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In an email I posted on my site last month, someone wrote in about a

performance they saw at Magifest, describing it as:

e most impossibly hands-o ACAAN I’ve ever seen.

e ACAAN he saw was an idea I had based on a product that came out a few
months back, which I will get to talking about soon.

First I want to describe what the ACAAN looks like in action. To temper your
expectations before you read it though, I should note that this isn’t a trick that
you would carry with you to perform extemporaneously. It’s not really
something that you would do strolling at a restaurant (although you could
probably gure out a way to do so). e original trick this is based on is far
more practical for those purposes.

is is more something you would have ready to go in your house or some

other location you frequent.

Imagine
My friend Elena is over my place for dinner. A er our meal, we’re chatting on
my couch. ere is a deck of cards sitting on the co ee table in front of us.

At one point in the evening, she picks up the cards and hands them to me.
“Show me something,” she says.

I reply that I’m not just some “performing monkey” and that “magic is an art”
and she can’t just demand it anytime she wants.

No. I’m kidding. I say, “Yeah, sure.”

I tell her I want to try a classic of magic, e No-Touch Card at Any Number
trick.

I give her the deck to shu e.

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 I ask her to think of any suit in a deck of cards.

I ask her to think of any number from 1 to 13.

I have her cut the deck and take a peek at the card she cut to. If it’s a number
card I tell her to multiply that number by the number she was thinking of.
( is is the only bit of “math” in the trick.)

“Okay,” I say, taking the deck back. “So you have a smaller number between 1
and 13 that you freely chose. And you have a suit in your mind that you just
thought of. And you have a larger number in your head that not even you
knew you’d be thinking of because that was decided randomly. Is that number
under 52?” She con rms that it is.

“Okay, let’s put this all together.”

I ask her for the number she originally thought of. It was 9.

I ask her for the suit she thought of. It was diamonds.

I spread the cards face-up between my hands. “And you shu ed these cards
yourself, yes?” She agrees.

“What was the larger number you created?”

She tells me it was 36.

I ri e some cards and cut the deck in my hands and put it on the table.

“Okay,” I say, “So you thought of the 9 and Diamonds. e 9 of Diamonds.

And the number 36. We have our card and our number. And now it’s time for
the No-Touch Card at Any Number trick. Where I make your card appear at
your number without even touching the deck.”

“Well, you did touch the deck though,” she says.

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 “What’s that?” I say, innocently.

“You were touching the deck, just now.”

“Huh? No... oh… wait… this one? Yeah, I touched this one. But that’s the deck
where your card is going to appear at your number,” I say and point to a boxed
deck of cards sitting on the end-table next to her.

“Noooo wayyyyyy,” she says.

I tell her to take the cards out of the box. And count down to the 36th card.
She does and it’s the 9 of Diamonds.

is trick can be done 100% hands-o , where you never touch anything. I like
having the misdirect of them thinking I’m doing “something” with the deck in
play, only to reveal that that’s not the deck we’re using for the trick. I saw this
idea recently in a Bernardo Sedlacek Penguin Live lecture, although I don’t
know if it’s original to him. It’s a great moment. Your friend goes from
thinking, “Could he really be getting that card to that number so quickly?” To
having no clue how it could be at that number in a deck that was never
touched.

Before I get into more details there, I need to jot o a quick note…

Dear Daniel Johnson,

The rst me I learned the rou ne Miraskill, I thought it was

the dumbest trick I’d ever heard of in my life. The mathema cal
underpinnings of the e ect were so obvious to me that I couldn’t
imagine even a third-grader not catching on to how the trick
works.

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 I tried it out on some dumb iends just for kicks and I was
surprised that they were fooled by it. Then I tried it on much
smarter people and they too were fooled by it.

That’s when I learned not to trust my own judgment on what will

or won’t fool people, methodologically.

I had a similar feeling when I rst learned your trick, F.A.S.T.

Not that I thought it was the “dumbest trick I’d ever heard of,”
but just that it seemed like the method should be transparent to
people.

I tried it out for a couple months and I found that it wasn’t a bad,
transparent method.

In a way it was something worse. It was a method that was very

fooling to half the people who saw it, and completely obvious to
the other half. (Actual numbers, through 8 performances: 3 were
blown away, 3 knew exactly how it was done, 2 were kind of in
the middle.) And there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason
regarding who it would fool. One of my smartest iends was

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 fooled by it. And one of the people who gured it out had—just
that same morning—put a pizza box in her oven to reheat the
pizza and started a re.

So I felt I couldn’t dismiss it because it was get ng me strong

reac ons. But I couldn’t embrace it because other mes people
were following right along with the method.

Using your trick as a founda on though, I made some changes to

address the parts that felt weak to me and created a version
I’m fairly sure I’ll be using for a long me to come. So let me tell
you how I’m using…

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 If you have F.A.S.T. and read the description of what a performance of my
version looks like, you may be able to put most of this together.

I mentioned that my version is not an anywhere-at-any-time e ect.

And that’s because, while the original F.A.S.T. is a one deck e ect.

Mine is…

Five.

Yes, I know, that sounds awful. But for an “at home” e ect, it’s not too bad and
I can guarantee you the e ect is worth it.

Addressing the Number Selection

e primary issue people had with F.A.S.T. was the way the number was
generated for the position of the card. I’m not spilling any secrets (since you
can see this in the demo) when I say the position of the card is determined by
having the spectator double the value of the card, and then double it again.

e weakness, as some people see it, is that there’s a direct line between the
value and the position. And it’s a direct line that both the magician and the
audience is fully aware of. If people see through a part of the method, this is
the part they see through. It doesn’t feel like a “random” placement.
Regardless of how casually you say, “double it… then double it again.”

My way to address this was to use the “randomly” cut to playing card that I
apparently don’t know for them to generate the position by combining a free
choice and a random element. is feels a bit more justi ed than asking them
to double their number twice. We’re taking a number only they know and
multiplying it by a completely random selection. Ending up with a new
number that even they couldn’t have predicted.

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 You can work this logic into the original one-deck version of F.A.S.T. too. You
can set it up to cross-cut force a four and then reassemble the deck a er the
force and then cut the deck to get things where you want them.

I don’t use a cross-cut force in my version. I wanted something even more free
and fair than that, as you’ll see.

e Five Decks

Four of the decks are set for the reveal. One for each suit.

e h deck, the one that’s in play during the course of the routine, is special
in this way: the 4s in the deck all are marked in some way on the back ( lling
in the center dot on a Bicycle card, for example) and they are all breather
crimped.

So to force a 4 you just need to…

Allow them to shu e the deck and cut it.

ere’s a good chance a 4 will be on top (which you’ll know because of the
mark). Have them turn over the card they cut to.

If it’s not on top, have them cut again.

If it’s still not on top, have them cut the deck into thirds and do the Jerx Ose
False-ish Cut to get the card where it needs to be.

In either case, you’ll have them secretly take a peek at the card they cut to and
lose it back in the deck.

If, for some bizarre reason, with four breather crimped cards and multiple
di erent cuts, no 4 ends up on top, take the deck and spread it for them to
show it’s well mixed and cull any four and force it in any other way. I’ve never

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 had to do that. I’ve never had to have the deck cut more than twice. But this is
just a backup if everything else fails.

e Home Index

e four reveal decks are placed in locations around your performing area.

When I last performed it, the Diamond deck was on the end table near where
my friends normally sit when they visit.

e Clubs deck was in a little box that sits on my co ee table.

e Hearts deck was in an envelope with, “ e Deck for the No-Touch Card
at Any Number Trick” written on the outside. is envelope was near my
publicly displayed decks, writing side down.

e Spades deck was in my o ce, prominently displayed. It was also in an

envelope with, “ e Deck for the No-Touch Card at Any Number Trick.”

e envelopes add a level of impossibility and serve the role of making the
decks extra distinctive.

So if my friend picks a Diamond the e ect is, “ is trick doesn’t use this deck.
It uses that one.” And it’s the deck right next to them that’s been in plain sight
the whole time.

If they pick a Club, “ is trick doesn’t use this deck. It uses this one.” And it’s
the one that’s sealed in the box in front of us since the start of the trick.

If it’s a Heart, “ is trick doesn’t use this deck. Go over to my deck collection
over on that bookshelf. Do you see the envelope there? What does it say?…
Yeah, that’s the one.”

If it’s a Spade, “ is trick doesn’t use this deck. Come with me.” We walk to my
o ce and there is the sealed envelope on display.

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 You can’t just put four decks in di erent parts of where you’re performing. I
don’t think that’s ideal. You want to do what you can to negate the idea that
more than one deck is in play for the reveal.
In my case, I had to do that in my house where my friends know there are a
lot of decks laying around. So the reveal deck had to stand out as “special” in
some way.

For me that was accomplished by…

1. Using (apparently) the only other deck in the immediate area. Or…

2. Using the deck that’s been directly in front of us in a closed box the whole
time. Or…

3. Using the ONLY deck in my collection that has been clearly designated as
being for this trick. Or…

4. Using the deck that’s boldly displayed in the center of my o ce. We’ve gone
through other areas of my place to get there. ere clearly weren’t other
envelopes on display in other rooms.

If you just hide four decks around the house and then tell someone, “ e 4 of
Clubs isn’t the 16th card in this deck. It’s the 16th card in the deck that’t taped
under the lid of my toilet tank,” that’s going to feel arbitrary. And it’s going to
have them thinking of potentially multiple decks.

So put some thought into where you keep the decks. e further away from
where you’re performing the trick the deck is kept, the more it needs to be
distinguished as being solely for this particular trick (hence the envelopes in
my version).

e No-Touch/No-Tell Version

is is the version I plan on testing next.

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 e person never names the suit they’re thinking of, or the value, or the
position. If you know what suit they’re thinking of, they never have to say
anything.

I’m thinking of using a marked deck for the deck in play and then going
through the trick to the point where they’ve created the card and the position
in their head. I will then tell them to go through the deck and remove their
card. (I’ll note what the card is (well, the suit is really all that matters)). And
I’ll tell them that while my back is turned I want them to put their card back
in the deck somewhere far from the position they’re thinking of.

en I’ll take the deck from them. “You chose a suit and a value to create a
card. You came up with a position in the deck. Only you know any of this
information. Even if you were to tell me that information it would take me a
couple seconds to process it, then a few seconds to nd your card in the deck,
and then at least a few seconds to move it into place. But what if—without you
ever telling me the card or the number—I was able to get that card to that
position. But not in this deck that I’m holding. In that deck over there.”

I haven’t worked out the full presentation yet, but I think it’s going to be really
strong.

✿✿✿

I know it seems like a lot of work, but trust me, if you have any interesting in
an ACAAN e ect, it doesn’t get cleaner than this.

While there is a bit of process to selecting the number, it’s easy to play that o
as an added element of randomness. And the fact their card shows up at a
number you couldn’t have predicted in a deck you never touch—it’s
completely impossible to laymen.

F.A.S.T. can be purchased in most magic shops. e lowest price I found on

the sites I frequent is currently at Penguin, where it’s available for the arbitrary
seeming price of $28.16.

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 Dear Juan Capilla,

I’m not a big “gag” person.

I don’t ever ask if someone wants to see a

picture of my “pride and joy” and then pull
this photo out of my wallet.

And I never follow it up by saying, “But

seriously, do you want to see a picture of
my kids?” And then I hand them this photo.

I don’t do that. And I don’t predict someone’s chosen grocery

store item by showing them a bar code, or predict the celebri
they’re thinking of by showing a picture of that celebri “as a
baby.”

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 I’ve never walked up to a cashier with a
miniature dollar and asked them, “Do
you have change for a small bill?”

I’ve never asked someone if they

know the word I wrote on the back of a piece of paper and
when they say, “No,” I turn it around to show I wrote the word
NO.

I think in professional circumstances, for a very charming

performer, these pes of gags might come o as “pleasantly
corny.” But if you’re a normal human talking to someone in a social
situa on and you start doing pre-scripted gags, you will seem like
a psychopath.

And I try to keep gags out of my magic tricks because they take
away the spontanei of the moment. Casual magic is at its
strongest the less planned it feels. If you’re doing pre-planned
gags and “bits of business,” you’re sacri cing the most powerful
aspect of social magic for a cheap, unoriginal, impersonal,
unmemorable laugh.

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 With that said, it may come as odd to you that I’m wri ng you a
letter to tell you how much I like your new e ect given that it’s
a trick that relies on the usage of a 52-on-1 gag card for the
e ect.

Well, it’s because I’ve found a non-gag-centric approach on the

presenta on that has been going over really well. And I wanted to
tell you about how I’ve been using…

Okay, rst let me walk you through how this trick is intended to look and
then I’ll let you know how I’ve been using it which is signi cantly di erent.

52 Stunner consists of two cards. e rst is a 52-on-1 card in which the

Queen of Hearts is slightly pulled out of the spread of cards.

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 e second is also a 52-on-1 card, but it’s similar to John Kennedy’s Mind
Power Deck in that there is a bank of cards that repeats and you can sh to
gure out what card they’re thinking of.

e way 52 Stunner is intended to be performed is as a two-phase routine.

First, you force the Queen of Hearts on someone and the card is shu ed back
into the deck. en you remove a card and say how it would be a miracle if
their card is printed on the other side. You turn the card over to reveal all 52
cards are printed on the opposite side. Once the group is done pissing and
shitting their pants with laughter, you reveal that the trick actually did work
since the card they were thinking of, the Queen of Hearts, is removed slightly
from the spread.

en you o er to try something di erent. You tell them just to think of any
card they see on the 52-on-1 card, and then (a er a little bit of shing) you
reveal what it was.

e structure here is ne. But that rst moment where you show that the
Queen of Hearts is slightly removed from the spread on the 52-on-1 card gets
almost no reaction. So it’s not really worth retaining, in my opinion. And
when you don’t need to force a card for that phase, you realize you don’t need
to have a deck with you. You can just carry one card (apparently).

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 Normally, I’m not a huge fan of carrying around one or two playing cards,
because that feels even stranger to me than carrying around a whole deck of
playing cards. But in this case, this isn’t one “normal” playing card. It’s one
special card with a full deck printed on it. And I don’t really have a hard time
justifying why I have it, as you’ll read in the presentation that follows. is
presentation turns it into a one-phase trick (which I generally prefer). And the
gag aspect of the card is incorporated in a meta manner. is retains whatever
possible “humor” is to be found in this gag but in a much less thirsty way.

Here’s what it looks like…

We’re out somewhere and I’m in my wallet or my bag for some reason. I see
the card that’s in there and I say, “Oh, here’s something you’ll nd dumb. I
found this when I was visiting home and going through some of my old magic
stu I had when I was a kid.”

I pull out the card and set it on the table, face down.

“Name any card in a deck of cards.”

“ e Jack of Clubs,” you say.

“Okay. Now would you be amazed if the Jack of Clubs was on the other side of
this card?”

You agree that would be pretty amazing.

I turn the card over and search for the Jack of Clubs. “Yup… there it is.
Amazed?”

Yup, that’s dumb, you think.

“I remember I got this card when I was, like, eight years old. I thought it was
the funniest thing I’d ever seen. Oh my god, how people were going to laugh
and laugh when I showed them this hilarious gag. Girls would be lining up to
be my girlfriend because of my hilarious joke. I’d probably make a ton of

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 money betting people, ‘ ink of any card. I bet you $20 the card you’re
thinking of is on the other side of this card.’ I had such big plans for this. I
think I tried it out twice and people were like, ‘ at’s stupid.’ So it sat in a
drawer in my house for a few decades until I found it the other day. From your
response, it doesn’t seem like people’s senses of humor have quite caught up to
the cleverness of this card yet. Oh well.”

en—either directly a er this exchange, or a few minutes later—I pick up the

card and say, “Here, let’s try something. ink of a card you see here. Go with
a number card, because that will be easier.”

en, with a little shing, I can reveal your card.

at’s pretty much it. So the idea is simply to contextualize the card as what it
is: a stupid gag card. And then you’re using it separately as part of a trick.

At some point, you’re going to switch the “normal” 52-on-1 card for the
gimmicked one. But because this doesn’t happen during a trick, there’s no heat
on it. And no rush to do it. It can be as simple as sliding the card back in your
wallet and then sliding the other one out later. is isn’t the type of switch
you’re going to use a move or a gimmick to accomplish. You’re on your own
timetable. I usually just have the gimmicked card in my lap and, while I’m
talking or they’re talking or something else is happening, my hand goes below
the table edge and switches. Later on, when I’m going into the “mind reading”
portion a er they have mentally selected a card, I switch the cards back. I lean
in towards them, my hand (holding the card) goes behind the table edge, and
I switch the cards.

Again, there’s no one looking for a “move” at any of these times. And,
psychologically, it doesn’t even make sense that you’d be “switching” this card.
It’s a singular sort of object—a card with all the other cards printed on it—
switching it in some way is completely illogical from their perspective.

Also note that in the rst “phase” of this presentation, where you’re showing
them the “gag,” you are cementing the idea that this is a card with all the cards
on it. Otherwise, the gag wouldn’t be guaranteed to work. ey get to look at

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 this card and see their freely named card on it. So as unusual as the card
might be, there’s no reason to think it’s anything other than what they see it is.

A er they mentally select a card, they will be thinking of one of four playing
cards.

e 10 of ♥
e 4 of ♣
e 9 of ♠
e 3 of ♦

In my experience, the 3 of Diamonds is by far the most commonly named

one.

Here is how I sh for the card. Even if you don’t do this e ect, you may nd
this shing sequence useful in other tricks. It’s similar to the thought process
I’ve written about in the past when I wrote about Squared Anagrams.

Instead of breaking the shing down into steps, I’m going to give them all the
information at once and have them note where I’m “correct.”

So I have them hold out their hands with their palms facing toward me.

I ask them to think about their card and send that thought from their mind,
down their arms, and out the palm of their hands.

I touch my hands against theirs or just hold mine in front of theirs if we don’t
have a “touching hands” type of relationship.

As I “absorb” the energy I say, “Okay… I’m getting that it’s a red card….” And I
wave my hand or press against one of their hands as if that’s where I’m getting
the “red” feeling. I then tap or wave around their other hand and say, “And…

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 hmmm… it’s a low card.” e idea is that I’m picking up on two pieces of
information coming separately from their palms.

If they say, “Yes,” I know they’re thinking of the 3 of Diamonds and I can
continue from there.

If they say, “No,” then I know they’re thinking of the 9 of Spades. I can say,
“Okay, let’s try something di erent. And then use whatever other method I
want to apparently learn and reveal what card they’re thinking of.

If they say that one of the pieces of information was correct, but the other one
was wrong, I now know which card they’re thinking of as well. So I con rm
that information while I associate it again with a particular hand. For
example, I’ll say, “So it was red?” Tapping the le hand. “But it wasn’t a low
card?” Tapping the right hand. ey con rm this.

I then point to the hand where I got the “wrong information” and tell them to
put that down and we just focus on the other hand. ey then send the
thought down that hand again and I, of course, know what their card is.

e unspoken process going on here is that information is coming out

through both hands. But the information was unclear or inaccurate from one
hand, so we want to get that out of play. And when they focus on sending out
that information through the “accurate” hand, I know without a doubt what
the card was. I don’t actually say any of this. at’s just the implied action
behind this process.

Once I know the card, I may reveal it verbally or write it down and have them
say what they’re thinking. I don’t really have a set way of doing it.

is presentation has worked really well for me. Telling the story of getting
this card and thinking how it was such a funny thing when I was young and
dumb is relatable to people. Everyone had some stupid thought about
something when they were a kid. “When I get those sneakers, everyone’s
going to pick me rst in gym class.” at sort of thing. And transitioning into
using the card for a “thought of card” e ect is fairly straightforward. And

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 being able to do that type of trick with just two cards on you is certainly a
nice, minimalist option.

52 Stunner is $20 from Penguin Magic and well worth it.

✿✿✿

Dear Marc Kerstein,

Ayoooooo!!! What up, player?

You know, you’ve been a big help to me since the site began. You
built the Jerx App and have added to it and kept it updated for
years now. I obviously owe you for that.

But you’ve dropped the ball in some ways too. I know you’re busy
with Wikitest and Xeno and working with David Blaine and all of
that. And that’s great. Those are fun little projects to occupy your
me. But in the mean me, another project has been dying on the
vine for almost eight years.

You’ll remember back in 2015 when I wrote this…

For a couple years now when someone asks me what I do for a living,
and I really don't feel like getting into specifics, I've been saying, "I'm
working on an iphone app." And when they ask what the app does I

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say, "You can fart into your phone and it tells you what you had for
breakfast."

Can someone build this for me already or what?

I mean, I get that the technology isn't really there, but we could fake it
easily enough. All you would have to do is know what your friend had
for breakfast and punch it into the app at some point in the day without
him knowing. Then when he has a fart brewed up you tell him to fart
into the phone and the app acts like it's running some calculations:

beepbopboopbeepbeepbopboopbeepbo—DING!

Eggs Benedict

And the app would be called something like, "My Breakfart App: Test
Version 1.6." And you could personalize it with your name and stuff
and tell people you built the app yourself. And maybe you could
convince 1 out of 10 people that Apple had put some kind of sensor in
iphones so that they can be used to detect carbon dioxide or smoke in
the air. And you're just harnessing that sensor and using it to break
down the gas produced in a fart to its food components. You have
some dumb friends. They would believe that.

Oh, and the app records the sound of the fart. So you have this app
that's filled with all your friend's farts. And you can assign them as
ringtones. So when your friend calls you, you hear his ass like
pthhhflllbbbbbbbbb.

I think you know what I’m wondering, Marc… Where is

Breakfart??

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Wikitest is on like its 20 update, meanwhile Breakfart isn’t

even out of the gates. Where are your priori es? You might say,
“But Blaine used Wikitest in his special!” Okay, genius, but if he’d
used Breakfart he’d have a recording of Margot Robbie’s fart on
his phone. So maybe you should consider that the next me you
devote your me to collabora ng on some new app like…

ISO is Marc’s new app which he worked on with Noel Qualter. (Noel, you’ll
recall, is the person who recently released a trick where a card penetrated a
clear plastic sheet. en he got called out when it was revealed the trick
wouldn’t work for anyone lying on the oor under the magician.)

It’s no secret what the app does, so I’m free to explain it here. ISO allows you
to upload a previously taken photo onto a spectator’s camera roll, under the
guise of taking a picture with their phone.

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For example, let’s imagine you’re meeting up with two friends, Bob and Abby.

You and Bob arrive rst so you take a picture of Bob posing in a certain way
on your phone and get it set in the ISO app.

Later Abby shows up. You ask her to take a picture of you and Bob. “Bros for
life!” you say as the picture is snapped. “I’ll take one of you and Bob,” you say,
holding your hand out for Abby’s phone. Bob puts his arm around Abby and
you take their picture.

A look of confusion settles over your face as you zoom in on the pic you just
took. “What the…?”

Your head snaps up. “Bob,” you say, in a serious, level voice, “step away from
her.” Bob is confused. “Bob, get the fuck away from that thing!” you yell.

Bob scurries away. You set the phone down and slide it away from you. “What
are you?” you ask Abby, with a tone of disgust in your voice. “Don’t come near
me. Or my kids.”

Abby is confused. Your reaction comes out of nowhere. Also, you don’t have
kids. What was it about the photo that was so upsetting? She opens up her
camera and looks at the picture of her and Bob.

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 “Oh, great,” she says. “I guess I’m a vampire now.”

✿✿✿

at’s just an example of the kind of thing you can do with this app. It’s not
the best idea because then it becomes a trick about the picture, and that’s
probably not ideal. You really want the trick to take place in the real world and
the picture is just ancillary to the e ect.

Ultimately, the app is a utility that can be used for all types of e ects. You’ll
nd a few ideas within the app itself and you’ll likely come up with some of
your own. ere’s probably a Facebook group for this too.

e good thing about Marc’s apps is that he always keeps them up to date. If
history is a guide, you don’t have to worry about him abandoning this app and
leaving it to wither away. It seems like he actually likes working on the apps.
Other app developers treat their app like a kid they had a er a drunken one-
night stand with an Applebee’s hostess. ey seem angry when anyone is like,
“You gonna check in on that kid ever again?”

ey’re like, “Goddammit, what now? I didn’t ask for this!”

You can’t just put an app out into the world and support it for the rst couple
of months to get as many sales as possible. You have to raise that thing. And
Marc is a good app-daddy.

✿✿✿

Speaking of updates, a recent update to this app allows you to make composite
images in real time. What that means is you can swap out (or add) one
element of an image rather than swapping a complete picture for another
picture.

For example, as a pseudo-hypnosis demonstration, you could line up a few

items on the table in front of the spectator. Ask them to memorize the row of

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 objects while you take a picture of them and the items. Sweep the items to the
side and cover them with a napkin. en you go through some ritual or
process to cause them to forget one of those objects. When they rattle o the
list of objects you say, “You forgot the sugar packet.” ey say there was no
sugar packet. Of course, the picture says otherwise because you inserted the
sugar packet into the photo. (Also, have a sugar packet palmed and at it in
with the items when you move them to the side of the table.)

✿✿✿

I’m going to describe a performance of ISO that my friend did recently. For
the sake of this description, we’ll say his name is Ben. And the person he was
performing for was Jenny.

Ben was performing a Bill to Impossible Location e ect for Jenny at a cozy
restaurant/bar near where he lives, which is about 3 hours and another state
away from where I am.

e Bill (or whatever) to Impossible Location is one of the primary e ects that
ISO is marketed as being useful for. What I want you to notice in this
performance are some of the small ideas we came up with that I think make
the ISO app even stronger and more justi ed. I’ll annotate these ideas in bold
as we go along.

As they were enjoying some drinks at a booth near the bar, Ben asked Jenny if
she wanted to see a trick.

“I’m actually not going to do the trick myself. I’m just going to document it.
You’re going to do everything.”

One of the best reasons for using ISO for a Bill to Impossible Location
trick is that you don’t need to touch anything. Play that up. Saying you’re
just going to “document” the e ect highlights your role as a bystander, and
gives justi cation for taking pictures.

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 Ben asked if she had a dollar bill on her. She did. (If she hadn’t he would have
had her get change from the bartender.)

“Okay, let’s start,” he said. “First, take my picture.” Jenny opened up her
camera app and took Ben’s picture.

is is probably the best way to get the spectator’s phone into the
interaction. Just have them take a picture. Now their phone is in play and
you don’t have to justify why you’re using it later on. ere’s some talk in
the app instructions about having a non-working pen on you and trying to
write something down and then failing and then asking for their phone so
you can take a picture instead. Too much, too much, too much. First, it
could get them wondering what you were going to write down (and what
you’re now taking a picture of) and have them focused on the serial
number before you want them to be. Second, why would you ask for their

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 phone? ird, it just gives too much weight to that moment. See how it
ows here.

“Now I’ll take a picture of you,” Ben said and took her phone. “Hold up the
bill. Show me the ‘ONE’ side and give me a
☝
with your other hand.”

In the U.S., the backs of one-dollar bills are all identical. So if the bill
you’re using isn’t in a signi cantly di erent condition than the bill you’re
making reappear, you can use this extra added bit where they’re holding
the bill so long as the back of the bill is facing you.

“So we have me and you, and now let’s get a pic of George,” Ben said, and
gestured to the table for Jenny to place the bill down so he could get a picture

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of the Washington side of the bill. is is where the ISO app came into play
and the previously taken photo was downloaded to her camera roll.

“Okay, I’ve documented all the key players. I want you to pick up the bill and
tear it down the middle.”

Ben had her tear the bill into 8ths and took a picture of her while she did so.

Taking a series of pictures or videos helps better disguise the one fake
picture that gets loaded into their camera roll. And it gives you time to do
what you need to do. However, you don’t want to have their camera in your
hands too much, because you want it to be clear you didn’t have time to do
anything sketchy.

At this point, the phone was o and on the table. Ben reached into the pieces
and pulled one away (actually a nger-palmed corner from the soon-to-be-
found “restored” bill) and slid it to Jenny and told her to put it in her pocket

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 “for future documentation.” is is one moment where Ben did touch the bill,
but we gured this extra future “proof ” would be worth it.

He had her gather the other pieces and they went over and tossed them into
the re.

ey went and sat back in the booth.

“What now?” Jenny said.

“I’m not too sure, actually,” Ben said. “If it works as I hope, the bill should
come back. But it’s di erent every time.”

ey waited a couple minutes. Ben had her check her pockets and her wallet
and he checked his.

A er a couple more minutes he asked her to open her phone so he could look
at the pictures. Maybe that would give him some idea.

He looked at the picture of her with the bill then looked around the booth to
see if maybe it was in with the sugar packets or under a coaster or something.
en he swiped back to the picture of him.

Wait…

What is that?

In the background of the picture. Back near the bar and the cash register.
ere were some bills taped up on the wall, as some companies do to
commemorate their rst sale or other occasions like that.

He showed the picture to Jenny.

“What the fuck?” she said.

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 ey went over to the wall together. ere was a bill with a missing corner.

“ at can’t be. at has to be a coincidence. It’s gotta be a di erent bill.” Ben

said.

But the corner matched. And the serial number too.

Mind = fugged.

Now, I should say that Ben and I had a disagreement about how this should be
performed. And he ended up performing this twice in di erent ways for two
di erent people.

Ben thought the bill shouldn’t be in the picture of him. In other words, the bill
is destroyed and it reappears on the wall. And if you look back at the rst
picture, it’s not there. To do this version, Ben just had the bartender (who he
knows—this is his neighborhood place) stick the bill on the wall when he saw
them go burn the pieces.

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I agree that this makes more logical sense. e bill isn’t there, and then it
reappears there.

But I thought it was more interesting if the bill is in the picture.

Ben’s concern was that if the bill is in the rst picture, then clearly it was there
all along, so it wasn’t the same bill that was borrowed and burned. I think that
is also a logical concern. But I thought that photo of the bill on the table—the
whole bill, matching serial number, not missing a corner, that you never
touched—sitting on their phone, might be enough to disrupt this “logical”
conclusion. And it turned out, in this instance at least, this did get the more
powerful reaction.

In this version, it feels like time loops around on itself. Like when you see Jack
Nicholson in the old photo at the end of e Shining.

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 e idea here is that the “impossible location” to which the bill goes is not just
the wall, but to the wall at an earlier point in time.

How this ends up playing might be spectator/performer/situation dependent,

but for Jenny, it was a true mind-blower.

You don’t have to have this element to the presentation. It can be more of a
traditional bill-to-impossible location e ect, of course.

And you don’t need to have a local bar with bills on the wall and a replace to
perform this. You just need a photo with the bill in the background
somewhere and a way to get rid of the pieces ( ushing always works).

I should note that I like combining the torn corner ruse with the ISO app.
at way the end isn’t, “And look, the serial number on the photo matches this
bill.” Instead, the corner matching is your proof. And the serial number
becomes almost this extra incontrovertible proof that you didn’t even intend
for. (You were just taking pics to “document” the moment.) In fact, the torn
corner is almost a red herring. When they see this bill, that you never
touched, has reappeared, they may hit on the idea that the corner came from a
di erent bill. And we’ll use their own suspicion against them. When they’re
thinking the bill from earlier isn’t the same bill that appeared on the wall that’s
when the serial number comes in to really mess with their heads.

And nally, you need a QR code to link to the spectator’s phone. Ben’s idea,
which I now use too, is to print it out and tape it to a coin. It’s easy to get that
coin in your lap or palm it and get it into the camera’s view at some point. I
have one QR code coin in my car and one in my house,, so I can always get
into an ISO e ect without having to worry I don’t have it on me.

ISO is available in the app store for $60.

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