Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Dr. Daley's Card Reverse

There are at least three secret reversals by Dr. Jacob Daley that are referred to as “The Daley Reverse”. All three share similarities, yet are distinctly different sequences.

  • Perhaps the best known is the reverse used in Dai Vernon's “Twisting the Aces” from More Inner Secrets of Card Magic, 1960, p. 5, that Daley published himself in Stars of Magic, Series 7 No. 2, 1950, p. 3. Even though it's the best-known reversal of Daley's, the technique predates him. It appeared in Harlan Tarbell's Tarbell Post-Graduate Service in Magic, 1930, p. 23. (Jon Racherbaumer claims that Ed Marlo was the first to put it into print; see The Linking Ring, Vol. 69 No. 1, Jan. 1989, p. 92. Racherbaumer must not have been aware of Tarbell's publication decades earlier.)
  • Cluttering the modern use of “The Daley Reverse” moniker for the above move, Jean Hugard published a different technique as “The Daley Reverse” in Card Manipulations No. 5, 1936, p. 144.
  • Another move that is occasionally referred to as “The Daley Reverse” is one he created with Sam Leo Horowitz. Daley recorded the technique in his notebooks; see Jacob Daley's Notebooks, nd. (c. 1974), np. (item 280).