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Crazy Eights

Learn a new presentation for an old packet trick.

A few years ago, I wrote an in-depth article sharing three different ways to present the same card trick (see “Twisting the Aces Three Ways”). It remains my most popular post on the blog, with well over four thousand views to date. And while I did what the title promised, I didn’t share the full details with you, only including a brief overview of each script. So, I thought I’d return to each of the three different presentations for Vernon’s classic packet trick and carefully write each one up so you can learn them for yourself.

Learn Traditional Twist and Crazy Eights

In June, in my post on Duty Aces—a favourite three-trick card set of mine—I published “Traditional Twist”, the first approach to “Twisting the Aces” that I discussed in the aforementioned article. Some of you may have missed this, so here are the full details, along with the link to the trick tutorial:

Learn Traditional Twist

A relaxed, table-based handling of Dai Vernon’s classic packet trick, “Twisting the Aces”. The four Aces mysteriously turn face up, one at a time. For the grand finale, the notoriously stubborn Ace of Spades turns over while completely isolated inside an examined envelope. Features an engaging historical presentation about “Old Frizzle”—the stiff, nineteenth-century British “duty Ace” that magicians loved to hate.

  • Effect Type: Twisting/Reversal Effect
  • Difficulty: ★★★★☆ (Intermediate)
  • Duration: 5–7 minutes
  • Setup Time: Minimal
  • Reset Time: N/A
  • Props: Four Aces and a black envelope
  • Key Moves & Principles: Block Turnover, Elmsley Count and Jordan Count
  • Inspired By: Dai Vernon, Juan Tamariz, Josep Vidal, Gerry Griffin and Darwin Ortiz

Learn Traditional Twist for FREE 👈

Last month, I also published the second trick in the series, “Pasteboard Puppies”, and today I’m sharing the third and final effect in the trilogy. It’s called “Crazy Eights”, and, like its puppy-powered predecessor, it delivers a whimsical magical effect, but without the cute anthropomorphisation, which I appreciate isn’t to everyone’s taste—especially if you’re a cat person (by that, I mean a person who prefers cats over dogs, not a half-human, half-cat hybrid being). 😻

Learn Crazy Eights

A variation of Dai Vernon’s classic “Twisting the Aces” routine using the Eights instead of the Aces.

You introduce the unpredictable “Crazy Eights” and demonstrate their odd abilities by rubbing the Eight of Clubs until it changes into the Eight of Diamonds. Twisting and shaking the packet causes the other Eights to turn face up and transform, while the Eight of Hearts repeatedly teleports from the bottom to the top of the packet. However, the stubborn Eight of Diamonds refuses to turn over, finally flipping when pushed through the packet.

To finish, twisting too many times accidentally morphs the Eight of Clubs, Hearts and Spades into duplicates of the Eight of Diamonds, before a final twist restores the cards to their proper form.

  • Effect Type: Twisting/Reversal Effect
  • Difficulty: ★★★★☆ (Intermediate)
  • Duration: 3–5 minutes
  • Setup Time: Minimal
  • Reset Time: N/A
  • Props: Playing cards
  • Key Moves & Principles: Block Turnover, the Glide, Elmsley Count, Jordan Count and Braue Addition

Learn Crazy Eights for FREE 👈

Why Are the Eights Crazy?

“Crazy Eights” borrows its name from the children’s matching card game. Crazy Eights is a classic shedding game; the aim is to be the first to get rid of all of the cards in your hand. It seems to have appeared in America at some point in the 1930s under the plainer name of Eights (according to games scholar and historian David Parlett, it doesn’t turn up in any English-language rulebook before about 1940).1

The story goes that children played it with the cards left over from a game of Euchre. Euchre uses only the Nines upwards, so strip those out of a 52-card deck, and you’re left with a 28-card pack running from the Twos to the Eights, which perhaps explains why the Eights were chosen as wild cards. The “Crazy” part arrived in the 1940s, borrowed from Section 8, the US military designation for discharging soldiers deemed mentally unfit for service.

How to play

Playing cards with friends and family offers a perfect opportunity to perform a few card tricks. Why not perform “Crazy Eights”, then enjoy a few rounds of the game of the same name? Deal seven cards each if there are two of you, and five each if there are three or more. (However, with six or more at the table, it’s best to shuffle two decks together, dealing five cards to each player.) The rest of the cards go face down as a stock, and you turn the top one face up beside it to start the discard pile. If that card happens to be an Eight, bury it in the stock and turn up another.2

Play moves clockwise, beginning with the player to the dealer’s left. On your turn, put one card face up on the discard pile; it has to match the card underneath by rank or suit: for example, on the Nine of Hearts, you could play any Nine or any other Heart. The Eights are wild and can be played on any card; whoever plays one names the suit the next player has to follow—the only thing that beats a named suit is another Eight. If you can’t follow, or would rather not (you might be saving an Eight for a better moment), you draw from the stock until you can play or until the stock runs dry. Note: Some households have you draw a single card and pass the turn instead, so agree on which rule is being used before you start to avoid arguments!3

The hand ends when someone plays their last card or when the game blocks and nobody can follow. The winner scores the cards left in everyone else’s hands: fifty for each Eight, ten for each court card and face value for the rest, counting an Ace as one. If the game blocks, the player holding the lowest total scores the difference between their total and each opponent’s. In the four-hand partnership game, both partners have to go out before the hand ends. Play a single hand, or set a target of a hundred points and let the lowest score win.

Negative Space Optical Illusions

As well as the card game, the presentation also relies on the hidden “invisible eight” formed by the negative space on the Eight of Diamonds (take a look at the image below). This gives you a similar hook to the one Vernon used in the original routine: that the Ace of Spades, being such a conspicuous card, is the most difficult to manipulate. In the same way, you can suggest that the Eight of Diamonds is more difficult to control than the other Eights because of this intriguing optical illusion.

Illusions of this kind come in two varieties. In a bistable image—the famous rabbit-duck illusion, say, or the visual effect that runs through the interlocking prints of M. C. Escher (1898–1972) and the sculpture and graphic work of Shigeo Fukuda (1932–2009)—two readings compete for the same space, and your eye flips between them, unable to settle on either. A hidden-shape illusion is a little more subtle: a second image sits in the leftover negative space, and once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. The Eight of Diamonds belongs to the second category, and so do two of the most famous examples in graphic design, both of which you’ve almost certainly looked at without noticing.

The first is the FedEx logo (see photo below).

The second is the packaging for the Swiss chocolate bar Toblerone, which was first made in Bern in 1908. The city’s heraldic emblem is a bear, which is your one and only clue.

My personal favourite, however, is the minimalist logo for the Guild of Food Writers.

So, here are the answers, in case any of them are still hiding from you. There is an arrow in the negative space between the E and the x of the FedEx logo (suggesting forward motion and a nod to the nature of the business). There is a bear standing upright in the snow on the side of the Matterhorn on the Toblerone packaging. And the spoon in the Guild of Food Writers logo is the white gap inside the nib of a fountain pen.

All of which is a decent analogy for how an audience experiences a magic trick. They don’t simply see what you show them. The magic is what they assemble in their minds from the gaps you leave behind—the “shape” the sleights and subtleties make in the empty space.

The “invisible eight” is a fun illusion, and the surprise it elicits makes it a memorable hook for “Crazy Eights”.

Why Use the Eights Instead of Aces?

Beyond the compelling optical illusion hook already discussed, using the Eights instead of Aces brings several benefits.

Firstly, the Eights can be easily read upside down, leading to clearer, more aesthetically pleasing magic. While the Eights aren’t symmetrical like the four Fours (the four of a kind used in “Pasteboard Puppies”), an upside-down Eight is not as noticeable or jarring as an upside-down Ace, so you don’t have to worry about the orientation of the cards as you handle them. Maybe you don’t ever worry about the orientation of your cards during performance, but I think you should, especially when it’s a routine like “Twisting the Aces”, in which it is critical that your audience remembers which card has already turned over. Anything that gets in the way of that muddles the effect and potentially confuses your audience.

Secondly, using a different four of a kind has the added benefit of giving the Aces a rest, meaning it isn’t always the same four cards being worn out and getting dirty.

Finally, this trick also puts you in a good position to perform a fun variation of my trick “The Jaybird Jump” called “Dead Man’s Daley”; I’ve included brief instructions for it in the write-up for “Crazy Eights”, although I will publish a separate write-up of this trick at some point.

The TWIST Test

Having multiple options at your disposal also means you can decide which version of the trick to perform in the moment, based on your particular audience and situation. This enables you to take a more flexible approach to your performances—what’s often called jazz magic. There are five things worth weighing before you do, and, appropriately enough, they spell out the word TWIST:

  • Time
  • Who
  • Intent
  • Setting
  • Tone

The first four are handed directly to you by the performance situation, and your job is simply to read them accurately. The last is the only real decision in the list, and the one most magicians never get to make, because with a single presentation there’s nothing to choose (unless you’re deciding between similar but different tricks; if you are, the TWIST test still works).

Note: The same five factors are worth applying in reverse when you’re deciding what to develop in the first place. If all three of your presentations want a table, a quiet room and seven minutes, then you haven’t really got three options at all.

Let’s look at each factor, one by one:

Time

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • How long have I got?
  • Do I need to lengthen or shorten my performance?

It’s a good idea to develop one presentation that can be performed at a leisurely pace, with more dialogue, and another that can be performed at speed. “Traditional Twist” runs 5–7 minutes because the history included in the script needs room to breathe; “Crazy Eights” does the job in 3–5 minutes.

“Pasteboard Puppies”, on the other hand, involves more audience interaction, so, like “Traditional Twist”, it works better if you have a little more time to play with. It is possible to present it in a more passive way—in what I think of as “watch me mode”—but you’re trading away the participation that makes the presentation unique. Think carefully before making such compromises.

Time is often the most limiting factor when performing magic, so it’s usually wise to consider it first, even in less formal performance situations.

Who

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Who am I performing for?
  • How old are my spectators?
  • Is this a new audience, or have I performed for them before?
  • Will the references and symbolism in my script mean anything to these people?

Having a keen understanding of who you’re performing for is, arguably, the most critical factor when selecting material. If you’re performing for a mixed audience of children and adults, then “Pasteboard Puppies” is the obvious choice. However, if I were having a coffee with an academic member of staff at the university where I work, then I might decide to perform “Traditional Twist” instead, where the historical hook will meet appreciative ears; I may even decide to perform the entire Duty Aces card set, time permitting.

If I’m performing for a group that includes someone who has already seen “Pasteboard Puppies”, for example, I have the option to perform “Crazy Eights” instead. This is something that happens quite often to amateur magicians, and it’s one of the main benefits of having different presentations for the same trick. While the effect is essentially the same, most people won’t recognise it as such. Laypeople categorise magic tricks by props or presentation, not by structure—they remember the puppies and the envelope, not the general plot or mechanics of the routine. (Magicians, on the other hand, tend to do the reverse.)

Intent

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What am I actually here to do?
  • What’s the gig? A casual performance for a friend, a paid family show, a magic club audition, a social media reel, or ten minutes at a dinner table?
  • What do I want out of it, as opposed to what the audience wants out of it?
  • What happens if the trick doesn’t land?

Bear in mind that your intent may well clash with what your audience wants or needs. For example, at a magic club meeting, the room is usually full of adults. This audience might steer you towards “Traditional Twist”. However, everyone is probably already familiar with Vernon’s famous packet trick, so I’d pick “Pasteboard Puppies” instead because it demonstrates how you can take a fresh approach to a familiar effect.

Paid work introduces an element of reputational risk. Therefore, when someone is paying you, reach for the trick with the most flight time behind it, not the one you’re most excited about. Save the new or experimental stuff for a situation more forgiving of failure. Don’t get me wrong: performing to find out whether a presentation works is a perfectly legitimate intent, but don’t confuse it with the intent to deliver a professional and polished show.

Setting

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Am I performing seated or standing?
  • Is the performance environment a noisy one?
  • What have I got with me—lots of props or only a deck?
  • Am I performing live or to a camera lens?

“Traditional Twist” is best performed at a table, and it needs an envelope for maximum effect. “Crazy Eights” uses only four cards and works standing, so it’s the best choice for a cocktail party where you’re on your feet with nothing but a deck of cards in your pocket. “Crazy Eights” also holds up in a room with music or a lot of ambient noise, because its simpler script asks less of an audience. The patter for “Pasteboard Puppies” needs to be heard to work: you can’t invite someone to join in if they can’t make out what you’re asking them to do. Reserve that one for a small group in a quiet corner, and those playful pups come into their own.

Performing to a camera is an entirely different beast. A reel has little room for historical exposition, has to work even when the sound is muted and needs a compelling hook in the first three seconds. So “Crazy Eights” is the logical winner: its optical illusion gives you a visual hook that works well on a screen (it has already circulated as a viral video, with no card trick attached).

Tone

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • How do I want my audience to feel?
  • What feeling does this presentation actually produce?
  • Does that feeling suit the moment?

Tone is all about atmosphere and the well-trodden idea that people forget what you said and remember how you made them feel. If you want fun, playfulness and whimsy, it’s “Pasteboard Puppies”. If you want something darker and more bizarre, lean into the story of Richard Harding from Duty Aces, or follow “Crazy Eights” with “Dead Man’s Daley”. Changing the tone of one trick very often changes the tone of the tricks on either side of it as well: this is the only one of the five factors whose answer reaches beyond the individual effect itself to shape the whole routine, set, act or show—and arguably it should.

Three Ways to Perform Twisting the Aces

I hope you enjoy studying, learning, practising and performing one or more of these tricks.

Yours Magically,

Marty

Footnotes

  1. David Parlett, The Oxford Guide to Card Games (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), page 122. ↩
  2. David Parlett, “Crazy Eights”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed 12 September 2026, https://www.britannica.com/topic/crazy-eights. ↩
  3. John McLeod, “Crazy Eights”, Pagat, last updated 1 September 2026, https://www.pagat.com/eights/crazy8s.html. ↩
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