Triumph

Triumph is a reversing-card routine developed by Dai Vernon that was first published in Stars of Magic, Series 2, N° 1 (1946) in which a card is selected and returned to the pack, whereupon half the deck is turned face up and shuffled into the face-down half. The deck then magically rights itself, except for the selected card.

Dai developed the Triumph Shuffle to accomplish this effect, which is a type of Strip-out Shuffle.

Variations

• ACER, David & SANDERS, Richard - Time Boards, published in Random Acts of Magic (Acer, 2004). The magician explains that he doesn't wear a watch because his deck tells time. He turns half the deck face up and shuffles it into the face-down half, cuts variously to show that the face-up cards are randomly mixed with the face-down cards, then "winds" the deck, somehow creating a sound like a watch-winder. He then spreads the pack on the table, showing that all the cards are now face down except for three face-up cards near the middle - e.g., a 5, a 2 and a 7. Any spectator is directed to look at his or her watch and state the time, which turns out to be 5:27.
• DUGGAL, Shiv - Reorient Express, a precursor to Paul Harris's "Unshuffling Rebecca" wherein the face-up half visibly rights itself as it's pushed through the face-down half. Created in 1978 but first published in Genii 2009 July.
• JORDAN, Charles - Reversed Cards. Instruction sheet published between 1916 and 1920, reprinted in Encyclopedia of Card Tricks, page 393 (1937) and in Charles Jordan's Best Card Tricks, page 66, compiled by Karl Fulves in 1992.
• KIMLAT, Kostya - Culligula: the Hardcore Triumph, a version of Triumph which can allow the spectator to do the shuffle. See DVD The Roadrunner Cull (2005) or Lecture Collection (2006)
• KORT, Milt - A Kortial Triumph, published in Milton Kort Lecture Notes (1963)
• MARLO, Ed - Marlo's Triumph, page 46 in Marlo in Spades (1947). A Triumph without a Strip-out Shuffle.
• STUDEBAKER, Peter - I.R.D., a version of Triumph in which the deck is referred to as a computer and the rubber band removed from around it called an Information Retrieval Device. A card is chosen and returned to the pack, whereupon said pack is “randomized,” first by overhand shuffling, then by riffle shuffling half the deck face up into the other, face-down half. The I.R.D. (rubber band) is wrapped around the pack, and after a few seconds, it pops off the deck holding only one card - the selection! Moreover, on its way through, it apparently righted the rest of the deck, as all the cards are now facing the same way. First introduced on the lecture DVD Classic Studebaker.

Related Notes

• Using double faced cards, ascribed to Stewart Judah in The Lost Notebooks of John Northern Hilliard.
• Vernon's Magic Mix, entry 21 in Jacob Daley's Notebooks.
• Roll-Over Aces