This short compilation follows on the heels of another compilation titled Dreamwork. Both relate to Bob Hummer's "The Midreader's Dream." Bob Hummer introduced to the magic world many interesting
principles and effects. One of the first to make a splash was introduced in 1952. The dreamy dealer ad seemed too
good to be true: A spectator merely thinks of a card and then performs a few, unseen dealing procedures with a deck of cards. The magician, whose back was turned throughout these actions, turns and faces the spectator. He takes the deck, briefly scans the cards, and consults a "dream book." He then names the mentally selected card.
Retrograde analysts - a tiny group back then - correctly speculated that the contrived dealing procedure provided a causal link to the method. Astute laymen probably guessed the same thing. Nevertheless, the trick was puzzling enough to motivate magicians to figure out ways to possibly improve and streamline the trick - which they did.
Ed Marlo was one of the first to tackle this card problem and he eventually published his solution the following year in The Cardician (1953). The first thing he did was to discard the codebook. The spectator did not need to look through the cards to choose one. Instead, he merely thought of a card without any visual prompting or cues. Also, the performer did not need to perform elaborate steps to discover the mentally chosen card and it was not necessary to glimpse or remember key cards.
Marlo's version is applied to H. L. Slippery's idea to incorporate a blank deck. The rest of the presentations by John Suardini, Harry Anderson, John Lovick, and Josh Jay round out the rest of this manuscript. To give you an idea of how the addition of a blank deck enhances this trick, note how John Lovick's version is perceived by laymen:
The magician explains that he is going to perform his favorite mathematical card trick where a spectator thinks of any card in the deck. A shuffled deck is then handed to the spectator and, while the magician's back is turned, the spectator transfers a few cards from the top to the bottom, depending on the card's value. A few more action steps are carried out and then the magician turns around again, takes the deck, looks through it, and names the spectator's mental selection. But that's not all. Next, the magician says, "This isn't just my favorite mathematical card trick...it's my favorite mindreading trick!" He then spreads the deck face up to reveal a deck of blank cards!
- INTRODUCTION / Jon Racherbaumer
- A BLANK MIND / L. H. Slipper
- CARDICIAN'SDREAM / Edward Marlo
- IMAGINE THIS / John Suardini
- STILL IMAGINING / John Suardini
- WARPO'S WARPED DREAM / As told by Harry Anderson
- I DREAM OF MINDREADING / John Lovick
- JOSH JAY DREAMS OF MINDREADING / Josh Jay
1st edition 2023, PDF 22 pages.
word count: 7368 which is equivalent to 29 standard pages of text
