Miraskill

Miraskill is a classic card effect and principle developed and marketed in 1935 by the Canadian magician Stewart James (1908–1996). Its description was first published in the September 1936 issue of The Jinx, a magic periodical published and edited by Ted Annemann (1907–1942). A reprint appeared in the Encyclopedia of Card Tricks (1937). More contemporary descriptions of Miraskill can be be found in the second volume of The James File and The essential Stewart James.

Variations

Over the decades since its inception, many variations of Miraskill have been developed. The Conjuring Archive has a list of over one hundred of them. Not very well known is that the first variation is actually due to Stewart James himself and was called The Candy King, where the audience consists of kids and the deck of cards is replaced by a bag with candies in red and white wrappers; a description can be found in the same issue of The Jinx and follows that of Miraskill. In 1948, Martin Gardner (1914–2010), who was himself an established magician and corresponded with Stewart James, described an extended version of Miraskill in the mathematical journal Scripta Mathematica. Although he does not mention Miraskill as the name of the trick, he does give due credit at the end of his description and mentions "This clever trick was invented ten or eleven years ago by Stewart James, a magician living in Courtright, Ontario, Canada." Gardner subsequently included this description of Miraskill in his first book on magic for the general public, Mathematics, Magic and Mystery. The whole of Chapter 47, called "Miraschool", in The essential Stewart James is devoted to variations on the Miraskill theme; these appeared in the period 1950–1993 and are due to several magicians. We mention "Magnetic Miraskill" by Allan Slaight (1931–2021), and "Miraskull" by Max Maven (1950–2022). A more recent variation of Miraskill, that originated from a class on mathematics and magic tricks at Harvard University, can be found in the book Magical Mathematics.

Combinatorial analysis

In the discussion of Miraskill, Stewart James makes the following comment, "This trick practically works itself. It is based on the actuality that, if a full deck of 52 cards be so separated after a genuine mixing, the red and black piles will always contain an equal number of cards. There Is no way of telling EXACTLY HOW MANY will be in each pile, but they positively will be the same." [emphasis in original].

Although, as SJ mentioned, one can not predict how many pair of cards will be in each pile, one can work out how likely certain outcomes and combinations are. This analysis was done only recently. It was shown that, for a [properly randomized] standard deck with 26 black and 26 red cards, the most probable outcome is six pairs of black cards, followed closely in probability by the outcome of seven or five pairs of black cards. One can be 99.9% certain that the outcome will lie in the range from three to ten pairs of black cards (end points included). The probability that all cards end up in the discard pile, leaving both the black and red pile empty, is roughly one in ten million.

References

• Culpepper, Joe. (2007). "Miraskill (1935)", Stewart James Exhibition. Magicana

Discussion threads

• Mckay, Joe. (2016). "Stewart James". GeniiForum
• Waterman (2021). "Thoughts on Miraskill". The Magicians Forum