[16] A description of this trick will be found in The Magician for March, 1914.
[17] If preferred the ball instead of being taken openly from the table, may be produced from the wand after the fashion familiar in the Cup and Ball trick, but on the whole I think this is best omitted.
THE BEWILDERING BLOCKS
The blocks which give its title to this trick are inch-square wooden cubes, three in number, as illustrated in Fig. 32. Each is coloured black on two of its opposite sides; these in use being made top and bottom. The four remaining sides are in the case of one block red, of another white, and of a third blue. The only other item of apparatus known to the spectators is a square cardboard tube, as depicted in Fig. 33. This is about five inches long, and of such dimensions laterally as to let either block slide by its own weight easily through it, but no more. All four items may be freely submitted to inspection, for in this case appearances are not deceitful. Both the blocks and the tube are no more and no less than they seem to be.
In exhibiting the trick, the tube is placed upright on the table, and the three blocks are dropped into it one after another, the company being requested to note particularly the order in which they are inserted, which we will suppose to be in the first instance blue, then white, and lastly red, as shown without the tube in Fig. 32. It is clear that, once inserted, they cannot by any natural means alter their relative positions, but, strange to say, when they are again uncovered, the red block just inserted at the top is found to have passed to the bottom, the other two moving up accordingly.
This surprising effect is produced by the secret introduction into the tube of a fourth block of which the spectators know nothing. This, which we will call the “trick” block, is, like the rest, coloured black at the top and bottom; but of the remaining four sides two, contiguous to each other, are red, and the other two blue.
Fig. 32 Fig. 33 Fig. 34
When the tube is handed back to the performer after inspection, before placing it on the table he secretly introduces the trick block into its lower end, privately noting against which sides of the tube the two red faces will lie, and taking care in placing the tube upon the table that the angle formed by these two sides shall be to the front. The other three blocks are then, in accordance with the patter, dropped in from above, in the order shown in Fig. 32, resting, unknown to the spectators, on top of the trick block. When the performer lifts off the tube, which he does grasping it diagonally between thumb and finger at about an inch from the top, he does so with gentle pressure, thereby holding back the uppermost block within the tube, and exposing the two others with the trick block at the bottom, as indicated by Fig. 34.
I gave a description of this trick in the Magician of February, 1914. The patter for its exhibition was based on a popular nursery legend, and as this mode of presentation won general approval from the juveniles I cannot do better than repeat it practically as there given. The needful working instructions will be found interspersed with the patter.