On page 45 of the recently released English version of “Mnemonica” by Juan Tamariz, the great Spanish mem-deck worker shares a trick you do with his stack. The descriptive title is: “Spelling the color, value, suit, and card.” Those of you that know my work can guess that my first reaction was: can it be done with the Aronson Stack? The answer is yes, and the explanation is the subject of this article.

The effect: a spectator selects a card and it’s lost in the deck. The performer does a series of spelling effects; when he spells red, a red card appears on the final letter. If he spells black, a black card appears on the final letter. He repeats this with two card values (a King and a Five in the Tamariz version) and all four of the suits. Finally, he gives the deck to a spectator who spells the name of his chosen card. As he reaches the final letter, not only does he land on his card, but he discovers that the card is reversed in the deck. And, following all of this, the deck is easily reset into Mnemonica order.

            Before I started searching for the correct sequence of cards in the Aronson stack to duplicate this effect, I was skeptical that I would find one. The remarkable string of factors necessary seemed to be unlikely in a random stack. However, good fortune was with me, and I discovered, not one, but three different ways to do it. Each one has a minor discrepancy. But, the original Tamariz routine has a similar discrepancy. In his version, when you spell each of the suits in turn, you spell three of them without the final “s.” But, when you spell the fourth, you have to include the “s.” This happens just before the grand finale, where the spectator spells to his card. In the versions I’ve discovered with the Aronson Stack, it happens earlier. All four of the suits are handled consistently just before the spectator is given the deck to spell to his selection. I like this better. I’m pleased that it worked out this way

            Let’s dissect the effect. I don’t have permission to explain the Tamariz version, so I’ll just describe my versions  with the Aronson Stack. For the Tamariz version, you’ll have to buy “Mnemonica.” But, if you’re a mem-deck user, you just have to have this book in your library. Don’t take my word for it, read the reviews by Jamy Ian Swiss and Mike Close in GENII and MAGIC. And, Loomis magic has Mnemonica at a very competitive price.

            First, you need to force a card. I’ll start with my favorite version. For this one, you force the 9S. (Card number five in the Aronson Stack) It’s near the top and easy to reach when you’re in “home” position. You can use any force that doesn’t disturb the stack order, but you must get the card back to its regular position (5^th) afterwards.  What I do (or will, when I start performing this), is to spread the first four cards, sight counting, and cull the 9S under the spread with the Hofzinser Cull. The spectator  touches any card they wish as I continue to spread the cards from my left hand to my right. When they touch a card, I out-jog it a bit, and break the spread just below the selection so that it becomes the bottom card in my right hand. The 9S is still under the right hands cards. Offering to let them change their mind (they seldom do), I take the right hands cards from above in biddle grip, I square them up and tilt them up so that they can see the bottom card. It’s not the card they touched. Because of the cull, it’s the 9S. On second thought, I remove the card and hand it to the spectator, allowing them to show it around to the others. As this happens, I place the two halves of the deck back together and hold them in dealing position in the left hand and fan the top six or seven cards of the deck in a small fan. When everyone has seen the card, I take it from the spectator, and without looking at it, replace it back in the 5^th position. Because it may look a bit suspicious to replace the card so close to the top, I immediately give the deck a false cut and then do a Charlier Shuffle. (Also known as the Haymow.) I do my own handling of it (described in an earlier Smoke and Mirrors Article) which allows me to displace five cards from the top of the deck to the bottom. At the end of this write up, I’ll repeat the information published earlier so you can use this. As an alternative, you can simply catch a break under the 9S when you return it, and do a double undercut to bring it to the bottom. Either way, the 9S is now on the bottom.

            Now, you do a remarkable demonstration of spelling. You’ll spell the colors black and red, the values seven and three, each of the suits, and then the spectator spells to his selected card. In each case, the spelling brings you to whatever you’ve just spelled.

             To begin, say something like: “To show you how well I’ve trained these cards, I’ll spell some colors, values, and suits. On the final letter, we always get what we spelled.” You then say “black” and spell it out: B, L, A, C, K. You can proceed two ways. You can take a card from the top of the deck into the right hand for each letter, each one going under the previous one so that you have a block of five cards in your right hand. You then tip up the block to show that you have indeed landed on a black card. If you know the Aronson stack and remember that the 9S is on the bottom, you’ll know that the black card is the AC. Alternately you can take the four cards into the right hand the same way, but then use the block of four to flip over the card on the top of the left hand’s talon. It will be a black card; the AC. As soon as the spectators have seen this card, you flip it down and take it under the block of cards in your right hand and put the block on the bottom of the deck. You are going to repeat this procedure over and over, spelling first “red” then two values, and then all four suits.

            I suggest that you begin slowly and then build the tempo up to the last suit. Then, stop dead and really sell the final phase, which is where the spectator does the spelling themselves and finds their own selection.

            So, right after you’ve found the “black” card, you say: “If I want a red card, I spell R-E-D.” As you spell, you perform the same actions as above and end up displaying the 2D.

            You will do the same actions for the values “Seven” and “Three.” But, you have to cheat just a bit on the seven. Unlike all of the other cards in the sequence, you will have to spell S, E, V, E, N, and turn over the NEXT card, not the card that corresponds to the N. One way to disguise this is to switch your procedure, and place each card to the bottom of the deck as you go. As you say “N” you also put that card to the bottom and then address one of the spectators and ask “What do you think I get?” He’ll probably reply “Seven” and you then flip over the top card of the deck face up. It will be a Seven… the 7H. The momentary break in the action as you solicit and get the spectators answer, will help disguise the slight difference in your procedure.

            Of course, there are other approaches. As you spell seven, you can simply grab two cards together as one somewhere along the way. If you go quickly, this “double deal” can be done without deceptively. You can slow down and actually do a double lift on one of the cards as you take it. Your choice.

            After you put the seven to the bottom of the deck, you’re home free. No more cheating is necessary. You can focus on just selling the effect. You will now spell the value “three,” and each of the four suits.  An appropriate card appears on the final letter each time. All you need to know is that you use the singular terms (Club, etc) and the order will be: Heart, Diamond, Spade, and Club. I like to say: “If I want a heart, I spell H, E, A, R, T and I get a heart.” This wording makes the use of the singular term logical. It may help you to remember the suit order if you remember that you do the two red ones first, and then the black. AND, you do the major suit first in both cases. Or, you may want to remember the simple mnemonic phrase: His Darling Seemed Clever (Heart, Diamond, Spade, and Club.)

            Amazingly, you will end up on a card of the proper suit each time, and when you finish the Club, you’re exactly in position to spell the chosen card: N, I, N, E, O, F, S, P, A, D, E, S and the card that corresponds to the final S will be the 9S. However, I recommend that you adapt the Tamariz handling and let the spectator do it themselves. If you are a little leery of this, you can “supervise” the procedure. One interesting approach is to give them the cards, and then pretend to read their mind. They think of the card and you spell it out loud. They duck one card to the bottom for each letter you say. When you reach the final “s” of Spades, the card will be the 9S.

            And, your Aronson stack is still in order. Just replace the 9S on the top or bottom, cut the 9D to the face and you’re “home.”

            If you’ve been reading carefully, you may have noticed that we haven’t explained one detail. In the Tamariz version, the chosen card appears face up. And that’s a nice visual punch to the already strong climax. How? Well, once the card is on the bottom of the deck, you have to reverse it, retaining it on the bottom. Here are some handlings:

You can simply do a one card “Half-Pass.” Or, you can control the 9S to the top, not the bottom. Palm it off with either a two handed palm or a one handed top palm, turn the deck face up and display the bottom card, noting that it’s not the selection. You then turn over the deck face down, adding the palmed card to the face of the deck as you do so, and then turn over the top card to show that the selection is not there either. Either of these will get the bottom card reversed. If you don’t do a palm or half-pass, you can do the routine without having the selection reversed. Or, create a reason to put the deck behind your back or under the table and reverse the 9S while the deck is out of sight. A simple verbal excuse for this is to say: “Some magicians find a card with the deck hidden (put the deck out of sight as you say this and reverse the 9S) but I’m not going to do that. In fact, I’m not even going to find your card… you are! But first…” and you start the spelling patter. Quite a bit of time will take place before the reversed card is revealed, so they’re unlikely to remember that you concealed the deck.

            The other two versions are similar. In one, you force the 10C, and in the other, you force the 8H.

            In both cases, you get the card back to its original position, and then get it to the bottom of the deck. (Reverse it, if you like.)

            For the 10C, I’d do an estimated cut, trying to bring it to the 6^th position from the top. That means trying to cut about 29 cards. (35 is the stack number of the 10C, and you subtract 6). As you square the cards, glimpse the bottom card of the deck. I just did that, and I see the 7C. That means I was one card off in my cut and that I need to cull the 7^th card, not the 6^th. As I begin spreading, I just sight count the first six cards and cull the 7^th. Later, when I return the 10C, I have to put it back at the 7^th position, and then control it to the bottom.

            The full spelling sequence for the 10C is as follows:

R, E, D                          10H

B, L, A, C, K                  KS

Q, U, E, E, N                QS

J, A, C, K                      JS        The “cheat”

T, W, O                        2H

C, L, U, B                      6C

D, I, A, M, O, N, D        7D       

S, P, A, D, E                  5S

H, E, A, R, T                 7H

Then the spectator spells to his card, the 10C.

You must cheat on the J, A, C, K sequence, just as you cheated on the S, E, V, E, N sequence in the first routine.

For the 8H sequence, I’ll let you enjoy discovering the “path” yourself. I can assure you that it works nicely, and that you have to “cheat” once. If you can’t figure it out, drop me an e-mail, and I’ll send you the solution. (deloomis@mindspring.com)

The reason I prefer the 9S sequence is that you can go directly into the force from Home position with no need for the estimated cut. But, it’s not hard to do the other two versions.

Theoretically, you could learn all three of these, and alternate them. The difficulty is that the different spelling sequences may be hard to remember. Still, with some determination and some mnemonics you could do it. For myself, I’m going to add the 9S version to my repertoire.

Here’s a repeat of a part of my article on my variation of the Charlier or Haymow shuffle and how it can be used to move any number of cards you wish from the top to the bottom:

I believe that I originally learned the Haymow shuffle from Royal Road to Card Magic by Hugard and Braue. I’ve done it for years, and was rather surprised, in discussing it with my pal Gene Anderson that I was doing it differently. I checked Gene’s instructions and also the Royal Road again, and indeed, what I’m doing is somewhat different. I don’t know how I fell into this action. Perhaps I read the instructions wrong in the first place. But, it works just the same even though it looks quite different. For completeness, here’s how I do it:

 The deck is held in the left hand dealing position and a bunch of cards are pushed off the top into the right hand. The number is unimportant, but I push about half of the deck. The left hand is raised until it’s just above the right hand and the right fingers push a small block of cards from the top onto the bottom of the left-hand packet. This is probably six or eight cards, but it’s not important. The left hand is lowered back to its original position, and the left fingers push a small block of cards onto the bottom of the right hands cards. Again the left hand is lowered and the right hand pushes off a small block of cards onto the bottom of the left-hand cards. If you’re pushing off roughly the same amount of cards each time (except for the first time, of course) then the packets in the hands remain about the same size and you can keep going as long as you like.

            When you stop, if you have a corner or belly short in your deck, you can easily cut the deck back to starting order. This is not necessary for the first two phases of the routine. You will want to do that for the third and fourth phase.

So now, let’s use it to accomplish something: moving a block of cards of any size from top to bottom. My primary use for it is as a way to get ready for the Simon Aronson Three Phase Poker Deal from his book: Bound to Please. I do not intend to explain that routine, but you must begin the routine with the ten of spades on the bottom of the deck. This is the eleventh card in the Aronson Stack. I do this in the process of the Haymow Shuffle. The deck is cut approximately in half, but the upper half goes into the left hand. To do this, here’s one simple method: With the deck held in dealing position in the left hand, the right hand comes over and takes the entire deck from above in Biddle Grip. The right index finger swivel cuts approximately half of the cards back into the left hand. This is the original top half of the deck of course. With some help with the fingertips and thumb of the left hand, the cards in the right hand are moved into a dealing position in that hand as well.

You begin the Haymow Shuffle by pushing a block of cards with the left thumb off of the top of its cards onto the bottom of the left hands cards. But instead of a random number of cards; push off exactly three cards. This is very easy. Now the right hand pushes off a block of cards from the top of it’s half onto the bottom of the left-hand cards. This can be any number; I usually do four or five. Again, the process is reversed and the left hand pushes off a block of cards. Again, it pushes off exactly three. And again the right hand pushes a random number of cards off the top of its pile onto the bottom of the left hands cards. The third time that the left hand pushes cards into the right hand; it again pushes exactly three cards. At this point, you’ve pushed a total of nine cards off of the cards in the left-hand pile. Again the right hand pushes any number of cards onto the bottom of the cards in the left-hand pile. Finally, the left hand pushes just two cards onto the bottom of the cards in the right hand. The right hand now places its entire pile onto the bottom of the left hands cards and the deck is squared. You have transferred exactly 11 cards from top to bottom, no other mixing has been done, and you have the ten of spades on the bottom ready to do the Aronson Poker Deal.

            You can move any number of cards you wish. For example, if you wanted to move fifteen cards from the top to the bottom, the left hand pushes four cards in it’s first “turn.” four more cards the next time, four more cards the third time, and finally just three cards. To move larger groups, you may want to move five or even six cards each time. Keep a running count in your head. In the above example, as I do the shuffle, in my head I say: "Three, six, nine, and eleven."

            I hope you find this simple procedure a useful addition to your arsenal. As always, I invite comments, suggestions, ideas, questions, etc. You may reach me at:

deloomis@mindspring.com

            Since writing the first draft of this article, I’ve been in touch with Simon Aronson about it. It’s his strong opinion that the spelling sequence in Mnemonica which allows this routine was not originally planned. It was discovered afterward. Simon’s probably right… he usually is.

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