Steinmeyer nine-card trick
by Martin Gardner
Jim Steinmeyer is one of the nation's most
creative inventors of magic tricks. A few years ago he
invented a marvelous mathematical trick. Known as the
Steinmeyer nine-card trick, it has since been given
many clever means of doing it by other magicians.
Here is one of the simplest:
Take any nine cards from a standard 52-card deck and
deal the nine cards into three piles of cards each. Pick
up any pile and remember its bottom card. Drop this
pile on top of one of the others, and these six on top of
the last pile. The cards remain down throughout.
Hold the nine cards down and spell the value of the
chosen card by dealing one card down to the table for
each letter. So, if the card chosen is the Queen of
Spades, spell Q U E E N and drop the remaining cards
on top. Pick up the packet and spell O F. As before,
drop the rest of the cards on top. Pick up the packet and
spell the suit of the card you selected: S P A D E S.
Drop the rest of the packet on top.
The position of the chosen card should now be at a
random spot because card names spell out with as few
as 10 letters up to as many as 15. So, now spell M A G
I C and turn over this last card. Believe it or not, this
will always be the selected card!