This 46-minute episode of David Suzuki'...... Gardner and his effect on mathematics, magic, science, philosophy, and . . . everything else!

You'll see a LOT of familiar faces on this video.

Great! It seems that Martin will also be coming out in a magic magazine with an article on this effect
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_dC5BbjLSr0

On Larry Becker's "Will The Card Match"? The mathematics behind the trick are quite interesting, and even more so when written up by Martin Gardner.

Any word on whether these "Vanishing Rabbit" people credit Larry Becker at all?

Not sure. Martin said that he was going into the history of the method.

Actually, if you want to go farther back than Larry Becker, it's actually Howard Adams' "The Ramasee Prophecy", where Howard spelled unrelated words. Larry Becker was the one who added "Will The Cards Match" afte learning it from Howard, and was largely responsible for its popularization.

As a matter of fact, I believe another magician was going to print it in a book as his own, but Harry Lorayne caught wind of this, mentioned it to Larry Becker, and it was printed in the May 1987 Apocalypse to establish Larry Becker as the proper author of this version.

It is a very nice effect, but I find that having the cards in some sort of order (A to 5) and later reveal them out of order is somewhat taking some of the strength of the effect.
Also the pick up "move" is not very subtle IMHO.
This effect has tons of potential with the right presentation.

just MHO
ND

The trick with "Will The Cards Match" is not to have cards that obviously match until the end.

In Stunners Plus, Larry Becker describes a version in which 5 cards have set-up lines, and the other 5 have punch-lines. You can show them briefly at the beginning, because it's not quickly apparent which set-up lines go with which punch lines. That way, there's more of a surprise at the end, when everything seems to come together magically.

Scott,

being the lazy guy that I am - could you point me to the page in stunners plus?
Nir

It's under "Match Game", pages 183-189.

Biased opinion, of course, but - the way I teach it in APOCALYPSE, my suggestion to use ANY five cards and tear them in half is best, because it is then an entirely impromptu, anywhere, any time, under most any circumstances, piece of excellent card magic. (Done with a borrowed deck, if the owner doesn't mind having his deck destroyed. You can, of course, carry some old cards with you and let a spectator select any five.) Larry (Becker)did mention that he thought Howard Adams had mentioned tearing the five cards in half, but I never was able to find that reference. Anyway, again, just my opinion. HL.

super stuff, thanks for posting that

this may not be the best place to ask, but since we are talking about MG already, does anyone know when the Miracle Factory's Martin Gardner book (Impromptu) is due to appear ... last I heard, it was going to be out in early 2008 ... and obviously it wasn't

All I can find on it says that it's "coming soon!". Either Michael Weberor Todd Karr would be the people to ask about a release date.

Scott

Thank for the heads up. You Da Man!

Jason

You're welcome!

BTW, if you like Martin Gardner's work, I discovered some more free Martin Gardner goodies shortly after finding this documentary.

If you like math and magic together, and you have Miro (a free program that's aking to TiVo for your computer), check out my Miro channel full of stuff like this at: http://members.cox.net/econalc/files/gmvideosmiro.rss

It includes the Martin Gardner documentary, and many other mathematical/magical videos you may or may not have seen before.

I just had an interesting conceptual idea. Picture this:

"The Annotated Labyrinth" by Martin Gardner

Any thoughts on this?