Water Wizardry: A collection of tricks in which water is the chief agent

by Arthur Ainslie

You can begin this trick by asking someone if they have ever tried to wash a playing card with water; if so, have they noticed the effect. You ask for a pack of cards and begin the experiment by holding the pack in the left hand, with the fingers on the lower side and the thumb on the other.

There is no harm in saying that the experiment is most successful with a five-spot card, and you put, say, the five of clubs on the bottom of the pack and therefore hold the pack with that card facing the audience. Then, this is what you apparently do.

Dip a finger into some water and rub on the pip at the lower corner nearest to you. To dry the card you take your handkerchief from your pocket and dab the corner. The audience see that you have apparently washed away one of the pips.

Turn the cards over in your hand, so that the blank corner is now at the top and repeat the experiment with the pip which is now in the position occupied by the first. This action reduces the number of pips on the card to three, arranged diagonally across the face of the card.

Repeat the experiment, but this time wash away the two corner pips at once, leaving only one pip in the centre of the card. Then wash away this pip and you have a blank card, which you hand out for examination.

Fig. 6

To begin with, the request for the loan of a pack of cards is not quite what it seems. You arrange with a kind friend in the audience to "find" a pack of cards when you ask for one, and that person has no difficulty in "finding" the pack which you have prepared for the trick and placed in some convenient hiding-place in the house.

The disappearance of the first pip is easily managed: You dip a finger into the water, shake it, and rub the corner with a dry finger. Then shake the pack as though you were trying to dry the card; this action enables you to turn the pack, in a natural way, with its face towards the floor and thus the audience do not see that the pip is still on the card. Then you take your handkerchief from your pocket, and in so doing secretly take out a five of clubs with one spot missing behind the handkerchief. It is not a difficult matter, under cover of the handkerchief and while pretending to dab the corner of the card, to slip the prepared card on the face of the pack. Having done that, show your hands and the handkerchief to your audience, to let them see that you have not merely slipped the pip off the card, but have apparently dissolved it in water and removed all trace of it.

Directly after you have shown this card on the bottom of the pack turn the pack over in the hand, so that the blank corner is now at the top. Now if you bend the third and little fingers of the left hand slightly they will conceal the pip at that corner, but before you bend the fingers let the audience see the card. Now you have to exchange that card for another with only three pips on it, the pips being diagonally across the card.