The magician apparently memorizes a shuffled deck and locates the spectator's made-up card.
A deck of cards is thoroughly shuffled by the spectator and spread face-up. The magician claims he can memorize the order of any deck within seconds thanks to his training and a bit of luck. To demonstrate this, he turns away and instructs the spectator to create a card at random, thereby ensuring complete fairness and eliminating any suspicion of forcing. To do so, the spectator cuts into the deck twice - once to select a suit and once to select a value - and combines them to get a made-up playing card. Only now does the magician turn back to face the spectator again. He spreads the deck face-up on the table and concentrates intently, memorizing each card and its position. After a moment, he turns away once more and instructs the spectator to swap his thought-of card with a random one, switching the two positions. The spectator does as instructed and squares up the deck. The magician turns back to him again and spreads the deck with the faces toward himself. He forms two packets that he cuts at a specific position and tables them side by side. He hesitates between two cards, then finally drops one packet atop the other. For the first time, the spectator names his thought-of card - let's say the 5H. The magician reveals the card he cut to - it is the 5H!
Bonus Effect: Using a process of elimination, the magician can identify the card missing from the deck.
The deck is completely normal and can be genuinely shuffled. Neither the value nor the suit of the made-up card is forced. No memorization of the full deck is required, as this is a staged memory demonstration. You don't add or remove anything. No sleights. No marking system.
1st edition 2025, PDF 11 pages.
word count: 2714 which is equivalent to 10 standard pages of text
