The procedure

Hand the spectator any nine cards. You can stand back for the entire routine; the cards do the work.

  1. Three piles. Ask them to shuffle the nine cards and deal them face down into three piles of three.
  2. The choice. They pick up any pile, look at its bottom card, and remember it. That is their card.
  3. Stack them. They put the chosen pile on top of either of the other piles, then put both on top of the last pile. Their card is now third from the top, though nobody needs to know that.
  4. Spell the value. Turn your back. They spell the value of their card silently, dealing one card face down into a pile for each letter: A-C-E, T-W-O, and so on up to K-I-N-G. Then they drop the rest of the packet on top of the dealt pile.
  5. Spell “of”. Same again: they deal two cards, O and F, into a pile, and drop the rest on top.
  6. Spell the suit. Same again for the suit, in the plural: C-L-U-B-S, H-E-A-R-T-S, S-P-A-D-E-S or D-I-A-M-O-N-D-S. Deal a card per letter, drop the rest on top.
  7. Spell the magic. Turn back around. Ask them to deal one card per letter as everyone spells M-A-G-I-C aloud. The card dealt on the C is turned over. It is their card.

Why it works: Value words have three to five letters and suit words have five to eight. Starting third from the top, with the rest of the packet always dropped on top, every possible combination leaves the card fifth from the top. MAGIC has five letters.

The rules that matter

Values are spelled as words, never digits: “seven,” not “7.” Jack, queen and king are spelled as words too. They must drop the rest of the packet on top of the dealt pile each time, not the other way around. Demonstrate that once with the first spell if they seem unsure, without looking at the faces.

Why it plays

You are across the room with your back turned. That distance is the whole effect, and it works perfectly on a video call.

Credit where due: Spelling tricks are a long-standing family of self-working effects. We checked this exact procedure for every value and suit in a standard deck (all 52 combinations) with a short script before publishing.

Next: The Kruskal count