The Card Puzzle is a gem of a creation by Spanish magician, Woody Aragon, and produced by the Essential Magic Collection. The Card Puzzle uses two decks, one a special Bicycle rider backed deck and another stack of quartered jumbo Bicycle rider backed cards made out of top quality thick paper.
The performer first engages in some open shuffling with the “regular” deck and then explains how the jumbo card were cut into quarters and shows the variety of different quartered card. The spectator picks a card from the standard size playing cards and then shuffles the jumbo quartered cards. The selected card is not looked at, but it is put aside and remains in view the entire time. Then the performer lays out several face-down piles of jumbo cards, in pairs, and has the spectator choose two piles (or 4 cards). The performer demonstrates with two of the piles that they could possibly make up a card, but chances are that the performer’s pile has a bunch of mismatched quarters. Then the 4 jumbo cards that are selected by the performer are turned over to reveal 4 pieces of the one card, thus constructing one full card. When the chosen card is turned over, it amazingly matches the jumbo pieces. It is a really great moment of astonishment. Spectators love this trick and it has nice twist to it.
With your purchase you get an excellently EMC quality produced DVD taught and demonstrated by Woody Aragon. Aragon performs the trick to Luis De La Matos in a studio setting and his performance style, personality and presentation are infectious. Although Aragon’s first language if Spanish, the entire DVD is taught in English and is 100% clear and understandable despite his heavy accent. Quite honestly, he could probably mime the instruction and it would be understood because his ability to communicate with his persona and sense of humor is amazing. Aragon effectively teaches this easy to learn and perform trick and a mathematical principal sometimes used in magic.
The promotional video, will show what the cards look like and read in conjunction with this review, you will have a very good idea of what the trick will look like to the spectators. While the ad copy says that the spectator “selects four of them [the quartered jumbo cards] under the fairest of conditions”, I do not fully agree. The spectator may actually have the “fairest” choice some of the time, but not always. Nonetheless, they will feel like they had the “fairest” of choices 100% of the time.
Neither the jumbo cards nor the standard size deck can be handed out for inspection and the trick cannot be repeated to the same audience. Notwithstanding these limitations, there is no heat on the decks at the conclusion of the trick. This trick is suitable for a close-up session, casual settings and maybe even for a one-off trick on a walk around set if you have enough table space (which is required).
At the time of the writing of this review The Card Puzzle retails for $35, which is a fair price for a great trick by a superb magician. There is a set-up that takes about 5 seconds to get ready and the same amount of time to reset.
I think that any purchaser of this trick will be supremely pleased with their purchase.
This excellent product, along with others from Woody Aragon is available at your favorite Murphy’s Magic retailer.