Thanks to Aronson

Simon Aron­son is a card magic geni­us. I love his work. There is one trick that has fas­cin­ated me thor­oughly, and that is his “Ad-Jacent”. What a great trick!

Des­pite hav­ing it, I would­n’t per­form it, because I am a lefty, and all the reg­u­lar peek work is out of reach and imprac­tic­al for me. So, here for all my fel­low lefties, my simple and crude ver­sion of that same trick, ded­ic­ated with a deep and humble bow to Mr. Aron­son. Des­pite lack­ing some of the “fin­esse” of the ori­gin­al, it has some prac­tic­al value (at least for me). Again, a lovely “magi­cian’s life hack”.

You need a deck, a match­ing double-back­er and a double-faced card, show­ing a Joker and an indif­fer­ent card on the oth­er side. The double-back­er is marked in the corners with a pen­cil dot on both sides for think­ing-free handlng.

Set-up: Double-back­er on top, second from top the double-facer, Joker side down (deck is face-down).

Per­form­ance: Hold deck face down. Double lift and turn the top two cards face up. Joker is seen. Thumb the Joker off the deck onto the table. Have two spec­tat­ors each select a card. Make sure you don’t let them select the double-back­er, for a bet­ter effect.

Pre­pare for the TILT. Take first selec­ted card and insert into TILT, “loos­ing it in the deck”. False shuffle, keep­ing the top two cards in place.

Put the deck onto the table and have the second spec­tat­or place his card on top of the deck and cut it in the middle. Replace the cut. The two chosen cards are now besides the double-back­er. Spread the deck face down on the table with a wide rib­bon spread.

Now for the rev­el­a­tion. Take the Joker and begin mov­ing it along the spread (from the end toward the middle). Have the spec­tat­or stop you, when it is about in the middle of the spread. Insert the card at this point. Make sure it is not in between the double-back­er an a chosen card (easy to see because of the secret pen­cil mark­ings on the double-backer).

Now imme­di­ately turn over the rib­bon spread in the well-known “macho dis­play mode”, show­ing your skills at turn­ing a spread of cards over. Do it with grace and con­vic­tion. Or just cleanly turn over the spread.

The spec­tat­ors see a face down card in the middle (sup­posedly the Joker). The cards dir­ectly to the right and left are the chosen cards! Clean-up with your favor­ite method …

I know, very very simple, but then – it works like a charm. A no-skill no-brain­er so to say. Have fun! 🙂