Disgusting Foods

Let magician Ryan Oakes show you how to trick a friend into picking chopped liver for dinner with this fun card trick.

Six blank note cards
Pens or markers

SOMETIMES WE USE MATERIALS THAT REQUIRE ADULT SUPERVISION…LIKE SCISSORS SO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE FRIENDS AND FAMILY AROUND WHENEVER YOU DO MAGIC TRICKS!!

1. To prepare, take out six blank note cards. On the first five, draw a picture of a different tasty food on each one (Pizza, burgers, etc.). On the last card, draw a picture of something disgusting (Worms, earwax, etc.). If you don’t want to draw the pictures, you can use pictures from a magazine or online.
2. To set up the trick, place the five tasty foods on top of the pile face up in your hand with the disgusting card face down on the bottom.
3. Tell your audience that you have a number of cards with different foods on them. Don’t tell them exactly how many you have, but indicate that there are different foods on the cards. Show them your cards by peeling each one up from the pile for them to see and then placing them face down on the bottom. Now all five ‘tasty’ cards are face down on the bottom of the pile with the ‘disgusting’ one face down on top of them, and no one will know the difference.
4. Next, show the audience how you’ll choose what to eat. Move the top card (the ‘disgusting’ one) to the bottom of the pile and say “I love it.” Then take the next one and place it face down on the table and say “I like it.” Continue in that fashion until you only have one card left in your hand. It should be one of your tasty foods if done correctly.
5. Place the ‘tasty’ card you ended up face down on top of the others on the table and then have a volunteer from your audience repeat the process to choose what they’ll have to eat.
6. Before you let your volunteer choose, you need to pretend to shuffle the cards, when in actuality, you’ll simply be reversing the order. To do that, place your thumb and your fingers on the sides of the cards and use the thumb of your other hand to peel the cards off the top of the pile one at a time into your other hand. Do this with all six cards and hand the pile to your volunteer.
7. Tell them to follow the same “Love it, like it” method of separating cards that you used until they are left with only one card. If done correctly, they will be left with the ‘disgusting’ card.
8. Before you let them turn it over, show them what they could have had by turning over all of the ‘tasty’ cards on the table. Then, let them turn over their card to reveal the disgusting food that they have chosen to eat! If you remember the exact process, this mathematical trick will always work.