I would like to mail someone a deck of cards and be able to have them force a card on themselves by following some simple directions. There is the old one of having the force-card on top, then they cut a block of cards, turn them face up, and spread to the last face-up card. I don't like that one very much. There's also the cross-cut force, but I don't want to use that either. Any other ideas? I don't mind if it uses a gaff card, but not an entire gaff deck. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

You mentioned only one part of the Balducci force. Done that way, it's not that deceptive. Doing it properly, with a bit of verbal manipulation, it should work just fine.

Actually, the cross-cut force is pretty fair in the eyes of the spectators, but if you want to discard it, no problem.

Mike

Mike, there is no possibility of verbal manipulation. I want to MAIL a deck of cards to someone with written instructions and let them fool themself.

Just jazz up that Balducci (and do it fully instead of that half-balducci thing above).

Put the forced card in second, not first. Then have him/her "calibrate" the deck: going through the whole cut deep, cut deeper thing, and pick the top card. Then according to its value he's to stick it back in the deck near the middle, or near the bottom, or whatever. Then you do it all over again for real, concluding in the pick up of the forced card. -- That should have him/her pondering about probabilities, law of averages and other math non-sense - or plain magic. And it "protects" your force from an unexpected peek at first card.

That's a tremendous idea Paul. The verb calibrate is a good one. In your instructions James, you could have headings like "Phase 1: Calibration" and "Phase 2: Selection" and "Phase 3: Disorder". I would have the spectator shuffle the deck in Phase 3, but I'm not sure how you want to reveal the forced card so that might not work for you. Thanks for the ideas gents.

Thanks, I've seen it done as "a practice try" and it didn't satisfy me, though I liked the idea of having the card in second... Alain Choquette used it as some sort of do-as-I-do with a whole crowd. But because some were drunk he only achieved maybe 85% success rate which sent me on a red herring and I spent a week wondering what sort of statistical voodoo he used, lol! Mind you, I had just bought Wilson's Complete Magic and started on my learning journey.

Paul and Gatsby, can you PM me with more details about this. I cannot follow it from the explanation provided. Much appreciated.

James

Telephone Trickery- Card Magic by Bill Okal

Maybe something in Verbal Magic by Juan Tanaruz.

Why not send them a "new, sealed" deck into which you have substituted one long card? Have them open the deck, discard the advertising cards, shuffle the deck (a few overhand shuffles, a few riffle shuffles and a few more overhand shuffles) and then square it up. Have them cut the deck by using the thumb on one short side and the fingers on the other, turn over the cut off portion and the card shown is the force (long) card.

Ben Earl's Red Herring

Is Red Herring a force?

Only problem is that's not 100% surefire.

Yes it is.

There is always the old 10-20 Force.

I have used the "calibrated" (nice term) Balducci mention above. It's really a nice addition to the Force itself.

Magicthree and terrillific, thanks for the advice about RED HERRING. It is the CLEAR WINNER out of all the suggestions made! I can't imagine how this could possibly be topped for the conditions I specified. I've looked at dozens of possibilities and this is perfect! With Red Herring I can mail someone a deck of cards, get them on the phone and have them shuffle, select a card, and shuffle again -- and still have forced a card on them! AND the procedure is easy to describe to someone over the phone when you can't see what they're doing, so the spectator is not likely to screw it up. THANKS A MILLION for this suggestion!

I find Red Herring rather easy to reconstruct, especially as the written instructions will be there for them to analyse should they wish too.

There are methods which are completely opaque and can’t be reproduced. I suggest you look up Alex Emlsey’s effect Sum Talk of Alexander published in The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley, Vol. II, pg 171:

A spectator freely chooses a card and turns it face-up and then deals face down onto the table as many cards as the value of the selection (court cards are equal to 10). The last card of the count is turned face up and placed with the selection. The value of this new card is then used to count down further onto the deck and the procedure is repeated until the entire pack has been exhausted.

When all the values of the face-up cards get summed up, the performer shows that he had predicted their total.

The last card turned face up is also predicted. (The last card face up is not the last card of the deck.)

So you can force a number, a card, or both. The method is diabolical.

There's a few cards setup that is not easy to detect and most of the deck can be shuffled if you word your instructions right.

I agree with Vlad about using the 10-20 force.

Why do you think it is a good force?
I only see limitations :
Only a very restricted range of numbers can be used.
Wording of written instructions tricky as 20 can't be used.

The OP wants to mail a deck of cards.

‘After you have removed the cards from the box, turn them face up and notice that they are in a mixed order. Now, turn them face down and as you do that, think of a number somewhere between 10 and 20...’

I would love to look up what you suggested, but I do not have that book in my library. It sounds great.
What we don’t know is what the OP wants to do with the forced card.