After spending a heck of a long time trying to memorize the Mnemonica stack and get my faro to work right, I'm finally at a point of wanting to take advantage of it.

I'm fine with the method used to get from NDO to Mnemonica, but I'm kind of bummed about the method that is required to get from Mnemonica to stay stack. In particular, the card location by dealing down two piles, re-grouping and then reversing... Know what I mean?

Is that really the only way? If so, what a friggin drag.

Steve Suss has some ideas in his "Best of both Worlds" post that I wish I would have read before I made the commitment to Mnemonica.

"Read my post "Best of Both Worlds". I think this is similar to what you are looking for. Instead of bringing the deck to Mnemonica order you stop after 4 faros and are now in stay stack order and can do many of the built in effects in Mnemonica. You then continue by giving the deck one more Faro and you are now in MD order and can do 95% of all MD routines. Finally you give the deck just 3 more Faros and you are in new deck order or what Juan Tamariz describes as one of the greatest climaxes in card magic"

Hoping someone can deliver me from my dissappointment

Says,

Rudy

Charlie Frye has an excellent presentation to cover that method that works brilliantly.

There are other ways of doing it though without the dealing... I have seen a few and have one myself. They are unfortunately not in print tho. Play around with different kinds of "shuffles" and you will find a solution that works for you.

D

Also ... as far as the Steve Suss post goes ... you are always in stay stack after every faro shuffle. I think it was Michael Skinner that used that as his mem deck, only with US NDO shuffled and no stay stack.

Hi Doug,

Thank you very much for your reply!!

You've given me a glimmer of hope

I'm beginning to see the power of the faro shuffle.
I noticed that the cards remained in stay stack when I was trying to get the deck into Mnemonica
It kind of tripped me out a bit. I'm a complete idiot when it comes to math, so I'm almost always astounded at things like that. The Gilbreath priniciple for instance. I also ran into a spelling effect by Stephen Tucker that is simply amazing, but I don't quite understand why it works. I'm just as surprised by the denouement!

Anyway, I'll try screwing around with the deck and see if I can discover a solution for myself.

Thanks for the hints!

Always,
Rudy