One of my pet peeves is working through a published card effect -- usually for many hours -- only to realize at the end that the mistakes were not mine, but were the author's. For example, I have seen books refer to "right hand" when only the "left hand" will work.

Can we put our minds to together here and list the mistakes we've found (along with the correct handling, if possible)? We'd be saving many collective frustrating hours for many would-be magicians.

I'm pretty sure that my copy of John Carney's "Book of Secrets" has the LH RH problems (Carney's sort of a lefty or at least he deals as a lefty would). Some of the drawings appear to have not been "flipped" if you know what I mean, most of them are flipped though.

I'm sure someone else will point out the now "classic" errors in Erdnase. I'll leave that to the true blue scholars!

I'll look for more errors later.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind, in "More Inner Secrets of Card Magic," at page 14, fourth paragraph, sixth line, erroneously states, "...next three cards, then..." It should read, "...next two cards..."

In Greater Magic p.238, it reads "left hand" instead of right. Worked out the discrepancy but it sure was annoying!

There is a good thing, however, that comes from these errors. It causes you to become somewhat creative in figuring out how to actually perform the effect. In some cases it can end up with you creating your own handliong or even a different effect.

I have thought in the past that, when writing a magic book it would be interesting to put a small error into the handling of an effect that may be considered less popular then some of the other effects. This would cause some people to spend more time on the effect and keep it on their minds, thereby resulting in an actual performance of the effect. I've never tested that theory out but it seems like a pretty standard marketing tool.

I have noticed plenty of mistakes in Joshua Jay's Talk-About-Tricks section of MAGIC Magazine.

One time the pictures that go along with the explanation were the pictures for a completely different effect featured in that section.

Another time a whole phase of a trick was left out in the explantion. If any of you read the explanation for the trick "Tally-Ho" then you know what I'm talking about. Luckily I figured it out.

I think people just need to spend time proofreading their work a bit more.

TJ

In Steve Beam's Semi-Automatic Card Tricks Vol. II he misprinted the Si Stebbins stack. Very badly too. Vol. III has some funny responses to this massive mistake.