🔢 The 21 Card Trick

The 21 Card Trick for kids: the whole trick

You deal twenty-one cards into three columns, three times over. Your friend only ever tells you which column their card is in, never which card. Then you spell a magic word and land on it. It's a level 1 apprentice trick for ages 6 to 11 (grades 1st–5th), takes 10 minutes to learn, and needs one thing you already have. Flick, the shop's rabbit, reads every step aloud with a picture, so a child can follow it alone.

The secret

Putting their column back in the middle each time squeezes their card towards the centre. After three deals it is always the eleventh card down, and ABRACADABRA has eleven letters.

What you need

• A deck of cards

How to do it

1. Count twenty-one cards off the deck and put the rest away.
2. Deal them face up into three columns, one card at a time, left to right.
3. Ask your friend to pick a card in their head and say which column it's in.
4. Gather the columns up with theirs in the middle of the other two.
5. Deal and gather exactly the same way two more times, three deals in all.
6. Now spell A-B-R-A-C-A-D-A-B-R-A, dealing one card for every letter.
7. The card you land on for the last A is theirs. Turn it over slowly.

Magic words to say

“Your card is shy. Every time I deal, it creeps a little closer to the middle, where it feels safe. There's only one word that can coax it out. A-B-R-A-C-A-D-A-B-R-A!”

Pro tips

• Say the letters loudly and slowly. Eleven letters is a long drum roll, and the room gets quieter with every one.
• Let your friend check their column carefully each time: "double-check, magicians need good helpers."
• You can deal face down instead, which looks even fairer, but face up lets the audience follow along.

If something goes wrong

If they point at the wrong column, the spell lands on a stranger's card. Smile, say "that's not it, is it?", and ask them to start again with a fresh card. Nobody minds twice.

Safety notes

• Needs a helper.
• Sit at a table.
• No fire, no flames and nothing sharp in a child's hand anywhere in the Magic Shop. Nothing ever goes in a mouth, a nose or an ear.

What kind of trick is this?

🔮 Prediction. You knew all along, or you read their mind. Almost every trick ever invented is one of eight kinds, and knowing which one you're watching is how magicians work out how a new trick is done.

The skill it teaches: Patter: what you say. A trick is a story, not a thing that happens. Perform it and it counts towards the Card Keeper badge.

Questions about the 21 card trick

What's the best card trick for kids?

The Spelling Bee card trick. You spell out every card from Ace to King, moving one card for each letter, and the right card turns up every single time. It looks impossible and it works entirely by itself.

How do you do a card trick?

Most beginner card tricks use a secret "key card" that you know, or a special order the cards are in before you start. Your friend picks a card, the secret quietly leads you to it, and then you reveal it in the most dramatic way you can think of.

More from The Card Cabinet

• 🃏 The Key Card Trick (level 1, 5 minutes)
• 🅰️ The Four Aces Trick (level 1, 5 minutes)
• 🐝 The Spelling Card Trick (level 2, 15 minutes)
• 🙃 The Upside-Down Card (level 2, 10 minutes)
• All 80 magic tricks for kids, the easy ones by age, and how to put on a magic show