Num Numbers, Cards... Cards... and Time! Time! Carlos Vinuesa
c Carlos Vinuesa del R´ıo � Written in Cambridge, Sanxenxo and Madrid, 2011-2012
Dedicated to Pablo and Alberto for their magic and their friendship.
Numbers, Cards... and Time! by Carlos Vinuesa
Photographs
Cristina Medrano Covers and figures
´ Angel Suazo N´acar English revision
Chris Wardle
Preface This book gathers together a part of my history with magic, in particular with card magic. In these pages you will find a selection of what I consider some of the best and most personal material I have developed. I have published it because I think there are some nice ideas that could be useful for other magicians, as well as my desire to inspire the reader. In fact, this book is essentially a translation of part of my (recently produced) book omo se hizo.... Some magicians in the UK from The Pentacle in Spanish C´ Club in Cambridge and The Magic Circle in London encouraged me to translate these ideas into English. I also hope that sharing this material will be motivating to make me work in new directions. I have learned a lot from books and I very much like the fact that one can know authors through their books, see how they think and understand why they do what they do and why they do it in a particular way. I have tried to show my way of constructing, thinking and understanding magic. I have also described how several of the ideas were born and I have tried to give credit to all their many inspirations. This work owes a great deal to a lot of people, most of which appear listed in the alphabetical index at the end. But, since it is very difficult to name everyone, I apologize to all those people that do not appear but who should. I have remarked on all of these things because in many cases I consider the process even more interesting than the results (although I consider the results to be very important too). This work contains a versatile and powerful idea which, for example, allows you to obtain a duplicate of a freely chosen card in a shuffled deck (Appendix A, The Trick that Can Be Explained ), my approach to the Card at Any Number effect (Chapter 1, Card at Any Number ) and a sequence –a more beautiful word than the hideous ‘routine’– I entitled Back to the Future (Chapter 2, Back to the Future ) which is essentially a version of the well known effect Collectors , a Camel Race and a further version of the Card at Any Number effect. i
Preface
I am very happy with this sequence and I believe that the methods are elegant, versatile and deceptive. In fact, in 2010 I was thrilled to be awarded The Ascanio Prize, Close-up Magician of the Year in Spain for this. Although there are isolated ideas and tricks in this work, I find both beautiful and interesting the link of some things with others, because of the story or the construction; that is why I like the idea of talking about this sequence. It is also the excuse to talk about some subtle uses of stripper decks and about how to implement many of the ideas included in the rest of the book. Everything is explained as I perform it, including what I say ( the sentences written in bold in this book form the script ) even, in some occasions, what I wear or what I think while I am performing. I like to use costumes to place myself in character (in the style of Mortadelo, one of the legendary comic characters of Francisco Ib´an ˜ ez) and letting the character do the magic and telling the story. Besides finding it very funny, I believe that in some occasions the character helps to make the fiction (in the case of the sequence in this book ‘I come from the future’) more ‘believable’ or memorable. Nevertheless, they are not real characters but ‘caricatures of characters’ which allow me to become myself again when I want to improvise or for the benefit of the magic... Virtually everything that you will read in these pages has gone wrong in public at some point. Thanks to these failures, I have sometimes thought about ‘outs’. Emergency exits. You will find this symbol when I explain po-
ssible ‘outs’ for fails. Before this prologue comes to an end I would like to thank Cristina ´ Medrano and Angel Suazo for their patience and for the works of art that are their photographs and designs. I would also like to thank Pablo Poza, ´ Gilbert, Pipo Villanueva and again Angel for their careful revision of former versions of this work. Finally, I would like to thank Woody Arag´ on for his help with the publication of this book, Irene for her help with the translation and very especially Chris Wardle for his careful revision and correction of the English draft without losing my ‘voice’ on the page. I hope these pages are useful and inspiring for you or that they simply let you know me better. Welcome to Numbers, Cards... and Time! ii
Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
i
Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
iii
1 Card at Any Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
Preface
1.1
That Is Not Possible! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
1.2
My Grail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6
1.3
What a Coincidence! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12
1.4
With a Freely Chosen Card: The One with the Blindfold! . .
16
1.5
Twins Hit Twice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24
1.6
Twins Without Jokers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
36
2 Back to the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
41
2.1
Back to the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
41
2.2
Material and Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
42
2.3
Summing up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
48
2.4
I Have Destroyed the Time Machine! . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
50
2.5
The Flux Capacitor (The Queens) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
55
2.6
Past, Present and Future (Collectors) . . . . . . . . . . . . .
59
2.7
The Sports Almanac (The Race) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
66
2.8
It is the Time (Card and Number) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
75
A The Trick That Can Be Explained . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
79
A.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
79
A.2 The Article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
80
A.2.1 Origin and Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
80
A.2.2 The Switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
83
A.2.3 Faster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
84
A.2.4 The Trick That Can Be Explained . . . . . . . . . . .
85
A.2.5 Interesting Variants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
91 iii
Table of Contents
A.3 Some Time After... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
92
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
97
Index
iv
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
