This is a challenge that has so few clues that it is probably completely unfair, but here goes. I'd appreciate it if anyone could help me identify the following (possibly obscure) card trick.

A friend of mine keeps encouraging me to relearn what he says is his favorite thing he ever saw me do. Here is the problem: I haven't done it in over 20 years and I don't have the slightest idea what it is

Here are the clues:

First, obviously it is at least 20 years old.

Second, the climax of the trick was reaching to the tabled deck and turning over the top four cards and showing them to be the four queens. The climax always came as a huge surprise. The effect had something to do with taking a few cards out of the deck, doing something surprising and or impossible with them, then turning over the queens for a final climax.

Hey, is that vague, or what?

Does any part of this sound at all familiar to anyone?

Could it have been something of Hamman's? LePaul? Doc Daley? Lorayne? Something from the Heirophant or Kabbala, perhaps? Jim Ryan? Cervon? Bueller? Bueller?

Seriously, this is making me crazy. If the trick is strong enough for my friend (a layman) to remember it after 20 years, I really ought to think about adding it back to my set list.

If I just had the slightest clue what it was.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Dan

I'm not sure on the age of this effect, but could it have been something like The Shuffling Lesson (Long/Hollingworth, in AOA)?


C

Just a shot in the dark. Maybe Roy Walton's Oil and Queens? From your description of "taking a few cards out of the deck, doing something surprising and or impossible with them, then turning over the queens for a final climax", Oil & Queens would fit.

Thanks for the help so far, guys.

AOA definitely wasn't published when I did the effect (in 1981 or 1982), but it is possible that The Shuffling Lesson may have been around earlier. I'll look it up tonight when I get home.

Oil and Queens is from the right time frame, I think, so I'll think that one over--but I don't remember it being an Oil and Water type effect.

In fact, What I think made the climax so powerful, is that I *think* it was sort of a feint--that whatever preceeded it (a vanish, perhaps, or change, ala Reset or Underground Transposition?) may have made the spectators suspect the top of the deck, so when you turn over the queens it just seemed to come out of nowhere.

I hear that the memory is the second thing to go.

I wish I could remember what the first was....

:)

Have you considered having your friend hypnotized, regressed twenty years, and interrogated on the details of the effect?

Another trick that comes to mind is Ed Marlo's Triple Transposition. It's kind of a follow the leader effect with a kicker. I can't remember now, in which Marlo book to look for it. There's a version of it in Giobbi's Card College (called Transposition Excelsior in the german edition).

Yea, that's what I was thinking. Hollingworth probably put it out long before AOA.

Any chance this might have just been something you jazzed up on the spot and not a published effect?

C

Mr Hollingworth would have been 7 yrs old going on 8..? It wouldn’t surprise me but he didn't get into magic ‘til his teens!

Of course, spectators don't always remember exactly what happened either...

Maybe you should just do a "Spectator Cuts the Aces" routine for him with Queens and comment. "You've just got those Ladies on your mind again haven't you?"

Paul

Eyemazing from the stars of magic video starring Frank Garcia comes to mind....eyemazing is a 4 of a kind for a 4 of a kind switch

Eyemazing is a very nice effect, and is from the right time period. But...that's not it. (Thanks, though!)

The climax was definitely a production of four queens--that much I know.

Could it be Hide and Seek Kings from Garcia's Million Dollar Card Secrets
except the queen are found by the kings.

hah! My bad. I always think of Hollingworth being so much older...

C

Could it be the four thieves rob a bank and they end up on the ceiling trick?