Starting Fires 2: Searching

Alexander Hansford and the NEAT Review just changed what “beginner” magic looks like.

Starting Fires is a new series from THE NEAT REVIEW that explores what a different kind of entry point might look like. These may be “beginner-friendly” card tricks, but they’re also beautifully constructed, highly interactive, and incredibly fooling. Each booklet focuses on just a single card trick, explained in intricate detail over a few dozen pages. If any of these were the first magic books you ever read, you’d be set on the right path immediately.

These are not just for beginners. While all of the tricks are completely sleight-free, the techniques they use are underground. They are incredibly deceptive and can fool even the most knowledgeable of magicians.

Booklet 1: Real Real teaches you one of the most impossibly clean, two-deck versions of Do As I Do. Both participants shuffle a deck of cards, select a card, and bury it into their pack. They shuffle again, first independently, but then shuffle their decks together. Without you ever touching the cards, they’re able to find each other’s selections. It’s clean, hands off, and incredibly fun to perform.

Booklet 2: Searching In Searching, you’ll learn to find a freely cut-to card in a shuffled pack.

Your participant cuts into a borrowed, shuffled pack, remembers a card, then completes the cut, burying their card in the middle. They shuffle again, before looking at the cards as you ask them to concentrate on their selection. While they concentrate, you have them also focus on their Star Sign, Earth Sign, Synastry, and Cardinal Points. Despite how fair the procedure is, you’re able to find their card, all while they hold the cards.

Booklet 3: Gestural
A pack of cards is fully shuffled by a participant. They look through some cards and mentally select a card in the middle of the pack. They never remove the card, and they are the only one who knows the identity of their card.

Without looking at the cards, you take them behind your back, as you make a few changes to the deck. When you bring the cards back out, you explain that the top two cards will help you divine their thought of a card. First, you get the color, then the suit, and finally the value of their selection. To finish, you spread the cards face up, and reveal in the center of the pack, there is one face-down card: their selection.