Dead Goose
/Anthony O. writes:
So in April, my best friend gave me a late Christmas present in the form of Sherlock Holmes themed playing cards with different things on each suit.
She specifically asked me if I could come up with a trick with them. I said "Yes" because a lot of really basic ideas came to mind but I quickly decided I wanted to go bigger and do something truly inexplicable because she's important to me, she's never seen me do anything that extensive, and it's rare to get an opportunity to do a magic trick with a gift someone gave you.
The first thing that came to mind was forcing multiple cards to make a story. Like I'd have her pick a victim, killer, witness, weapon, and location. The only problem with that is that the deck isn't as straightforward as Clue cards where you have an equal number of people, weapons, and locations.
Here's what I counted:
28 Characters (30 if you include the Jokers)
12 Objects
6 Animals
6 Locations
So I was kind of stuck on how to force different things in a way that feels natural. If there were equal numbers of each type of thing, I could just use the same force for everything but because there's so few locations and objects compared to characters, I'd have to do something different for those and using multiple different card forcing procedures just seems excessive. I'm also having trouble coming up with a good reveal. I thought about doing something similar to your Humanity's Twins trick where her choices match up with something in an "unreleased" Holmes story or a fanfiction or something.
Another idea I had was to use "deductive reasoning" as a presentation and do something similar to your Closed Circle trick. So I'd get a few people involved and have them each select character cards and do some sort of real-time murder mystery with them.
I'm just not really sure what direction to take this trick and wanted to see if you had any ideas off the top of your head. I don't expect you to completely write out the trick (unless you want to of course) but just wanted to see if you had any ideas or suggestions to get the ball rolling since I want to do something special and don't want to waste this opportunity. —AO
You’re thinking along the same lines I would be thinking. Here’s exactly what I would do. I would first go and buy another deck of those cards. Having duplicates of something she doesn’t suspect you have duplicates of can be very useful.
I would force a card on her. I would take advantage of the duplicate I had and use that for some form of an ultra-fair force that involved a free choice at some point along the way. For example, by cutting the deck in half, in a way which leaves one of your force cards in either pile, you can fairly let them eliminate either half of the deck and then perform the force with the remaining half. You can make it clear that whichever half is eliminated will be out of play. They will remember that very fair elimination and will have a hard time getting around that, especially when they’re not conceiving of duplicates being in play.
So I’d force a card and have it hidden away without me knowing what it is (perhaps without her knowing what it is as well).
“I was really happy you got me this deck because it goes with something I’ve been looking into. Usually, card tricks involve sleight-of-hand or something. But there is a branch of card magic that actually uses techniques similar to what Sherlock Holmes used: observation, deduction, and reasoning. And I’m going to try and use those techniques to determine what card you picked.”
I would then have a group of cards chosen in some way. Perhaps cut the deck in thirds and then force one with equivoque. It doesn’t have to be super strong because it’s not going to be the focus of what they remember.
“Okay, these cards will be our clues. We can set the rest aside. But not all clues are equal. Very few are actually important. Some are red herrings. The key is being able to identify which is which. So we’ll use your choices to identify which of these clues are important.”
I would then do some sort of mixing procedure that leaves a certain pre-determined group of cards face-down. Think Shuffle-Bored. Think David Regal’s Letter Perfect. Think John Bannon’s Origami folding procedure. (I think those are all more or less the same sort of thing, but look a little different.)
So now you push aside all the cards other than the five or six cards that your spectator has seemingly chosen as the “important” clues.
“Okay, okay. Let’s see. We have a violin, we have a butcher’s cleaver, we have John Clay, a waterfall, and a dead goose. Hmm….”
I’d spend a few moments examining the “clues” and then look up, “Ah! I know what it is. You have the… the 4 of Clubs! Elementary!” She’d remove the card, showing I was correct.
“A very simple deduction. We had the violin and John Clay, of course. So that was making me think a red card. But then we had the waterfall, and the cleaver, and the dead goose. So then it was clear it was the 4 of Clubs.”
This will likely get a blank look.
“Okay, I didn’t really use deductive reasoning. I tried. But honestly these clues made no sense to me. But then I remembered that story. That famous Sherlock Holmes story. The one with John Clay, a waterfall, a cleaver, and a violin. And also a dead goose. You don’t know that story? It’s a good one.”
I’d walk over to my bookshelf and take down a book
“Yeah, this is the one. I’m pretty sure I remember the ending.”
And I’d flip to the last page of the book and rapidly read the last paragraph.
Holmes leaned back in his chair, a faint smile playing on his lips as Mrs. Hudson gathered the cards. The room was silent for a moment, the weight of revelation hanging in the air. Mrs. Thompson's eyes met Holmes's with a mixture of awe and gratitude. "The Four of Clubs," he stated definitively, confirming the unspoken truth that lingered between them. The flicker of the gaslight caught the glint in his eyes, and with that, the curtain descended on yet another chapter in the chronicles of the great detective.
“See, that’s how I knew. I just remembered this story.”
For me, that would be the right mixture of amazing and silly. And it’s the type of trick that grows in impossibility the more they think of it.
I might not actually reveal the card myself. I might have it just as the climax at the end of the book. I’d have to give it more thought.
And yes, I’m suggesting you make a hard-copy version of a fake Sherlock Holmes story. You could use AI to do it chapter by chapter, it wouldn’t have to make complete sense. And then print up a single copy. There are plenty of places online you can do that. Here’s one. You could bang it out in an evening, and it wouldn’t be that expensive.
That’s the route I’d take.