FAMILY FUN

New Zealand Tablet, 16 September 1909, Page 1478

FAMILY FUN

Two Heaps of Cards Having been Placed Upon the Table to Predict Infallibly which of the Two a Spectator will Choose.— This is performed by means of the following artifice: — One heap (unknown to the spectators) is made to consist of four like cards— say, the four fives. The other heap consists of such number of indifferent cards as will correspond with the pips of those in the first packet — ie in this instance, five cards. The performer writes on a slip of paper, ' You will choose the five heap, and entrusts the document, carefully- folded, to a spectator. He then asks a second spectator to select whichever he pleases of the two packets. When he has done so, the paper is opened, and the performer is found to have correctly predicted the result, the oracle being construed, according to circumstances, either to mean that the heap of five cards, or the heap of fives would be chosen.

Two Packets of Cards having been secretly made on the Table, to discover the Numbers of the Undermost Cards — Request a person to draw two cards, and to pla^e them face downwards on the table; then to place on each of them as many more cards as will make twenty-five. The two turned-down cards to count according to their value (court cards as ten, and other cards according to their number of pips), but the superposed cards only counting as one each, whatever they may chance to be. This having been done, you take the remaining cards, and spreadine them face downwards on the table, proceed to turn up the first, the middle one, and the last; and are thereby enabled to tell with the utmost certainty the total numbers of the two cards originally drawn. The secret consists n the fact that the number of cards remaining after the urocess above described is invariably the same as the total of the two cards first -turned down. The turning up of the first, middle, and last (or any other cards) is merely a blind to enable you to count the remaining cards without letting it be noticed that you do so. _