Jinx Navigator Podcast — Episode 12: Issue #12

Issue #12 is an all-Annemann affair — editorial, notebook column, a stacked-deck solitaire hustle, and a stage four-aces routine built for maximum fairness. He's also bottle-feeding a puppy, which explains a few things about the issue's more notebook-jottings character.

Effects Covered

[0:48] Editorial — Theodore Annemann Annemann blames August heat and an eight-day-old bird dog for a lighter-than-usual issue, then pivots to a genuinely frustrated observation about magicians who ignore published effects until someone else does something brilliant with them — at which point the whole community suddenly discovers it's great. He closes with a word about the late dealer Sam Bailey and goes to feed his puppy.

[2:22] Thoughts in General — Theodore Annemann Annemann's occasional miscellany column covers a card puzzle involving 25 cards and five poker hands, a betting proposition hidden in a fanned shuffled deck, an improved handling of the Seven Keys to Baldpate built with Robert Thrasher, a shrinking dollar bill stunt with Roosevelt-era patter, a canary-in-a-lightbulb variation using water, and a pointed note to anyone still using cop-and-robber patter in 1935. He also digs into the history of the vanishing bird cage and cards from the pockets, and closes with a practical angle for secretly loading an object into a helper's pocket using a card trick as cover. Jay notes that put-pocketing, it turns out, is not a new idea.

[5:03] The Solitaire King — Theodore Annemann Annemann discovered that the Eight Kings stack, applied to the solitaire game Canfield, produces a win nearly every time — and built a presentation around it for card parties. After a few card tricks, you offer to demonstrate how you can always win at solitaire, false shuffle the stacked deck, lay out the game, and it plays itself to a win with one decision point in the middle. Annemann is modest about it: he didn't invent either piece, he just noticed they fit together.

[6:06] Four Aces on the Stage — Theodore Annemann A classic close-up effect gets a full platform treatment. Four volunteers each find an ace themselves, cover it with three cards, and one packet is chosen at random — the rest go back into the deck, which gets shuffled, rubber-banded, and tossed into the audience for someone to search. No aces anywhere. The chosen volunteer spreads their cards: all four aces. The method uses a short-card deck and three extra aces, with the key moves happening precisely when every eye in the room is on the volunteers or the audience member searching the deck. Jay — confirmed non-card-guy — says this one sounds genuinely fun to both perform and watch.

[7:37] Outro Links and a preview of Issue #13 — featuring Arthur Lloyd Johnson's Cards and Newspaper.