Word of the Day
Simulacrum (n., sim-you-LAY-crumb)
An image of something, or a vague, unsatisfying impression. Less uncanny valley, more RealPlayer stream.
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Link of the Day
RIP Ricky Jay
Ricky Jay passed away over the weekend, aged 72. He was renowned as perhaps the best sleight-of-hand magician alive, as well as a gifted actor and historian. Watch any footage of Jay's magic and you'll see a man who is not just a master magician nor just a showman but also someone with a voracious appetite for knowledge and history. In this clip, he describes a Japanese movie that runs parallel to the trick he's performing:
Many people online pointed to the 1993 New Yorker profile of Jay by Mark Singer as the best introduction to the legend. They're right, it's a terrific piece, but it is looooong. Read our excerpt below, then read it over a free evening:
“The magical aspect of Ricky is very strong,” Diaconis says. “It’s one thing to see someone who is very skillful with cards and quite another to witness an effect and have just no idea what happens. With Ricky, it’s very hard to isolate technique from performance. I can sense when a sleight has happened and how it happened, but I still don’t see it. I just feel it intellectually. When Ricky is doing one of his poetical pieces, he’s working in his own unique venue. He’s mixing disparate things—quirky scholarship, iconoclasm, technique, a good story—into some soup that works. Because he picks good, strong tricks and makes them come to life, in the end there’s this basic simplicity about what he does. Before Ricky came along, there had been comedy magicians, but never ones who really fooled people. And you can see the consequence—there are a dozen people now working in night clubs doing Ricky Jay acts. But none of them are Ricky Jay.”
...
“I’m always saying there’s no correlation between gambling and magic,” Jay said as he shuffle-cut the cards. “But this is a routine of actual gamblers’ techniques within the context of a theatrical magic presentation.”
He noticed me watching him shuffling, and asked softly, with deadpan sincerity, “Does that look fair?”
When I said it looked fair, he dealt two hands of five-card draw and told me to lay down my cards. Two pair. Then he laid down his. A straight.
“Was that fair?” he said. “I don’t think so. Let’s discuss the reason why that wasn’t fair. Even though I shuffled openly and honestly, I didn’t let you cut the cards. So let’s do it again, and this time I’ll let you cut the cards.”
He shuffled again, I cut the cards, he dealt, and this time I had three tens.
“Ready to turn them over?”
My three-of-a-kind compared unfavorably with his diamond flush.
“Is that fair?” he said again. “I don’t think so. Let’s talk about why that might not be fair. Even though I shuffled the cards”—he was now reshuffling the deck—“and you cut the cards, you saw me pick up the cards after you cut them, and maybe you think there was some way for me to nullify the cut by sleight of hand. So this time I’ll shuffle the cards and you shuffle the cards.”
Jay shuffled the deck, I riffle-shuffled the deck and handed it back to him, and he said, “And I’ll deal six hands of poker—one for myself and five for you. I’ll let you choose any one of the five. And I’ll beat you.”
He dealt six hands. Instead of revealing only one of my five hands, I turned them all face up.
“Oh, oh,” he said. “I see you want to turn them all over. I only intended for you to pick one—but, well, no, that’s all right.”
The best of my five hands was two pair.
Jay said, “Now, did that seem fair?”
I said yes.
Jay said, “I don’t think so,” and showed me his cards—four kings.
I rested my elbows on the table and massaged my forehead.
“Now, why might that be unfair?” he continued. “I’ll tell you why. Because, even though you shuffled, I dealt the cards. That time, I also shuffled the cards. Now, this time you shuffle the cards and you deal the cards. And you pick the number of players. And you designate any hand for me and any hand for you.”
After shuffling, I dealt four hands, arranged as the points of a square. I chose a hand for myself and selected one for him. My cards added up to nothing—king-high nothing.
“Is that fair?” Jay said, picking up his cards, waiting a beat, and returning them to the table, one by one—the coup de grâce. “I. Don’t. Think. So.” One, two, three, four aces.
You can read the rest of the profile at The New Yorker, see a couple more clips of Jay's tricks from Jason Kottke's page, or go watch the 2012 documentary on him on Prime Video.
MagicRicky JayRIPIllusions, MichaelPolymathsPick a card, any card?