Interestingly, what is actually arguably the greatest card magic trick ever (the Berglas Effect https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/23/style/berglas-effect-card... ) has been speculated to be essentially this trick, but done at scale with such subtlety that the victim never realizes that there were a bunch of tricks being done around him and that is how one of them worked out despite being impossible.
To expand on that, there is the Trick That Cannot Be Explained. Magicians always have "outs," which means an alternate ending if the expected one doesn't happen as planned. In The Trick That Cannot Be Explained, the magician takes advantage of the fact that you rarely say what they should expect next... so you roll with whatever happens until you can wind it into something that looks amazing. Pompous magicians call it "jazzing" because they don't like to admit that as long as you know 52 tricks, you can guarantee a solid outcome.
In the Berglas Effect, that is one of the outs that is taken immediately - if the spectator chooses a correct card and location, then they (obviously) just stick with it. Why add anything else to it... this is a bona fide miracle already!
That's not the full method for the Berglas effect. But that's the method that makes the trick amazing, and the version everyone remembers on those occasions that it ends with the spectator happening to choose correctly.
When they don't, other things are done to make sure the answer still appears to be correct. There are dozens of versions for accomplishing this. Berglas is definitely the guy who demonstrated how the trick can transcend viewer logic.
4 comments
[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 17.1 ms ] threadIn the Berglas Effect, that is one of the outs that is taken immediately - if the spectator chooses a correct card and location, then they (obviously) just stick with it. Why add anything else to it... this is a bona fide miracle already!
That's not the full method for the Berglas effect. But that's the method that makes the trick amazing, and the version everyone remembers on those occasions that it ends with the spectator happening to choose correctly.
When they don't, other things are done to make sure the answer still appears to be correct. There are dozens of versions for accomplishing this. Berglas is definitely the guy who demonstrated how the trick can transcend viewer logic.