Intentionally sticking cards together

[sjrwheeler]

Hello there,

i'm currently working on trying to solve a very specific problem, I'd appreciate any help or advice anyone has.

While I'm sure there are better ways to achieve the result I'm looking for, I'm doing this for purely my own enjoyment, however:

I need to find a way so that when a playing card is selected from a deck the cards on either side of it stick together.

my first thought:
rough and smooth, but interweave each pair of roughed cards. That way they wont stick together until the odd card between them is removed. I haven't set this up but i'm pretty sure it would work, however i'm ideally hoping to find a solution which would allow a spectator to shuffle the cards, obviously as soon as other odd cards are introduced between pairs, they will start sticking together too.

my second thought:
the same method as above, however with long and short cards, this way the pack could potentially be riffle shuffled by a spectator without separating the pairs.
However i would like more freedom with the shuffle.

Let me know if you want me to explain those ideas in more detail.

Ideally i'd like a way of ensuring that only those 2 cards would stick together, they wouldn't separate (or would be unlikely to separate in a shuffle) and other cards can't stick together during the shuffle.
I'd like the selection process to be out of my hands if possible.


My true end game is to have a card selected from a deck while my back is turned and to be able to detect which card is missing but allowing the spectator to shuffle, I've used "The Devil Deck" or "A Mystic Discovery" from Tarbell in the past, and so I'm aware of a method to achieve this.


In essence my idea is to use a stacked deck for the selection, which can then be shuffled yet i can still find the card that was originally next to the selected card.

please let me know if you have any thoughts.

thanks,

Sam

[Brad Henderson]

(somewhat less than) Half roughed cards on alternate ends of the pack Would probably put a one way mark on the cards so you know on which end to apply pressure depending on which card is selected

[digit_al]

Would a bit of magician's wax do what you want? Transferred from your finger to the card?

[sjrwheeler]

Hello,

thanks for your replies,

Digit:
i think wax would be a good way to go.
i was looking at a Marlo book the other day, and he suggested the use of saliva, however with an overhand shuffle (as he advises) i was unable to find the stuck cards. so i couldn't make that work. has anyone had any luck with this method?
however wax would probably work.

Brad:
sorry brad, i'm not entirely sure i know what you mean?

thanks,

Sam