Thief of Tarts
Reading time: 10 minutes
✨ Overview (TL;DR)
Date: 21 July 2026
A card is thought of, then found by an unlikely helper: the Knave of Hearts, the light-fingered rascal of nursery-rhyme fame, who is made to spell out his own name to find the chosen card. By the time the old rhyme is told, the whole court of Hearts has assembled on the table, stolen tarts and all!
- Effect Type: Location & Production
- Difficulty: ★★★☆☆ (Intermediate)
- Duration: 3–5 minutes
- Setup Time: Modest
- Reset Time: Less than a minute
- Props: Pack of playing cards
- Key Moves & Principles: Key card, Automatic Placement
Introduction
“Thief of Tarts” is another experiment using the Automatic Placement principle based on my previous efforts, “Gambler’s Lament” (see Easy Does It #12) and “I Alone Know”. Both are available on this blog to learn for free:
While experimenting with the mathematical placement, it occurred to me that it was possible to maintain a small stack when using the principle. This enables you to dress up the location effect by producing several cards—in this case, the Ten, Jack, Queen, and King of Hearts, along with the spectator’s selection.
Effect
A card is selected “by association” using a secret number, then lost in the deck by the spectator.
You remove one card from the deck: the Jack of Hearts. The spectator tells you the Jack isn’t her thought-of card. You reply, “I know, but the Jack of Hearts will help me find your card. Did you know his original name was the Knave of Hearts?”
You spell out “K-N-A-V-E-O-F-H-E-A-R-T-S”, dealing one card onto the table for each letter. You turn the final card of the count—the one landing on the “S”—face up to reveal the mentally selected card.
With a flourish, you cut to the Queen of Hearts. “Ah, the Queen of Hearts,” you say. “This is her story. She baked some delicious tarts, one hot summer’s day…” You begin to recite the famous rhyme:
“The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
All on a summer’s day;
The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,
And took them clean away.”
As you mention the Knave stealing the Queen’s tarts, you push over the face-up Jack on the table to reveal the Ten of Hearts—the stolen tarts—hidden beneath the thief all along!
Finally, you perform a one-handed cut, producing the King of Hearts from the centre of the deck as you finish reciting the children’s poem:
“The King of Hearts called for the tarts,
And beat the Knave full sore.
The Knave of Hearts brought back the tarts,
And vowed he’d steal no more.”
Requirements & Preparation
All you need to perform “Thief of Tarts” is a standard deck of playing cards. To prepare for the trick, place the Ten of Hearts on top, followed by the Jack, Queen and King of the same suit (KH-QH-JH-10H). I remember the phrase “King of the castle” to remind me that the King of Hearts should be the top card of the deck—he’s the King of the castle (the deck).
Method & Presentation
Find a friendly-looking spectator. Perform an overhand jog shuffle, retaining your four-card stack on top, as you say, “There’s a story about a Queen, some tarts and a thief. I need your help to tell it.” Follow this with your favourite false cut.
Explain to a spectator that you want her to pick “a secret number between one and ten, inclusive”. Once she has a number in mind, ask her to deal that many cards into a pile on the table while your back is turned. To demonstrate, deal seven cards into a pile, then drop the rest on top. Pick up the combined deck and say, “Make sure you square up the cards before I turn around, so I can’t see how many you transferred from the top to the bottom.”
Situation Check
The demonstration has reversed the order of the stack and transferred it to the bottom of the deck. The four bottom cards, read from the bottom up, are the King, Queen, Jack and Ten of Hearts (KH-QH-JH-10H).
Turn away and let your participant deal any number of cards (from one to ten) onto the table, drop the talon on top, then square up.
Turn back to face your audience. Pick up the deck and perform your favourite false cut.
Tell your helper that you’re going to have her select a card “by association” under “test conditions”. Instruct your participant to remember the card that falls on her secret number. Take the top card, show its face to your spectator, and say “One” before placing it on the table. Display the next card in the same way as you count “Two”. Take the next card and count “Three”. Continue until you’ve dealt a total of ten cards into a single pile on the table.
🔥 Hot Tip
Make sure you do this slowly and at an even pace so the spectator has time to remember her card, no matter which number it lands on.
Drop the remaining cards onto the ten-card pile.
🔥 Hot Tip
Instead of just dropping the cards onto the ten-card pile, you can perform Bobby Bernard’s False Swing Cut, which helps better disguise the use of a key card.
Pick up the combined deck and demonstrate a standard cut, asking your participant to do the same when your back is turned.
Turn away and instruct her to cut the cards as many times as she wishes.
Run through the cards until you reach the Jack of Hearts, cutting the card so it becomes the face card of the deck, with the Ten of Hearts directly behind it. As you square up, obtain a little-finger break below these two cards. Lift both in right-hand end grip and drop them onto the table as a single unit; if they land flat and parallel to the tabletop, the double won’t split.
Your spectator will most likely assume that you think the Jack is their chosen card. Say, “The look on your face tells me that your card is not the Jack of Hearts; I already knew that. The Jack is my assistant; he’s going to help me find your card. Did you know his original name was the Knave of Hearts?”
Slowly spell out “K-N-A-V-E-O-F-H-E-A-R-T-S”, dealing one card onto the table for each letter. You turn the final card of the count—the one landing on the “S”—face up to reveal the mentally selected card. Place this card in front of your spectator.
Drop the cards remaining in your hand on top of the pile on the table.
Situation Check
The Ten of Hearts is hidden underneath the face-up Jack of Hearts. The King and Queen of Hearts are the bottom two cards of the deck.
With a flourish, double cut the Queen of Hearts from the bottom to the top of the deck. I like to do this by getting a break above the Queen (the bottom card of the deck) using a Pinky Pulldown. Next, I perform a Swing Cut, maintaining the break. Finally, I regrip the cards from above, transferring the break to my right thumb, and perform a Swivel Cut. This is a graceful and elegant way to produce a single card.
Turn the top card over. “Ah, the Queen of Hearts,” you say. “This is her story. She baked some delicious tarts one hot summer’s day…” Recite the rhyme in response to the Queen’s appearance:
“The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
All on a summer’s day;
The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,
And took them clean away.”
As you mention the Knave stealing the Queen’s tarts, push over the face-up Jack on the table to reveal the Ten of Hearts below, which visually represents the Queen’s stolen tarts. “The scoundrel,” you exclaim. “He did steal those tarts!”
Bring the routine to a fitting conclusion by cutting to the King as you recite the poem’s second verse. Produce him on the first line of the verse, so the flourish and the words land together:
“The King of Hearts called for the tarts,
And beat the Knave full sore.
The Knave of Hearts brought back the tarts,
And vowed he’d steal no more.”
You can use the same “Swing and Swivel” approach described above. However, I prefer a modified one-handed Charlier Cut, as follows: as the usual cutting action is completed, contact the face of the King with the fingertips of your left second and third fingers. Push the card out of the deck by straightening these two fingers. With enough practice, you can learn to make the card flip face up and land neatly on top of the face-down deck (by curling your left fingers once the card is clear of the deck). This provides a suitably flashy way to end the routine.
Cleanup & Reset
Place the cards in KH-QH-JH-10H order, then drop them on top of the deck (King on top).
Performance Tips & Additional Ideas
At the end of the routine, you’re only one card away from a Royal Flush in Hearts. I seriously considered producing the Ace of Hearts after the King, but ultimately felt it added little to the routine and distracted from the nursery-rhyme narrative. However, you may feel differently. If so, I encourage you to explore this idea (see the trick “Wedding in Wonderland” in Tricks, Tricks & More Tricks #4: Soulmate Sorcery for some inspiration).
If you’re planning to perform this in a more formal setting, it might be a good idea to print the poem on a small card and place it in a decorative envelope. You can then hide the four-card stack beneath the envelope, allowing your spectator to shuffle the cards thoroughly before the trick begins. To secretly load the four cards onto the deck, temporarily place the envelope on the deck to free your hand as you remove something from your pocket (or reposition something on the table, such as the tuck box). You can then invite a spectator to recite the poem by reading from the card.
Background & Credits
While Edward Marlo named and popularised the Automatic Placement in the mid-1950s, the underlying mathematical concept has a long history. Early modern applications include Van Osdol’s “Number Trick” in Rufus Steele’s 50 Tricks You Can Do (1946) and several tricks in Eddie Joseph’s Eddie’s Dumbfounders with Cards (1950). The technique’s foundational mathematics, rooted in the Transposed Cards Principle, dates back to Professor Hoffmann’s Modern Magic (1876) and ultimately to Pablo Minguet’s 1733 publication, Engaños a ojos vistas.
The idea of maintaining a small stack throughout the placement process—so the performer can produce a run of named cards as well as locate the selection—is, as far as I’m aware, my own wrinkle. However, I doubt I’m the first magician to explore this idea, so I’d be grateful to be pointed to a precedent.
Final Thoughts
The nursery-rhyme theme makes this cute card trick suitable for adults and children alike. The revelation that the stolen tarts were hidden under the thief the whole time is particularly amusing and foreshadows the appearance of the King and Queen of Hearts.
“Thief of Tarts” also closes my trilogy of tricks based on the Automatic Placement. “Gambler’s Lament”, “I Alone Know”, and “Thief of Tarts” are, mechanically, the same location trick: a thought-of card, a justified count, and a thirteen-letter name spelt. But one is Appalachian folk magic, one is a New Orleans murder mystery, and one is a fairy-tale theft—and no audience would ever guess they share the same method. That is the whole argument for taking presentation seriously. The mathematics is identical; only the story changes, and the story is what most people will engage with and remember.
If you’ve enjoyed this trilogy, I’ve written more about how a single principle can wear three faces in this companion blog post:
Read Folk Song, True Crime, or Nursery Rhyme? 👈
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