Out of This World (card trick)

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Out of This World is a famous card trick created by magician Paul Curry in 1942. Hundreds of other magic performers have tried to improve on it since its creation, but few have succeeded. It is often billed as "the trick that fooled Winston Churchill." The method, though simple and essentially self-working, is well hidden, and can be enhanced by the presentation of the performer or the use of other principles of magic.

[edit] Effect

1. The performer takes a deck of cards, and places on the table two face-up "marker" cards, one black and one red; the black on the left and the red on the right. The performer tells the subject that he or she is going to deal cards face-down from the deck and the object of the exercise is for the subject to use the power of their mind to identify whether each card in the deck is black or red.
2. The performer takes one card at a time from the deck, face down, and asks the subject to attempt to divine whether it is black or red. The subject states their choice, and the performer then places the card in line with the appropriately coloured marker card, overlapping it at the bottom.
3. About halfway through the deck, the performer stops and announces that it is necessary to switch sides in order to prevent a possible preference for one side over another from confusing the results. The performer deals two new marker cards onto the existing lines: a red one on the left, and a black one on the right.
4. The performer then continues as before, dealing cards face-down from the deck onto the subject's choice of the black or red line.
5. When the deck is exhausted, the performer instructs the subject to gather up and somehow reveal the left-hand line of cards; the performer does the same for the right-hand line.
6. The exposed lines reveal that every one of the subject's guesses was correct, and the black and red cards have been exactly sorted by colour.

[edit] Method

The principle is very simple: the deck used by the magician is stacked, with all the black cards at the top and all the red cards at the bottom.

In the first round of dealing face-down cards, all of the cards dealt will be black. The switching of sides occurs at the halfway point through the deck because that is the point at which the black cards will be exhausted and the red cards will begin to be dealt.

To understand why this enables the trick to work, think about what will be in the two lines of cards at the end of the trick. The left-hand line will begin with the black marker card (placed at the start), followed by the face-down black cards from the top of the deck, then the red marker card (placed at the side switch), then the face-down red cards from the bottom of the deck. That's (black marker) (black cards) (red marker) (red cards). In other words, this line is exactly right, and is given to the subject to gather up.

The right-hand line will begin with the red marker card (placed at the start), followed by the face-down black cards from the top of the deck, then the black marker card (placed at the side switch), then the face-down red cards from the bottom of the deck. That's (red marker) (black cards) (black marker) (red cards). Although incorrect, it should be apparent that this can be instantly made to appear correct by moving the red marker card from one end of the line to the other, or by reversing the order of all other cards in the line. This must be performed by the magician during the act of gathering up the right-hand line of cards, while the subject is distracted by gathering up their own line. Since the cards are gathered into a stack at that point, this is trivially easy.

[edit] Variations

Other variations to the effect allow the deck to be shuffled beforehand. This enhances the illusion that there is no pre-arrangement. If using the same choreography as in Curry's creation, the deck needs to return to its color sorted state. This is achieved by switching in an arranged deck, or the performer being able to false shuffle the entire deck, retaining the set up. Another method would be to allow the spectator to genuine shuffle the deck. A noted version of this is Harry Lorayne's "Out of this Universe".

In a more bold version, suggested by (whom?), the performer would use a stripper deck with the reds and blacks in reverse polarity. After the spectator shuffles, the performer gives a simple cut to strip out the reds from the blacks and is thus ready to perform.

A further variation of the trick is available under the name "Nu-Way Out of This World." This version does not require any stacking and may be performed with a borrowed and genuinely shuffled deck. It is not quite self-working, and requires a bit of daring and showmanship, but properly performed, has an effect as good as the original version, and begins and ends with a completely clean deck.