Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Tap False Cut

This is a simple and deceptive false cut, begun with a Swing Cut and followed by tapping the edge of the bottom packet against the top of the top packet, which confuses the spectators' perception of which packet is which, so that the false cut can be successfully completed. General consensus attributes this false cut to Bobby Bernard. Although Bernard never published it in print, he did explain it on the third volume of Bobby Bernard: Video Lecture—Teach-in released by Videonics in 1980, and again in the videotaped lecture Magic Clinic, c. 1991. Also see R. Paul Wilson's Out of Your Mind, c. 2002, n.p., where Wilson states, “Bobby says he came up with it in the forties but it may date back further than that.” Jerry Sadowitz makes a similar attribution in Cut Controls, 2004, n.p. Sadowitz writes, “[Bernard] has been doing this after all, for nearly fifty years.”

Dominique Duvivier published the identical false cut in 1974, in Cartomagie Année 2001, p. 17. In an email sent to Denis Behr on September 14, 2025, Duvivier gives this history of the sleight: “I invented my 'French Tap False Cut' in April 1972, at the period when I was creating my own universe of personal techniques. I was in my early twenties, throwing myself wholeheartedly into magic, but speaking no English and having access to very little information about the magic that already existed, I set out, by default, to invent many new things, simply in order to express myself with magic as I saw fit.” This matter seems an instance of independent invention, in which it appears, pending further evidence, Bernard preceded the French master.