Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Pull-down

This concept appears to have been reinvented many times over the years. In an exposé of cheating techniques (in other words, he makes no claim of originality), Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin describes the idea of opening the pack with only the little finger. This is described in a peeking technique within Les Trickeries des Grecs Dévoilées (1861).

Laurie Ireland later redeveloped the idea in Ireland's New Card and Coin Manipulation 1935, p. 9, where it is used in the context of a false count for “Six-card Repeat”. This count employs the mechanics of the push-off double lift, published by Marlo in Off the Top, 1945, p. 7, in the context of both a one-handed turnover, and two-handed variant; Vernon attempted to claim the same move over twenty years later in Dai Vernon's Ultimate Secrets of Card Magic, 1967, p. 54. The procedure is essentially the same, it being applied to two cards by Marlo and Vernon, while Ireland pushed over a larger block. The sleight credit should go to Ireland here. It is this procedure that Ireland focuses on, and he makes no claim of originality for the pull-down.

There is evidence to suggest that others had worked on the idea between Robert-Houdin and Ireland, and possibly before:

  1. John Booth was using a pull-down in his Six-card Repeat handling in vaudeville in the 1920s. He wrote a letter saying as much. He does not try to claim credit for the idea. It was just something he was doing at the time.
  2. Vernon spoke about discovering the pull-down in the teens or twenties while trying to decipher a cryptic passage in the early translations of Hofzinser in The Sphinx. The passage referred to making a crepitating noise by ruffling the cards with the little finger.
  3. In Ottokar Fischer's book on Hofzinser, it says (in Sharpe's translation, p. 26): “The two lower cards are held separately by the little finger, which is put between them and the other cards.” This occurs immediately after two cards are brought to the bottom with the spread cull, and no assistance from the right hand is mentioned. While the passage is too vague to draw any firm conclusions, Fr. Cyprian, in Fr. Cyprian on the Hofzinser Card Problem, 1978, p. 7, suggests that the pull-down might well have been what Hofzinser used here. This speculation is strengthened by the crepitating little finger action mentioned above.