Of course you will have prepared the sets beforehand, and take
care to alter the arrangement as soon as possible after the
trick. But you can prepare the pack in the presence of others
without their detecting it. Distribute the cards by dealing
according to the two colours; take them up, and having placed the
red set a little projecting over the black, set them down, and,
pretending to cut them, separate the sets.
6. Twenty cards being arranged upon a table, a person thinks of
two, and you undertake to guess them.
Lay out twenty cards of any kind, two by two,
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| c | i | c | o | s |
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| d | e | d | i | t |
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| t | u | m | u | s |
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| n | e | m | o | n |
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and request a party to think of two in a line; that is, one of
the ten sets formed by the twenty cards. This done you take up
the sets in the order in which they lie, and place them in rows
according to the letters of the words. You may use a diagram
like the preceding, but as the words are easily retained it had
better be dispensed with, distributing the cards on the table
just as though upon the diagram, which will make the trick more
puzzling and extraordinary. Proceed as follows:-- Place the
cards two by two on similar letters: thus, place the two cards of
the first set on the two d's in dedit; the two cards of the
second set on the two i's of cicos and dedit; the two of the
third set on the two c's, and so on with the ten sets.
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