Password Central

Wait. Not so fast, please. Even though Paul Harris is one of the great free spirits in magic, we aren't. Company policy requires that we not expose neophytes or the casually curious to the dangerous, personality-altering Secrets of Magic. This is another way of saying we don't want to receive all that Exposure Hate Mail that Mac King receives for his work on the WGM specials. Hence, as they used to say in the old days, we'd like you to demonstrate a smidgen of knowledge of the classics in card magic before accessing these two modern card tricks. (Just to show we aren't completely black-hearted, you get two card tricks for the price of one password.) Let's consider that mother of all card trick books, Expert at the Card Table. It was the favorite text of the Professor, Dai Vernon, and is also highly regarded by our two most recently reviewed authors, Michael Skinner and Harry Riser. Darwin Ortiz wrote a spectacular annotated version of it in 1991. Like many great texts, the book is more frequently referred to by its author's name than by its title, and that is your task.

To access Paul Harris's stunning card tricks from the February issue, click on either "The Anything Deck" or "The Perfectionist." Click on "Thoughts on 'The Anything Deck'" from the March issue for even more ideas on Paul's so-good-it's-scary routine. When prompted for a Userid, enter the word bible. When prompted for a Password, enter the last name of the author of Expert at the Card Table. This isn't a trick question -- use the name as it appears on the book. (Historians speculate that the name is a pseudonym, and scholars as eminent as Martin Gardner have tried to track down the man behind the name. It is frequently guessed that the author was a card cheat named Andrews who murdered his girlfriend and then committed suicide. But no one knows for sure.) As always, both Userid and Password must be entered completely in lower case.

If you've never heard of this 1902 classic, click What If I Don't Know the Password?

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