Miraskill

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

Effect

A good description of the effect [and a condensed version of the 1936 original by SJ] can be be found in the second volume of The James File:

Be sure there is no Joker in your deck, and secretly hide four black cards in a convenient pocket. Ask someone to shuffle the cards thoroughly, and also to state whether they wish to have the red or black cards. If they say red, for your secret prediction write: "You will have four more cards then I." If they say black, you write: "I will have four more cards than you."

We will assume the volunteer chose the red cards. Instruct him to remove two cards at a time from the deck and turn them face up while still holding them in his hand. He is told that if they are both red, they go face up to start a pile before him; if they are both black, they go face up before you; if there is one of each colour, they go in a discard pile. He deals through the deck in this manner, distributing the cards as directed.

When he is finished, casually pick up the discard pile as if to get it out of the way as you tell him to count the cards in his red pile, and then to count the cards in your black pile. While he is thus engaged, it is a simple matter to palm the four blacks cards from your pocket and add them to the top of the face-down discard group in your hand.

He opens and reads the prediction. You are correct. State that, while he assembles all the cards and shuffles the full pack again, you will make another prediction. Although it is for effect, ask him what colour he prefers this time, then write "We will both have the same number of cards." The volunteer goes through the identical procedure a second time and, once more, your prediction proves to be correct.

Virtually the same description can be be found in 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.

Discussion

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."

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 are. This analysis was done only recently by Tuenter. He showed that, for a standard deck with 26 black and 26 red cards, the three most likely outcomes are five, six, or seven pairs of black cards, and that 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

Online discussion threads

• Mckay, Joe. (2016). "Stewart James". GeniiForum
• Waterman (2021). "Thoughts on Miraskill". The Magicians Forum
• http://www.geniimagazine.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=39257