Four Jacks are burglars who break into a tall building. You push one into the bottom of the deck, one a third of the way up, one two thirds up, and leave the last on the roof. You cut the deck, and all four Jacks are back together on top: they got away.
✨ Level 2: Conjurer
⏱ 10 minutes to learn
🃏 Cards
🎒 Ages 6+
A bit of setting up, or ten to twenty minutes of practice.
What you need
The secret
Get ready, before anybody is watching
Put the four Jacks on top with any three cards behind them, and square the deck.
The words a magician says are called patter. Good patter tells a small story, asks the audience to help, and then goes completely quiet for one second at the magic moment. Every trick in this shop has magic words to say that you can copy or change.
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.
Four Jacks are burglars who break into a tall building. You push one into the bottom of the deck, one a third of the way up, one two thirds up, and leave the last on the roof. You cut the deck, and all four Jacks are back together on top: they got away. It's a level 2 conjurer 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
Three other cards are hidden behind the Jacks when you fan them at the start. The cards you push into the deck are those three. The Jacks never leave the top.
What you need
A deck of cards
Get ready, before anybody is watching
Put the four Jacks on top with any three cards behind them, and square the deck.
How to do it
Fan the top cards of the deck and show four Jacks, keeping the three behind them hidden.
Square them up and put all seven back on top of the deck face down.
Take the top card and push it into the bottom of the deck: the first burglar.
Push the next into the middle, and the next a bit higher up.
Leave the last one on top: the lookout on the roof.
Say the police are coming, cut the deck, and turn over the top four cards.
Magic words to say
“Four burglars. This deck is a tall building and they are going in. One in the basement, one on the second floor, one on the third, and this one stays on the roof to keep watch. Uh oh. Police.”
Pro tips
Tell it as a story, slowly. Every magician learns this one and the story is why it has lasted a hundred years.
The fan in step 1 is the only move. Practise showing four Jacks with three cards hiding behind the last one until it looks like nothing.
Let a little one push the burglars in. It is their favourite part and it costs you nothing.
If something goes wrong
If the fan shows a stray card, close it, say "and his getaway driver", and carry on. Five burglars is just as good a story.
Safety notes
Only from the front.
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?
🔀 Transposition. Something jumps from one place to another. 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 four burglars
What do you say during a magic trick?
The words a magician says are called patter. Good patter tells a small story, asks the audience to help, and then goes completely quiet for one second at the magic moment. Every trick in this shop has magic words to say that you can copy or change.
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.