The Twelve Card Problem by Scott Baird

Powerful mental magic you can perform with a borrowed deck of cards.

The Twelve Card Problem: and Similar Mentally-Selected Card Divinations is an amazing eBook written by Scott Baird (creator of The Hermit magic magazine). It is filled with mental magic with playing cards that is mostly impromptu and can be done with any deck of cards. No expert sleight of hand skills required.

The core idea is that a deck of playing cards is fairly shuffled. You then have a few members of the audience select any 12 cards at random without showing you. Typically, three people will select four cards each.

From their pile, each audience member thinks of one card. The cards are then gathered and shuffled again.

With just one question, you’re able to divine every selection.

And that’s just one of ten different handlings, methods, and variations for this concept featured in The Twelve Card Problem.

This special project was inspired by “Three Hours”, a routine from Mnemonica by Simon Aronson and Ramon Riobóo, as well as a problem posed by Michal Kociolek in More Plots and Methods.

There is something for every type of magician, including “Three Hours or Less”, which is one of the best variations of “Three Hours” ever made.

If you perform mentalism or just want to add some mental magic to your card magic set, you must download a copy of The Twelve Card Problem today.