Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Counting on It

This trick of Paul Cummins from The New York Magic Symposium Collection Three, 1984, p. 132 was inspired by a version shown to Cummins by Bill Herz in March, 1984. The Herz method has apparently not been published. A precursor of this plot is “Impossible Location”, attributed to Larry Jennings and Mike Skinner, in Frank Garcia's Exclusive Card Secrets, 1980, p. 21. In this version, the values of the top and bottom cards (controlled and adding to ten) define the location of the selection. In the Cummins version, the spectator may name any number between ten and twenty. Cummins gives six alternative treatments of the plot, dating from 1989-1996, in his …from a shuffled deck in use…., 1996, p. 6.