Two Ed's Are Better Than One: Volume Two

You are probably wondering who I am. I’m not related to Larry Hass. Two magic writers with the same, unusual last name? Total coincidence.

My qualifications:

• I’ve been doing magic for over seventy years.
• I wrote a magic blog for about eight years.
• Genii Magazine included my blog in their list of distinguished magic periodicals.
• My magic has been published in both The Linking Ring and Genii.
• I tutored many students, two of whom became president of IBM Ring 26 in New York City.

What is this blog about?

I bought Marlo’s Magazines from VI last December. I decided to read it from cover to cover in 2026. I calculated that I could do that by reading eight pages a day, five days a week, for fifty-two weeks. Over 2000 pages. Piece of cake, right? We’ll see.

I emailed Andi Gladwin for permission to blog about this material. He offered me the opportunity to blog for VI, rather than my own website. Not a difficult decision. So, here we are. Once a month(ish), I’ll write about something that falls within the most recent 170 pages or so of what I’ve read in Marlo’s Magazines.

As organization is not my strong suit, it took me more than one attempt to get the blog written. Because of this, we are publishing, in March, material that I read in January. In the future, I hope to write the blog during the month after I’ve read the material. This month, I’ll start writing about what I read in February. We will post this in early April. There will be a gap between the month I read the material and the date it’s posted.

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What I read this month:

Before starting, I checked the table of contents to see what I’d be reading. The first entry that caught my eye was a section on Oil and Water. I was anxious to read this section because my editor, Sal Mannuzza, and I had been working on a Marlo technique that made the separation look like CGI. (Sal wrote a learning guide for this move that I will publish if I encounter that move during my reading of Marlo’s Magazines.)

I was disappointed reading “Dissertation on Oil and Water.” Rather than an analysis of his approach to the trick, it was a rather long complaint about Karl Fulves trying to discredit Marlo’s invention of the Oil and Water plot.

Was Fulves trying to discredit Marlo? Was he just looking into the historical record? I have no idea, but I felt Marlo wasted a day of my reading time on this.

On the positive side, I enjoyed reading and working on his “Oil and Water, Plus Climaxes.” It’s a multi-phase version that ends with all the cards turning black. He gives you a good theme about drilling for oil to wrap up this version. It’s a little too long for my taste, so when I get a chance to spend more than a day on it, I’ll shorten it a bit.

From here, I went to the beginning of the book, a section called “Secret Moves.” The first item is named “Marlo’s Deal Switch”. This surprised me, because the switch he used was identical to Dai Vernon’s “To Exchange a Card,” from The Dai Vernon Book of Magic, (p. 77.) Considering how he went on about Fulves denying his credit for the Oil and Water plot, I can’t imagine Marlo not mentioning Vernon’s name, either as the switch’s originator or as a man who took credit for a Marlo sleight.

The switch is explained badly. We are switching an Ace for a selection. Using the names of the cards in the explanation should be easy, but Marlo doesn’t do it. He just says, “the card,” or “the palmed card,” or “its card.” I couldn’t figure out which card he was referring to. Had I not already learned the move from Vernon’s book, I don’t know if I could have learned it from this description.

The trick itself is not very good. I imagine Marlo just wanted to create a trick to illustrate the use of the switch, so he took some liberties with deceptiveness.

Shortly afterward is his work on the Curry Turnover Change.  This is a slight I believe to be an invaluable switch.  I spent many hours looking for a way to do it without the awkward get-ready that Curry used. I eventually found one. Marlo found one fifty years earlier. It's groundbreaking. Sadly, it seems to be unknown. Marlo didn’t include a trick to illustrate the use of this sleight. I wish he had, because in the fifty years since he published it, I’ve seen no reference to Marlo’s solution. No search engine or AI seems to know about it. There is some material here that, again, looks like stuff that Vernon had already published, but still is useful.

Closing out the section is the “Unit Upjog” sleight followed shortly by an excellent trick—the “Choice Elevator.”

The magician deals four kings face down on the table. A spectator may point to any King. The deck is dropped on top of it—the king rises to the top. This can be repeated.

Depending on the choices made, the card might be placed on top of the deck and sink to the bottom. A thoughtful spectator might realize that his ability to choose the King makes this an impossible occurrence.

A thoughtful magician might realize the magician has to be sharp enough to react properly to the spectator’s choice.

Next, comes an interesting section on the "KM move". The first thing I learned was that there are several variants of this sleight that I’ve never seen before. The version I knew—slipping the rear card of a double onto the top of the deck as the left hand turns palm-down over the deck—doesn’t appear here at all. What does appear here are two versions that switch cards. These versions unfortunately are named the “KM Move with Reverse Fingering.” Weirdly enough, reverse fingering is only used when switching a single card.

There are several effects mentioned; I feel they aren’t worth learning. They start with several cards fanned, some face up and the rest, face down. This telegraphs something suspicious is about to happen; you are not going to show them an unexplainable miracle, just a card trick. (OK, do them for your magic club friends.)

Note: There is a particularly useful sleight on page 55; it’s called “Changing Four for Four.” (It can, of course, change any number of cards.) Although it is discrepant, it looks more real than if you did it the “correct” way.

Next, comes a large chapter on an effect called “Succession Aces.” The effect, created by Ken Krenzel, is an Ace assembly unlike any I had seen before. It starts out with four Aces placed face down on the table with three X-cards placed on each. Then, the Ace in the first packet vanishes, and is found in the second packet. Then those two Aces vanish and are found in the third packet. Finally, the three Aces vanish from the third packet and arrive in the fourth packet.

As with many of Marlo’s tricks, the reader suffers from too many variations!

The first variation used set of double-faced cards, as in MacDonald’s Aces. It was easy to learn, easy to perform, but had some moves near the end that were inconsistent with went before and suspicious looking, as well.

Next came a version with double-indexed cards—nine of them. As I didn’t have any double-indexed cards, I read through the instructions with regular cards to see if the handling seemed to be reasonable. It did. However, at the end you weren’t clean. You can spread the cards widely, but you certainly cannot put them under the spectator’s hand, as you can in many Ace Assemblies.

Third in order came “Succession Aces (First Method).” (OK, I don’t know why the first method came third, either.)
Now, Marlo totally baffles me; he uses one double-faced card and a borrowed deck! In order to accommodate the use of the borrowed deck, Marlo presents a trick weakened to the point of uselessness. It also uses a double-faced AC/AD which doesn’t appear in the ordinarily available double-faced pack. Later in the text, Marlo suggests gluing two Aces back to back. It works, but the thickness, and probably some excess glue, impeded my handling.

I initially abandoned this method, but my mind seemed to want me to come back to it. I eventually decided to use a prepared deck and add two extra cards. This worked very well. Later, it occurred to me that there was no reason I had to use four Aces. Any four cards would work, as long as two of them matched the faces of your double-facer. This is the version I like the best now. It’s too long to write it in a blog, but you can find it on my website here.

Next, we have “Duck and Pull,” a sleight that helps you show a double-faced card as two different cards as you count the cards face-up.

Fourth, we have “Succession Aces (Second Method).” Again, we have the double-faced AC/AD and borrowed deck. I skipped it.

Next is “Ace Problem (Two Extra Aces—Your Own Deck)”.

On the first page Marlo used a sleight that I could do most of the time. I only do tricks that I can do all of the time. I skipped it.

Later on, there were versions of "Succession Aces" using Aces with different-colored backs. I found these too confusing. I skipped them.

Last in this section was the “Scoop-Up Palm.” It’s a palm you do when counting a small number of cards to the table, and scooping them up with the last card in your hand. Marlo uses it in all the methods except the first two. In the context of the “First Method,” which I eventually adopted, I could replace this move with a top palm. The "Scoop-Up Palm" might be useful in other contexts, but my “mission” doesn’t give me a lot of time to investigate such things.

I was done!!!

All in all, I found this part of the book well within the reach of the average intermediate card man, with a few exceptions. Marlo has us use some sleights that he assumes everyone knows, or has access to. For instance, I didn’t know what “Marlo’s Technical Variation of the Veeser Count” was. I Googled it, and I found a reference to Hierophant Vol. 5 and 6, p. 243, so I was able to learn it. (If you need more info on this, comment on this post.)

I’ll be back soon with my February travails.