Imagine:
The magician introduces a deck of cards. He invites a spectator to thoroughly shuffle the deck. Once the spectator is done shuffling, the magician spreads the deck face up as he asks them to verify that all the cards are in fact different. With this done, he closes the spread and turns the deck back face down, after which he turns his back to the spectator. He then (while turned away) instructs the spectator to cut the deck into 3 piles. Furthermore, he promises never to touch the deck again until the end.
The spectator takes the deck and cuts it into 3 more or less equal piles: top pile, middle pile and bottom pile respectively. The magician then invites the spectator to pull out any card at random (sight unseen) from the top pile. They do that (after which they look at it). He then says "If I were to ask you to place your selected card on top of the top pile, you may think I could use the top card of the top pile as a key card. After all, the top card of the top pile just is the original top card of the deck before you split the deck into 3 piles. So, in order to eliminate this idea, place your card on top of the middle pile instead." The spectator places their selected card on top of the middle pile.
The magician (while still turned away) explains, "I'm going to turn back around in a moment, but before I do so, cut and complete the middle pile as much as you want so as to lose your card." The spectator gives the middle pile as many complete cuts as they want.
The magician turns back around to face the spectator (the first time that he's turning back around ever since he turned away) and recaps what happened. He then instructs the spectator to either shuffle the top pile or shuffle the bottom pile, and to place it on top of the middle pile. They choose one and do that. And, finally, he instructs them to shuffle the remaining pile and to place it underneath the bigger pile. They do that as well.
At this point, the entire deck is reassembled. Now, for the first time since the beginning, the magician touches the deck. He takes the deck, spreads through its faces and locates the spectator's selected card.
Some important conditions of note:
- The spectator shuffles the entire deck at the beginning of the effect.
- After placing the selected card on top of the middle pile, the spectator freely cuts the middle pile. The spectator also shuffles the top and bottom pile before reassembling the deck.
- The magician turns his back before the spectator cuts the deck into three piles - and he only turns back around after the selected card is cut into the middle pile. So there is no opportunity to peek the selection or any card next to it.
- The method for this is completely different compared to the methods of Three Pile Location: On Steroids and Three Pile Location: On Cocaine.
1st edition 2023, PDF 9 pages.
word count: 3335 which is equivalent to 13 standard pages of text
