 and all of the suits spelling neatly upwards with 4, 5, 6, 7 letters. All the +1 cards are pairs (4, 6, 8, Q) and so on. Plenty of patterns, but it will take time to find the most effective path and the shortest formula.

But with me being so mathematically challenged, I wonder if it may not be easier in my case to simply memorize the number of letters for each card. Why not, I have time.

I suppose the real need isn't the knowledge of how many letters a card has, but the jump point from which you have to start in order to find it.

Unfortunately, mapping all jump points and all landing points for all cards seem a little bit overwhelming. I thought about writing them out on the back of each card as a means to find new effects, but I think it will quickly become confusing.

But imagine knowing instantly what card to cut to in order to spell to the required card. And also all possible cards that can be spelled to from where you are. No math for idiots like me who just get it wrong anyway. To know the jump point for each card and all the places to go from there.

So instead of writing the letter number on the back of each card pertaining to that very card, one could write the cards that can be spelled both to and from that card. All the places that spelling from that point can lead you, as well as the card you needed to have started on in order to find where you now are.

So from the top of the stack as a jump point (starting by dealing the first card as one), you would arrive at all of these cards neatly in order: AC, 10S, 5H, 2D, KD, 7D. (And possibly more by adding 'The' and other cheats). They can all be reached from where you start without having to do anything. I'm sure this is an intended feature and I'm equally sure that there has to be many such cards throughout the deck that lead to a lot of different cards. So that maybe a few key jump points could cover a great many possibilities.

Is this roughly the same principle as what Count Zapik refers to? I'm not very advanced with this so I don't fully understand all of what has been said.

Hi Noobini,

You are understanding what for me is the way forward with this process.

[YOU WROTE,‘I suppose the real need isn't the knowledge of how many letters a card has, but the jump point from which you have to start in order to find it’.]

I think this is the way forward.

[YOU WROTE ‘Unfortunately, mapping all jump points and all landing points for all cards seem a little bit overwhelming’.]

Not if you only have to remember 6 or 7 cards, and if there is a reason and logic to what you have to spell to reach your destination cards each time.

[YOU WROTE ‘So that maybe a few key jump points could cover a great many possibilities’. Is this roughly the same principle as what Count Zapik refers to? ].

This is indeed what I’m thinking of and what I do. You are right Noobini.
The system can be made to be very straightforward to a large degree using this as a guiding principle.

My own view is that this approach is ultimately easier to internalize than the ideas I’ve read about before. The methods on Dennis Loomis’ excellent web pages are really well considered and are good, but maybe a bit dry IMO. If you’re daft enough to want to learn something like this in the first place you need to have some fun whilst doing it. The way forward is to create a viable and memorable reason for everything being where it is; it both aids the memorizing and creates features that cue the script or patter that you might choose to use.

So there is more to this. Let me explain.

I make the few anomalies work as features that both enhance the effect and make the memory work required easier.

Here is an example. I get extra theatre out of the Ace of Diamonds which I have to force to spell from the top of the deck. Whenever this card is chosen I declare in a pretend manic mock mid European voice, [despite my normal elegant English accent], that where I come from it is always called ‘The Three of Diamondos’. I then proceed to prove it by spelling to it with the extra ‘o’. A potentially frustrating problem actually becomes an excellent opportunity to create a theatrical moment adding entertainment value to the effect. Crutches like this add dynamic quality and enhance the presentation. There are a number of them. In fact they make the performance exciting for me too, because I never know how the effect will unfold. I could of course in this example simply cut the top card to the bottom, if I wanted, but I’d waste the fun of putting on a funny voice.

Over time I have developed a whole set of methods for revealing and spelling to different cards which make the effect resonate and sing.
On offering to spell to the six of clubs for example, which I also do from the top of the deck, I offer to find the card by spelling s-i-x, when I do this I miss of course, and turn over the five of clubs!! ‘Off by one’, I declare, ‘the magician has failed- but a brave attempt’, Oops! ‘Maybe I needed to have tried the suit?’ So I then spell c-l-u-b-s, from that point, and hey presto it turns up!

This is where the extra life gets breathed into a potentially dry effect.

Best wishes zAP.

I have not researched this but, how about if you could spell to a card and using the arrived at card as an indicator card and count down the number to get the card named?

Just a thought.

I have a question. I have ACAAN by Kozuch and I see he has it set up in the Aronson stack because he says this is the order and then shows what that order is. But I have tried to figure out how do I learn the Aronson stack because to me it really looks like cards in no order. Just so you know here is the beginning order I have so you can see it is the Aronson stack and I'm not just trying to get to a secret here. The first 10 cards are js, kc,5c,2h,9s,as,3h, 6c,8d,and ac. In this effect Kozuch gives a copy of the order the cards are in and calls it the Aronson stack. But I have no idea how to stack this stack without looking at the instruction sheet. And I've looked for anything on it and can not find out about this stack.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you


And good magic to all,


Eric

Ps. If you want to PM me that would be great.

Gumbystock,

Yes, you do have the Aronson stack, and the reality of a memorized deck is that you have to memorize it so that you know every card's Stack Value and Card Value back and forth without thinking. For example, you should just know that the 8 of Diamonds has a Stack Value of 9, and vice versa. So for ACAAN, if a spectator says the 8 of Diamonds, and another spectator says the number 20, you know through simple arithmetic that you have to secretly shift 11 cards from the bottom of the deck to the top.

There has been a lot written about how best to memorize a deck. Aronson's and Tamariz's books are excellent. But also don't overlook Scott Cram's outstanding compendium of resources at http://headinside.blogspot.com/2008/06/m......box.html

I also humbly submit my StackView software as a reference.

Nick

Stackview is indeed excellent software to drill the Aronson Stack.

Nick,

Thank you very much. I believe I was thinking more in terms of a Si Stebbins numerical version. I see now why I just could not figure how these cards were in any order. I think I will be ordering the book Bound To Please that has I guess a few good things in it including the Aronson Stack. But I thank you so much for the heads up and the site.


Gratefully yours,


Eric

To Count Zapik,
You are very right that the methods of most of the effects on my web site are pretty dry. These are meant to be studies in methodology and are written merely to explain how to do the various tricks I've worked out. Only occasionally do I mention any patter at all and what's there is just there to explain the concept.

There are virtually no presentation concepts except where I note a couple of things I really like from other sources.

And yet I am a strong believer that the most important element in the performance of magic is the presentation. But it's hard to suggest presentations for others as they are so often tied into the personality of the performer. For example, the very best presentation of the Egg Bag is probably Jeff Hobson's. He gets more laughs per minute that you can imagine and has many, many great little bits of business and touches and lines. But it's unlikely that anyone else could do the Egg bag as he does as it depends on the character he plays.

In real life, I am a stand up magician and only do a relatively small number of paying gigs with close up magic. But I love card magic, especially mem-deck stuff, and do it off stage.

But for the rest of you, remember that in adding things to your repertoire, learning how to do a trick, mastering the moves, etc., is only the beginning. To be a good performer you must work equally hard on the presentation. Most card magic in books (as on my web site) does not give a flushed out presentation. That's your job.

Dennis Loomis

Again to the Count,
Your point about turning weaknesses into strengths is well taken. But I can't get your example to work. Spelling "The Three of Diamondos" from the top of the deck only gets me to the Seven of Spades. I'm five cards away from the Three. But you stated that you are calling the Ace of Diamonds "The Three of Diamondos." I've still overshot that card by one. Can you clarify?

Dennis Loomis

Hi Dennis, that was an accident on my part...well-spotted thank-you.

My mistake! I meant to write 'The Ace of Diamondos'. I've copy pasted the paragraph below again, notice I start off by mentioning the Ace and then stupidly loose track of what I'm writing and accidentally misname the ACE as the THREE...apologies for that. I only meant to mention one card in that whole paragraph. The card I wanted to mention and arrive at is ‘The Ace Of Diamond[o]s’.

'Here is an example. I get extra theatre out of the Ace of Diamonds which I have to force to spell from the top of the deck. Whenever this card is chosen I declare in a pretend manic mock mid European voice, [despite my normal elegant English accent], that where I come from it is always called ‘The Three of Diamondos’. [THIS SHOULD READ 'THE ACE OF DIAMONDOS']. I then proceed to prove it by spelling to it with the extra ‘o’. A potentially frustrating problem actually becomes an excellent opportunity to create a theatrical moment adding entertainment value to the effect. Crutches like this add dynamic quality and enhance the presentation. There are a number of them. In fact they make the performance exciting for me too, because I never know how the effect will unfold. I could of course in this example simply cut the top card to the bottom, if I wanted, but I’d waste the fun of putting on a funny voice.'

I hope this bit makes some sense now.

Thanks for noticing Dennis.

ZAPik

Incidentally spelling 'The Ace of Diamondos from the top of the deck brings you to card 17. Once at this point the magician needs to turn over the next card to find the one being spelt to.

z

Very interesting stuff, Zapik! I have to sit down (some day when I'm not this tired) and begin looking for interesting places in the stack, as seen from the point of view of using my own language for spelling.

I'm so used to skipping past all effects that deal with spelling as they so often don't let themselves be translated, but here I should hopefully have plenty of new territory to discover. I feel almost like a pioneer.

Thanks a lot to you and the other posters for leading me onto this line of thinking!

Count,
Thanks. This makes sense. It brings up what I call the + 1 problem. In spelling effects you may actually end up on the last card you are spelling to, or, as in your example, you spell the word and turn over the next card. If you do a couple of these things, the discrepancy could be noticed. One solution comes from Pat Page. You deal and actually turn over the card on the final letter and it is seen to be wrong. You act surprised, but you blow on the card and it changes into the named card. This is done with a simple top change. When you stop the spelling and turn up the card, the proper card is on the top of the deck in your left hand. As you react to the mistake, you do the top change and all is well. As always, the important thing about the top change is when you do it. You do it when no one's watching... but you have to know how to create that moment. It's called misdirection.

You will be left with a sleight problem in that if you place the now correct card on top of the deck, your stack is slightly out of order. (The top two cards are reversed.) You can just correct this on the off beat. But, you can make the correction into another effect. While the audience is reacting to the change, you just do another top change and freeze. When the group is quiet, you mention that what they saw was an optical illusion. The card was not the Ace of Diamondos, not really. It was the Three of Spades all along. And you show the card has returned to the Three. Now you can replace it on top and your stack is maintained.

Here's another cute way to handle the + 1 situation. You count down to the card, turning the card you end up on face up. It's wrong. You then turn it face down and give it a little rub, turn it face up again and it's right. And for your magician buddies, snap the card so they can see it's single... not a double card. How? When you rub the card you do the Erdnase Color Change, but do it face down. When you turn it up, other magicians will be thinking double lift. The reason to do it for lay people? Well, maybe your top change sucks.

Dennis Loomis

The BoTop Change also comes to mind as a neat change effect if you need to go back one.

As for my quest for any golden stack areas in the Norwegian language, it is turning out to be a bit of a disappointment. The maximum number of spellable cards from a starting point is 3. There are 5 of those luke warm hotspots and none of them are near each other. At one place, a span of 3 cards give 5 hits in total. This is very low to work from so I think I will go back to the Flash Spelling translation instead.

The '+1 +1 ' issue happens beautifully at position 20 for me.
I spell ' The Five of Spades', [3 is one of my jump points], and get to the Seven of Spades. after showing the card to be 'near but not quite near enough' I do a top change and pretend to lift a couple of pips off the seven transforming it into the five - or maybe I put the seven and five back to back and do a flick change. It's great to discover where a moment of whimsy can take you.

Also, [not a spelling effect I realise but...],
The 6 of Diamonds, 10 of Clubs and the King of Hearts are beautifully set up to do a great 'sleight free' sandwich effect using the two of a kind that lie on either side of them. This gets gasps when it comes up, because no work seems to happen at all.

Best wishes Z