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jUST A SQUAREOFPAPER (Created and Described by T. Nelson Downs or Charles Jordan) Effect: Showing a piece of dark opaque tissue paper five or six inches square, and hands utterly empty, you cut it in half with a pair of scissors. Placing the oblong halves together, you cut them into square halves again. Opening what are apparently the pieces, the paper is found whole as at first, and is again shown both sides and hands empty An added effect is to paste an initialed stamp or sticker to one corner of paper before beginning, and without substitution, the same stamp is found adhering to that corner when the R paper is unfolded. Self contained and easy.
ner 7 slightly, allow them to slip under this single thickness. Then, unfolding the paper, you have a piece of the same size as when you started, which is really a hollow bag with the cut pieces inside and, wonder of wonders, the stamp still sticks diagonally to the corner where it was originally attached. With the right hand, tear off the single thickness at the corner where the stamp is located and pass it for inspection, the left hand crumpling the rest of the bag and destroying it. You will like this.
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(RK Notes: As I mentioned last issue, the first time I read this was in the Downs notebook. It was impossible to reconstruct. The accompanying illustration is copied from a pencil drawing in the Jordan notebook, and it makes everything quite clear. I have inserted a few clarifying words into the description, and also numbered the steps in the construction phase to make it a bit less confusing. Downs wrote as if he had to get out of a buruing building, and so the descriptions are quite terse. They are, however, for the most part fairly clear. The differe nces
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secret: Whatever size paper you use, cut out a piece in the same proportions as the accompanying drawing, 3 whic h is scaled for a two-inch square. l.Apply paste from E to B to F, and G to H. 2. Fold on line E-G, so A lies on B, and Con D, then T paste and fold closing all open edges. 3. Now fold on line I-J, so K lies on MandL on N. 4. Now fold on line 0-P, so Q lies on R. 5. Apply paste from U toT to S, and from \V to V, also a tiny daub at 1, 2, and 3. 6. Fold along V-S, X lying on TandY over the small folded square, paste closing all except the thick corner. Press flat and you're ready. Have the sticker or stamp initialed and stick it in the position indicated by Z, keeping this side up. Show the paper on both sides, and the hands empty. With the scissors, cut on line 4-5, being careful not to nip the small inner square. Place the. half cut off underneath, and cut on line 6-7. Fan the four pieces, and in closing the fan secretly fold all but the thick corner piece and, raising cor-
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between this description and the one which appears in the Jordan notebook amount to no more than an insignificant word or two.)
••• Only the last item, "Just a Square of Paper," is germane to this controversy between Downs and Jordan. It's a damned remarkable trick which Jordan advertised for sale, as I wrote last month, in the October 1921 issue of The Sphinx. Has it ever occurred to anyone that perhaps Downs, Finley and some other guys got together and, just as a joke, decided to create a fictional genius. Then they found this chicken farmer named Charles Jordan to use as the front man .... Stranger things have happened.
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M A G I C • September 1992
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