Memory Tricks

These tricks ask you to remember something: a card, a short list, or, in the bigger ones, the order of a whole deck. It sounds like a lot, but the systems here are made for ordinary memories like mine. A silly sentence and a made-up word are often all you need.

The most famous example is the old “eight kings” stack in Chased. You learn one rhyme for the values and the word CHaSeD for the suits, arrange the deck to match, and from then on a single peek at one card tells you the next. Once it’s in your head, it stays there, and it powers dozens of tricks.

Practice the memory part away from the cards. Say the rhyme on your walk, in the shower, while waiting for the kettle. When you can rattle it off without thinking, then pick up the deck. Trying to remember and perform at the same time is where things fall apart.

Also worth a look: What’s on Your Mind?, where you remember four cards and pull the thought-of one from your pocket, Triple Threat, and The Impossible Location, which mixes memory with a touch of mentalism. If you enjoy these, the Mental Tricks and Math Tricks pages are close cousins.