Out of This World
Someone who has never held a deck calls red or black for card after card, face down, and gets every one right. Paul Curry published it in 1942 and magicians have been calling it the best card trick ever made for eighty years.
Call them yourself
A deck sorted before anybody sat down, four markers taken off the top and the bottom, and forty-eight cards left to deal face down. Play it from either chair. As the spectator you place every card and find out how you did. As the magician you watch them call, and the only thing you have to get right is the moment you swap the markers over.
Also called the out of the world card trick, with the this dropped, or just the red and black card trick. Paul Curry named it in 1942 and the name has been slipping ever since.
Why it works
Because while the deck is feeding cards of one color, both lines are equally right. The spectator is making a free choice that cannot be wrong, because every card available to them at that moment is the same color.
You sort the deck beforehand — reds together, blacks together, and the four markers come off the top and the bottom at the table. For the first half, every card coming off it is red, so it does not matter which line receives it. Halfway through, you change the markers over. Now the second half arrives, all black, into lines whose labels have swapped hands.
The part almost nobody explains
Work it through and you hit something odd. The two markers must be different colors — that is the whole premise. But both lines receive the same color at the same time. So while the first half runs red, only the line under the red marker can be right. The other line is quietly collecting reds under a black marker.
One line comes out perfect and the other comes out exactly backwards. Not partly wrong, not randomly wrong — inverted. Right cards, right order, labels the wrong way round.
| First half (all red) | Second half (all black) | Result | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Line A | red under RED ✓ | black under BLACK ✓ | perfect |
| Line B | red under BLACK ✗ | black under RED ✗ | exactly inverted |
And that is the point, because exactly inverted is a gift. A line that is backwards in a completely predictable way can be put right by reversing it, and reversing a line of cards is indistinguishable from gathering one up. So the correction hides inside a movement you were going to make anyway.
Every published handling of this trick resolves the same problem, and they differ only in how. Curry's original, Harry Lorayne's impromptu version, and the handlings sold today all arrive at the same place by different roads: one line is fixed while the spectator is busy with the other.
How to do Out of This World
- Sort the deck before you sit down. Every red together, every black together. That is the whole preparation, it takes a minute, and it is the only thing they must not see. You cannot sort a deck into colors in front of anybody, so it arrives ready.
- Take two cards off the top and two off the bottom. A sorted
deck has one color on top and the other underneath, so that hands you two reds
and two blacks without you appearing to look for anything.
Never fan through hunting for a red and a black. That is how you get caught, and it shows them a deck in color order at the same time. Top and bottom looks like nothing.
All four come out now, not later. By the halfway point every red has been dealt, so the deck in your hand is all black and there is no red left to pull. - Put one red and one black down as the markers. Well apart.
These are the labels.
The other two go somewhere you can reach without looking — your lap, a pocket, or under the card box. You need them in the middle of the trick. - Let them call every card. They choose the line every time, and they cannot be wrong, so let them take as long as they like, change their minds, and talk themselves in and out of it. Every hesitation improves the ending and costs you nothing at all.
- Put down the other two markers at the halfway point. The ones
you kept back. The black goes on the line that started red, and the red on the line
that started black, so each line now carries two and the new card is the label from
here on. "Let me put a second card on each of these, in case you've been favoring one
side." Say it casually.
This is the only timed moment in the trick. It has to land exactly as the deck crosses from red into black — after card twenty-four, so count as they deal. Early and late cost the same, and neither can be repaired. - Let them finish.
- Gather the lines, and reverse the second one as you do. Ask them to gather their own line while you gather the other. That is the cover, and it is enough, because they are looking at their hands.
- Turn the lines over one group at a time. Four reveals, not one.
Spend them.
Show each group as a group — squared up, or spread as a fan, and say what it is: "every one of these is red." What you must not do is lay all forty-eight out in a line in the order they went down. That turns the table into a chart of the deck you started with, and somebody will read it.
The one thing that goes wrong
Changing the markers at the wrong moment. Swap too early or too late and both lines come out part-wrong instead of one cleanly inverted.
Nothing reverses that. Know which card you are waiting for, and if you want to feel it go wrong, the demo above lets you swap whenever you like.
Making it play
- Do not claim it is their intuition. Say you have no idea whether it will work. Then the ending is something you are both discovering.
- Never touch a card once they start calling. The strength here is that you visibly do nothing. The marker change is the one exception and it should look like fussiness rather than method.
- Let them shuffle nothing. This is the trade for the ending. You set the deck, so keep the handling brief and invite no examination you cannot survive. Impromptu versions exist and buy that back at the cost of harder work.
Questions people ask
How does the Out of This World card trick work?
The reds and the blacks are already separated before you begin. The spectator deals into two lines, and nothing they decide changes which color arrives next, because the order was fixed before they touched a card.
You swap the two marker cards once, at the moment the colors change. One line then reads correctly and the other reads exactly backwards, so you turn that one round.
Do you need to set up the deck first for Out of This World?
Yes. Sort it so the reds are together and the blacks are together. About a minute, and it has to be done before you sit down — you cannot sort a deck into colors in front of anybody.
The four marker cards come out at the table, two off the top and two off the bottom. A sorted deck has one color at each end, so that gives you two of each without appearing to search. Take all four then: by the halfway point the reds are all dealt and there is no red left to pull.
It costs you two things: you can only perform it when you have set the deck, and you cannot hand the cards out afterwards. The ending is worth both.
Who invented Out of This World?
Paul Curry, in 1942. Magicians have called it the best card trick ever made for eighty years, and it is the reason his name is still in print. Curry died in 1986.
Why does one line always come out backwards?
The two markers are different colors. They have to be — that is the premise.
So when the colors change at the halfway point, the marker that was telling the truth starts lying. One line was collecting the color it names all along. The other was collecting the opposite. Reversing it is not a repair. It is the method.
Is Out of This World self-working?
Yes, once the deck is set. There is no sleight of hand and no move to fumble.
You do exactly one thing: swap two cards at one moment. The only way to fail is to swap them at the wrong moment, and this page lets you try that and watch what happens.
More
The 21 card trick needs no setup at all, and the Si Stebbins stack is the opposite trade: set the deck once and the arithmetic does everything afterwards.
The method is documented in several places, including Wikipedia, and the published handlings differ from one another, which is itself worth knowing, and is why this page explains the principle rather than one person's sequence of moves.
Harrison Alley
Hobbyist · Writes Sleightless
A hobbyist, not a professional. I write up the self-working end of card magic, because it is the door I would point a beginner at, and every trainer here is played through and checked before it ships.