h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Trick that Fooled Churchill - A87842451
Author: Icy North - U225620

Greetings, Peer Reviewers

A companion entry to the recent one featuring Einstein...

Comments, corrections and suggestions welcome

Icy

No suggestions, very clear.

I actually ran across this card trick on Youtube a couple of days ago. The 'magician' was claiming to be psychic - and that he could teach you how. I figured it was a stacked deck. The Rhine Institute would go crazy about a hit rate like that.

The odds against it are one to two-to-the-power-of-48.

In other words, if you tried it 281,474,976,710,656 times, you'd maybe achieve the feat only once.

Unless you were really psychic, I guess. Although why anybody would want to use their psychic powers to sort cards out escapes me...outside of Vegas of Atlantic City, anyway...

This trick obviously depends on being very careful how the cards are stacked.

I once managed to spoil an amateur magician's card trick, which depended on the way in which the cards were shuffled by spilling them all over the table!

brilliant, Icy

Although I am now worried that you have been banned from the Magician's Circle for the rest of your mortal life.



GB

Even though these tricks have been freely available in books, and more recently on the internet, people still try to sell them.

Your Guide Entry has just been picked from Peer Review by one of our Scouts, and is now heading off into the Editorial Process, which ends with publication in the Edited Guide. We've moved this Review Conversation out of Peer Review and to the entry itself.

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I just realised I hadn't got around to adding links. Let me know if you'd like suggestions.

Congratulations! Another step towards reaching 100
If you've links you'd like to add, then yes, definitely make suggestions. I can make a note to whoever sub-edits that there are links to be added (and I expect that the subeditor will read this comments thread anyway).

<BB<

Next, you saw a lady in half...

although if you need a contortionist volunteer, my #2 daughter for a special rate

PR thread readand I can add my own links thanks, it'll give me something to do

GB