Spirited Pasteboards by Leo Boudreau

Spirited Pasteboards by Leo Boudreau  

Max Maven writes in the introduction to Spirited Pasteboards:

There is an ancient Chinese curse which goes, "May you live in interesting times." Bearing this in mind, it is not without some playful malice that I inform you that you are now holding a tome which is extremely interesting.

As with the author's previous book, Psimatrika, the work in this text is primarily based upon stacking arrangements which generate information via binary codes. The principle is by no means new, but in its seventy-year history as a conjuring method it has remained little-known and woefully under-explored.

Mr. Boudreau clearly wishes to remedy that, with a vengeance.

The material in this volume is almost exclusively done with playing cards. However, don't be misled into thinking that this is simply another book of card tricks. Rather, in this book playing cards are used as a frame-of-reference for the author's adventurous speculations. Once the methodological foundations are understood, a far wider range of applications will present themselves. (For that matter, purely as card tricks there are some hot items to be found here.)

At first, much of this material may strike the reader as being infuriatingly complex and confusing. I would urge perseverance; the rewards are well worth the effort. After absorbing the ideas in this book, you may never look at a pack of cards in quite the same way again.

Many of the effects Leo describes are based on what mathematicians call a 'De Bruijn cycle' and coding specialists call a 'Gray code' or 'bracelet code'. It has unique properties which are very useful for the mentalist.

first edition, 1987, Arlington, VA; 234 pages.

Table of Contents

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