Friday, September 30, 2011

An amazing spelling trick.

An amazing spelling trick. One of the most mysterious of all spelling tricks with cards, notwell known today even to magicians, was invented by the Americanmagician Howard Adams. He published it in his now rare 1984 booklet withthe strange title OICUFESP (Oh, I see you have ESP). Since then it hasappeared with slight variations in several others books. I urge you toget a deck of cards and astonish yourself by following theseinstructions. Remove from the deck any five cards and their mates. A mate is acard of the same value and color. For example, the Queen of Hearts isthe mate of the Queen of Diamonds. Call the five cards ABCDE and theirmates abcde. Arrange the cards in the order ABCDEabcde. Place the packeton a table and cut it one or more times. Hold the packet often cardsface down and deal five cards to form a pile, thereby reversing theirorder. Put the remaining five cards face down to form a pile alongsidethe cards just dealt.. Now you are going to spell the words in the phrase "Last twocards match." Pick up either pile and spell the letter L, the firstletter of "Last," by moving one card from the top of the pileto the bottom. Replace the pile on the table alongside the other one.Again, randomly select one of the two piles. Pick it up and move a cardfrom top to bottom to spell A. Replace the pile, then pick up eitherpile to spell S. Do the same for T. You now have two piles face down on the table. Remove the top cardsof each pile. Without showing their faces, put the face-down pair to avacant spot on the table, one card overlapping the other. Repeat the random procedure for selecting a pile and spelling T,then W and O. After spelling TWO, again remove the top cards of the twopiles, and place them aside, face down, near the pair previously putaside. In the same way randomly select piles for spelling CARDS and MATCH.After each spelling of a word put the top cards of the two piles to oneside, face down by the other pairs. Two face-down cards remain on the table. Turn them over. Surprise!In spite of all the random choices, the cards match! The prediction,"Last two cards match," has been fulfilled. Is the trick over? Not by any means. There is a second climax evenmore astounding. Turn over all the pairs you placed aside. Each pairconsists of matching cards! The trick rests on subtle combinatorial principles. Of course otherwords can be substituted for the four in the prediction provided theyspell with 4,3,5,5 letters, or those numbers with 5,4,3,2 added to themto make words with 9,7,8,7 letters. Do you see why? Martin Gardner Norman, Oklahoma

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