Perplexities by Peter Duffie

Automatic Aces
You shuffle a deck and then give it a spectator, who now carries out a series of random actions that result in him locating all four Aces.

Rideckulous
Your invisible helpers become visible and then find a chosen card along with all the other cards of the same colour!

Natterjacks
You remove the four Jacks. A Card is selected and returned to the deck. The deck is cut into two halves – one remains on the table. The four Jacks are placed face up on the table half and cut into the middle. One by one the Jacks leave the tabled half and appear face up in the half in your hands. However, the fourth Jack refuses to travel. But you realise what has happened. You spread the tabled half and the Jack is still there, face up. The card immediately above it proves to be the selection.

Hellish Prequel
You give a spectator an Ace, Two, and Three of any suit, while you hold the two black Jacks. In an instant, the two packets change places..

Hell Raiser 1-2-3
A rapid-fire elevator routine where an Ace, Two, Three magically penetrate two black Jacks, then do so once more at a blistering pace.

Missing Diamonds
The effect is Alex Elmsley’s “Diamond Cut Diamond”. The feature of this version is that the spectator can deal the Diamonds and there is no Palm or Second Deal.

Triple Stop by Gene Maze
This routine was sent to me by Gene Maze back in 1995. It was part of a wonderful correspondence we had going at the time.

Not Your Card
You remove four cards from your pocket and place them face down on the table, stating that these are an infallible prediction. A spectator freely chooses a card from your deck – it can be signed. – and then it is lost back into the deck. The spectator is given the four prediction cards. You tell him to transfer the top card to the bottom, after which you point to the top card, saying, “That’s not your card.” When this card is dealt face up, it proves to a blank faced card with the words NOT YOUR CARD printed on its face. This is repeated two more times, and each time the card turned has NOT YOUR CARD printed on it. “What was your card?” you ask. The last card proves to be the spectator’s selection. You can end right here, or you can add an extra effect. After a pause, you continue, saying, “What if the trick had gone wrong?” You pick up the three word cards and insert the selection among them. Now you count the cards, one by one, and all four cards now say, NOT YOUR CARD. You continue, saying, “In fact, I don’t know why this trick DID NOT go wrong … because your signed card has been in my pocket all along!” At that, you reach into your pocket and bring out the selected card.

Too Secret
Two spectators, two selections, too puzzling…

Last Orders
Duffie examines Dr. Daley’s last trick, with a little help from Fred Robinson.

I Me Mind
The following is a solution to a card problem which was posed in issue 7 of Profile magazine. The principle used comes from Roy Walton’s Helensburgh Speller where Roy credits Stewart James with the concept.

Lying Low
I like the Lie Detector plot. Martin Gardner was first to introduce the lie/speller aspect. I have published several methods over the years. Here is another one!

1st edition 2016, 35 pages.
word count: 7863 which is equivalent to 31 standard pages of text