"Time began to slow down..."

May 25, 2021 5:32 PM

The Mystery of Magic’s Greatest Card Trick. [NYT] "There are hundreds of ACAAN variations, and you’d be hard pressed to find a professional card magician without at least one in his or her repertoire. (A Buddha-like maestro in Spain, Dani DaOrtiz, knows about 60.) There are ACAANs in which the card-choosing spectator writes down the named card in secrecy; ACAANs in which the spectator shuffles the deck; ACAANs in which every other card turns out to be blank. For all their differences, every ACAAN has one feature in common: At some point, the magician touches the cards. The touch might be imperceptible, it might appear entirely innocent. But the cards are always touched...."

"...With one exception: David Berglas’s ACAAN. He would place the cards on a table and he didn’t handle them again until after the revelation and during the applause. There was no sleight of hand, no hint of shenanigans. It was both effortless and boggling."

posted by storybored (40 comments total)

This is speculation, but in the case of the journalist, it seems possible that David Berglas had 52 decks of cards secreted in various locations in his home, in preparation for the interview, organized in such a way that for any combination of card and number he could direct the interviewer to the appropriate deck.

In this particular case he knew in all three decks in the drawer had the seven of diamonds within 2 of the correct position. If he gets it exactly, he gets full credit. If he is off by 2, he gets near full credit (because he said he might be off by two). He got unlucky, but still it looks incredible.
posted by justkevin at 6:08 PM on May 25, 2021 [18 favorites]

I'm not great at probability or statistics, but wouldn't he need way more than 52 decks to cover every possible variation?
posted by Saxon Kane at 6:27 PM on May 25, 2021 [8 favorites]

I was watching a youtube magician do some similar feats, and his explanation for the tricks he performed was it was mostly psychology at play, that by surveying the environment he had a very good idea of which card people would pick. Have no idea if that's how Berglas does it.

Honestly, I'm just as impressed by variants where the magician touches the deck. Being able to secure a particular card and then move it to a particular part of the deck in a generally imperceptible manner is pretty astonishing in-and-of-itself.
posted by maxwelton at 6:28 PM on May 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

My guess was similar to justkevin's.
Since he gave himself leeway to be off by 1 or 2, it wouldn't even require 52 decks.
Generate and memorize a single looping pattern that looks sufficiently random.
Stack each deck with a different card on top.
Maybe some markings on the box as a reminder of the starting card.

Incidentally, according to Kottke:

In 2011, Richard Kaufman wrote a book called The Berglas Effects with the participation of Berglas himself in which his version of ACAAN is explained at length. ... There are 75 pages devoted to [Berglas's version].

posted by cheshyre at 6:32 PM on May 25, 2021 [10 favorites]

I watched a bit of the YT video linked to in the story, and it struck me that the magicians doing the commentary completely ignore that Berglas gives the deck a couple of shuffles after the card and position was declared. It’s subtle and quick, and he holds the deck low while speaking to the audience, but he definitely rearranges the deck in two or three quick moves.

After it seemed like they either missed or ignored this, I lost interest. Do they go back and discuss this?
posted by Thorzdad at 6:38 PM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm not great at probability or statistics, but wouldn't he need way more than 52 decks to cover every possible variation?

The number would be much greater than 52, yes. It'd be in the bazillions. Google says 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000.

However... the number of decks you'd need to cover the numbers that people most commonly guess would be much lower. There are a couple of party tricks which involve "pick a number and something else", and 90% of people or thereabouts pick 7.

And, of course, in the article both of the people doing the picking pick a 7...
posted by clawsoon at 6:39 PM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

No, you only need 52 decks. Have every deck in the same sequence, just with a different starting card, and memorize the sequence. Once you get a card and a number, just do modular arithmetic to figure out which deck has the card at the right position.

If you've memory palaced the 52 decks around your house, direct the person to the right place.

Edit: Looks like cheshyre already stated this upthread.
posted by bfranklin at 6:45 PM on May 25, 2021 [25 favorites]

Have every deck in the same sequence, just with a different starting card, and memorize the sequence. Once you get a card and a number, just do modular arithmetic to figure out which deck has the card at the right position.

Ohhhh, I see. That makes sense. Thanks for the correction.
posted by clawsoon at 6:49 PM on May 25, 2021

I had a friend who tried to divine my zodiac sign. It took her twelve tries. I was impressed.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:26 PM on May 25, 2021 [32 favorites]

I don't think that video of Berglas is him doing "The Berglas Effect."

The magician Marc Paul apparently does this trick or a version of it- I saw it on TV many years ago and here's a YouTube compilation.

If there is a stooge then I believe it's the audience member who flips the cards, not either of the pickers.
posted by muddgirl at 7:28 PM on May 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

Also I should say I love magic, I love card magic specifically even though I'm terrible at it. And I love the idea that Berglas knew he'd have to stun this reporter with a killer version of this trick.
posted by muddgirl at 7:36 PM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

I’m with Thorzdad. He clearly gives the deck two cuts when he takes it out, which makes this not even a slightly impressive trick. What am I not understanding?
posted by argybarg at 7:40 PM on May 25, 2021

Looks to me like he looks at the cards as well when cutting, and he also refuses the first number given saying it's too low much reducing the range involved.
posted by edd at 8:57 PM on May 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

The secret is almost always a disappointing brute-force thing that you don't guess mostly because it's something that would be way too much trouble just for a magic trick.

The reaction to finding the secret is usually not "Oh! That's clever!" but rather "Oh. That's cheating." The impressive part is how skillfully they fooled you with something so dumb.
posted by straight at 9:45 PM on May 25, 2021 [11 favorites]

To pull back the curtain a little, back in my sleight-of-hand days I was fond of a trick that you'd do by effectively guiding your opponent through a step-by-step process to choose a random card (other than the aces, "because they're too obvious"). You would then produce your wallet and say, hey, funny story, but I was given a playing card by a stranger long ago, and told to hold onto it. You then pull out the card.

"Oh, that's the THREE of clubs, though. I chose the FOUR of clubs."

And that's when you reveal that, even more interestingly, the mysterious stranger told you — as you turn the card around to reveal — that the "OFF BY ONE" written on the back of the card would one day make sense.

To break this down, removing the aces not only encourages a more "random" selection, but also neatly reduces your options per suit to twelve. The "off by one" means that you can actually cover three selections per card (2-3-4, 5-6-7, 8-9-10, J-Q-K), which means you only need four cards per suit, or sixteen cards total, which is actually decently manageable in a normal-sized wallet, especially if you use tiny playing cards.

If you're the sort to enjoy doing this sort of thing, it's definitely worth a try! It's a lot of fun to have a go-to card trick that you can perform at a moment's notice without even having a deck of cards available.
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:07 PM on May 25, 2021 [22 favorites]

The secret is almost always a disappointing brute-force thing that you don't guess mostly because it's something that would be way too much trouble just for a magic trick.

When I learned about so-called "card mechanics" like Richard Turner and the recently-deceased Ricky Jay, I realized that real magic tricks require an incredible amount of work and skill. I really suggest that those interested in card tricks look into those two magicians, particularly. They are legends in the field.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:03 PM on May 25, 2021 [11 favorites]

I have a soft spot for 'self working' card tricks, which are basically math puzzles disguised as magic. The Gilbraith Shuffle is my go to trick: the rube shuffles the deck, and then I deal four identical high-straight poker hands. ('But you shuffled it, right?') This leads naturally into a discussion of mixing time and the representation theory of the permutation group.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:17 PM on May 25, 2021 [11 favorites]

It's wonderful how resistant we are (at least in the moment of performance) to the reality that magic tricks are done however they need to be done, elegant and beautiful or cheap and ugly, it doesn't matter: all that matters is the illusion and how it's sold.

We want to be amazed, which is good. Our desire for it is strong enough to make us ignore the fact that the word "trick" is literally in the name of the activity.

The downside of this phenomenon may be observed when trying to explain to a Derren Brown fan that his stage patter doesn't mean he's actually a master of abstruse psychological manipulation.
posted by howfar at 1:34 AM on May 26, 2021 [7 favorites]

Metafilter: this leads naturally into a discussion of mixing time and the representation theory of the permutation group
posted by crocomancer at 2:06 AM on May 26, 2021 [6 favorites]

Look everyone, there's nothing up my sleeves ... and yet ... here is the archive version of article.
posted by chavenet at 3:17 AM on May 26, 2021 [13 favorites]

I saw a talented sleight-of-hand artist a few years include a brute-force version of this trick in his act.

He had an audience member unwrap a new, shrink-wrapped deck of cards. A different audience member shuffled and cut, and a third audience member pulled a card from the middle of the deck. The card was folded into quarters, after which the magician finally touched the card, holding the folded one up to his forehead. None of the volunteers, nor the magician, had looked at what this card was.

Then he started selecting someone from the back of the audience. After two or three tries, he finally gave someone permission to name a card. Queen of diamonds, was the pick.

He unfolded the card. Since he was still holding it to his forehead, the audience could see it before he could. Three of spades. Not even close.

After some frustrated blustering, the magician reached into his trunk full of supplies and got out a gallon ziplock bag full of previously-folded cards. He threw the reject in with the rest, and muttered “one of these days that trick is going to be amazing.”

And you know, if he does two shows a week, that trick is amazing about twice a year.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 3:56 AM on May 26, 2021 [33 favorites]

I agree that he must have had 52 decks in different hiding places to do that trick. And its a simple trick to lead someone to the right deck. The extra bit of having him choose one of three decks, gave a one in three chance that he would really amaze him.

The Si Stebbins stack can be used to do lots of different card tricks. Any card taken out and inserted is immediately out of place. If you see any card in the deck, you know the cards before and after it. And of course, depending on what the top card is, the position of any other card is determined.

I've always liked the psychology of good magic. I like when a trick makes spectators feel that they had free will but in fact they were under the magician's control all along. Or take advantage of the fact that people cannot shake off coincidences as just that.

I do recall a magician friend who would hand someone a card he always carried. you would hold the card in your own hand, looking at one side. That side would ask you, say, to choose a number between 1 and 4 or to think of an animal that starts with 'e'. Then you flip over the card and on the back it would say "You are thinking of 3" or "You are thinking of an elephant" and most times people would be dumbfounded and would always remember that. Sometimes it didn't work and he would just shrug it off and say he was still perfecting his tricks and move on to another trick or something and people would tend to just forget that.
posted by vacapinta at 4:21 AM on May 26, 2021 [6 favorites]

So there's a bootlegged PDF of Richard Kaufman's book where the trick is described in extreme detail. If you can't find it, memail me.

You don't need 52 decks, you need one carefully arranged (and memorized!) one and maybe a second if possible to make the probabilities work better in your favor. And then it's a hell of a lot of patter and redirection to get the person to deal the deck and turn up the named card.

It's also taking advantage of the fact the person names the card before the deck is brought out, which gives a lot of time to do some things to set up the deck and/or choose the alternate one. But Berglas' patter makes the person believe the card was named after the deck was brought out. A lot of the 'miracle' seems to be making the subject forget certain details and reinforce others.

And, as the book says, sometimes you just get damned lucky. In the case of the deck in the jacket in the backseat of the car, the book mentions that the card that Simon named just lucked out to be the bottom one on the prebuilt deck in the jacket. And the backup deck was sitting in the glove compartment. The patter would have changed to ignore the jacket if it turned out that one in the glovebox would have worked better.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:24 AM on May 26, 2021 [10 favorites]

...think of an animal that starts with 'e'.

Think of a country that begins with 'd'.
Think of an animal that begins with the second letter of that country.
Think of what colour that animal usually is.
You are thinking of a grey elephant.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:42 AM on May 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

You are thinking of a grey elephant.

No I'm not, I'm trying to remember what color emus are.
posted by dnash at 6:47 AM on May 26, 2021 [7 favorites]

Think of a country that begins with 'd'.

That one failed on me because the first time I heard it, I'd just done a report on Djibouti.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 6:49 AM on May 26, 2021 [18 favorites]

I also skimmed Kaufman's book. JoeZydeco summarizes it well; a lot of the trick is the psychology of getting the mark to not see or forget seeing you do something. Kaufman claims that in every version of the trick Berglas really does touch the deck at some point to manipulate it, just that the audience doesn't realize it. In the case of the NYT story there's minutes or hours of interview between the time the cards are mentioned and the deck is "discovered" in the desk drawer. It's easy to imagine how Berglas could have manipulated the deck in that time.

The reason the book takes 75 pages to describe this is it has an exhaustive list of a bunch of card mechanic tricks to manipulate the deck. Also a lot of outs. (A simple one; if someone says "10" but you manipulated the target card to the 11th position, don't tell them to take the 10th card. Tell them to count off 10 cards, and you'll magically be right. This lets you cut down the manipulation required by half.)

I really admire the skill in folks doing this kind of thing. Card manipulation is hard, at least without a gaffed deck. Manipulating folks' perception without their knowledge is hard. I can see why Berglas says it's a trick like improvisation, that he couldn't teach it if he wanted. Because really it's a bunch of techniques all put together. At least, according to Kaufman.

BTW if you like this sort of thing I can heartily recommend Penn & Teller's Fool Us! TV show. It's surprisingly good, and I'm allergic to Penn's persona and presence on stage usually. The show is really a showcase for new magician talent, 3-4 performers an episode showing off a trick. Nominally they're trying to fool Penn & Teller but that's kind of secondary to enjoying the trick.

Except then it gets interesting. Because if not fooled, Penn will deliver some oblique explanation of how the trick works. And usually that's just enough hint to make you think about how the trick works. If you want to know more, there's always spoilers and details online in various discussion forums. (These days, Reddit). It's a fun insidery view into magic that somehow avoids the usual concern that explaining the trick spoils it.

Penn & Teller are on the record as saying the real purpose of the show is to inspire a new generation of magicians. That by discussing a bit of the techniques at play, they hope to inspire new performers to get interested in learning magic and developing their own acts. It's pretty clever.

One last comment: having read some about how tricks are performed now I'm amazed how many rely on gimmicked props. Like trick card decks, so many ways to make a rigged deck of cards. In that case the art in the magic isn't in finding the right card, the manufactured deck does the work. The art is in the performance of making the audience believe what you did was magic. I don't think that's what Berglas is doing, but it sure explains a lot of tricks.
posted by Nelson at 6:58 AM on May 26, 2021 [9 favorites]

If you have your deck (or all three of your decks, or however many) in a specific order, which you've memorized, it becomes a trick not of getting the seven of diamonds into position #44, or of remembering which deck has the seven of diamonds in position #44, but of getting the mark to say "44" after they've said "seven of diamonds."

Is there a type of psychological manipulation that would get this done without fail, or at least reliably enough not to tank your career? I don't know. But it's something other magicians might not be looking out for. And we're explicitly told that he messes with minds, not cards.
posted by babelfish at 7:13 AM on May 26, 2021

Is there a type of psychological manipulation that would get this done without fail

In the case of this trick, there are a couple of things going on. One is psychologically forcing the mark to pick a number in a certain range. Remember, you already know what card they've chosen and where it lives in the deck because you memorized that sequence.

Berglas has a list of things to say to try and get the mark in the right zone. "Give me a small number" compared to "Challenge me! Make it a large number!"

The trick also has a lot of talking to get the mark to choose whether to deal from the top or bottom of the deck. So maybe the card is at the 8th position but the mark said 44. So you just deal from the other direction. Maybe it's at the 9th. So you do what Nelson said.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:26 AM on May 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

So the real Berglas Effect is cherry picking the few times you can get away with not manipulating the deck...
posted by muddgirl at 8:02 AM on May 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

...and smoothly changing your routine, instantly and without thought, into something else when you can't get away with it.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:09 AM on May 26, 2021 [5 favorites]

Yeah, I think it's easy to think that being a great magician is just about being able to devise and execute a particular routine perfectly, when it's also about something much more interesting and difficult: identifying all the ways that the trick can play out, having strategies for all of them, and being able to deploy those strategies without giving any sign of doing so.

The other thing that it's easy to miss, of course, is that the social contract of not lying to people directly is, from the magician's perspective, entirely suspended, at the very least during a performance, and in some cases, outside of it too. It's so easy to think "well it can't be done that way. The person on stage just told me it's definitely not done that way, so it must be something else". It's an utterly fascinating art, that interacts deeply with how social rules construct perception.

I guess that's why the connection between magic and scepticism is so strong: if you know how easy it is to get away with lying and cheating, and how much power it gives you, seeing a charlatan using it to exploit people, when you only use it to entertain them, must be utterly infuriating.
posted by howfar at 8:54 AM on May 26, 2021 [13 favorites]

Here is a demonstration of some close-up artistry from Richard Turner.

S. W. Erdnase's classic The Expert at the Card Table has been mentioned by Ricky Jay in some of his research. I cannot work cards, but do enjoy recalling part of the book's preface:

To all lovers of card games it should prove interesting, and as a basis of card entertainment it is practically inexhaustible. It may caution the unwary who are innocent of guile, and it may inspire the crafty by enlightenment on artifice. It may demonstrate to the tyro that he cannot beat a man at his own game, and it may enable the skilled in deception to take a post-graduate course in the highest and most artistic branches of his vocation. But it will not make the innocent vicious, or transform the pastime player into a professional; or make the fool wise, or curtail the annual crop of suckers; but whatever the result may be, if it sells it will accomplish the primary motive of the author, as he needs the money.

posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:30 AM on May 26, 2021 [6 favorites]

We want to be amazed, which is good. Our desire for it is strong enough to make us ignore the fact that the word "trick" is literally in the name of the activity.

My daughter (who is almost 12) learned a card trick a while back that I love, and that I don’t ever want to know the secret to. She has you pick a card, then shuffle it back into the deck. Then she does some complicated sorting through the deck, pulling out a card here and there: Is this your card? No. More messing with the deck. Is this your card? No.

After the third or fourth, you’re starting to feel really self-conscious and bad for her because her trick isn’t working. She’s just a kid! It’s ok, we still like you! Magic takes practice!

Right when you’re about to apologize to her for the fact that it’s not working, she changes the game: she fans out the remaining cards - she’s sorted the deck down to like three or four by now - and holds them face down, saying “slap the cards out of my hand.” So you smack the little fan of cards. Invariably you don’t smack them hard enough the first time and they stay in her grip. “It’s ok, smack them out of my hand.” So you do, and this time the cards spill out of her hand onto the floor. Except for one, which she turns up to reveal was your card.

I was so amazed and delighted the first time she showed me that trick. I never get tired of watching her do it; it works especially well on visiting relatives who haven’t seen her in a while. They’re so drawn in and sympathetic thinking the trick isn’t working, to then have it work in such an unexpected way.

I don’t ever want to know how it’s done, but I hope I can be there when she shows it to my grandchildren some day.
posted by nickmark at 11:49 AM on May 26, 2021 [23 favorites]

Here is a demonstration of some close-up artistry from Richard Turner.

Also, incredibly—Richard Turner is blind.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 12:20 PM on May 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

I second the recommendation to watch Penn and Teller Fool Us! There's lots on youtube. Pandemic staple for me and three elementary schoolers around the house.
posted by sy at 6:09 PM on May 26, 2021

Ricky Jay showing how card manipulation borders on freakin' real magic.
posted by storybored at 9:27 PM on May 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

Isn't it something else?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:35 PM on May 26, 2021

God I wish that we had more HD vids of Ricky Jay and Richard Turner doing their thing. I still wouldn't be able to catch what they were doing, but damnit I'd think I was close!
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:06 PM on May 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

And you know, if he does two shows a week, that trick is amazing about twice a year.

There's a story from Penn and Teller where Penn just plain lucked in with Steven Spielberg's selection.
posted by edd at 2:07 AM on May 27, 2021 [1 favorite]