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Hi I'm having trouble with one of the card tricks in Paul Zenon's street magic book. Its one of the card tricks called "Magic spell" where you get someone to cut the deck into three piles then you get them to look at the top card in the middle pile and remember it. Then you reassemble the deck and you spell out "this is your chosen card" and the next card turns out to be the one they selected. I follow the instructions in the book but it keeps going wrong. If someone could send me a PM or reply to this message I'd appreciate it. Thanks

I do this with 'This is the card you took' and then the last card is theirs.

The key is to make sure you follow his instructions to get the card to the right place and then count one card per letter for each word (e.g. t, h, i, s), and then deal the next card down on the table. Continue through the sentence and the last card should be the chosen card. PM me if it does not work.

Thanks DrTodd I practised it again and again last night until I got it right. I was missing out the "final cut" you give the cards after the spec has cut it enough times to make sure his card was "lost" in the deck

I know you probably have this all sorted now, but I'll throw in my words anyway. I don't use anything like the phrase PZ suggests as the one to spell (though he does make it clear that his is only a suggestion). This is partly because I thought a different, erm... 'theme' would be much nicer and so I chose a phrase that gelled with that. However, I also wanted one that was longer than PZ's. Mine's 26 characters. My thinking was that there's really only one place where you can end up in a pickle (or at least having to back peddle) and that's if the spec makes the first cut above your key card. I know you've stressed, 'Cut deep. Leave just a few cards on the table,' but would you ever want your life to depend on a spec doing what they've been told? So, at 26, the spec can leave half the damn deck there, and (think about it) cut really deep in the next bit (when you've ask them to cut shallow), and you're still OK.