'Cough Cough'

Today's trick to be learned is highly known as 'Cough Cough'. You will understand why it's called this very shortly. Once again this is a trick that Blaine performed on his TLC special and what makes this trick pretty cool is that it breaks any kind of language barrier. David performed 'Cough Cough' trick for a group of Asians who could apparently understand no word of English. So, if you ever find yourself stuck in a place where no one can understand you but you still have a desire to entertain them, than this is the trick for you.

Synopsis: This trick has a pretty original ending to it and is guaranteed to make people wonder what just happened. The lay out is like this. The magician fans out a deck of cards and has a spectator choose a card. After they choose one, look at it, and places it back into the deck, the magician puts the deck behinds his back and tells them that he is going to find their card. He brings the deck back out in front of him, up close to his mouth, and blows on it while pulling off the top card. The card he revealed is not their card, so he does the process a few more times. Finally he gets frustrated and stops doing the trick. But all of a sudden, he starts coughing
(see that's where the name comes from. Pretty witty eh?) and the card they chose is in his mouth! They could have even signed it if they wanted to.

The reason this trick breaks a language barrier cause you could technically do it all completely with out saying anything. Just fan the cards, they take it and look at it. Put it back in the deck and the magician just blows on it revealing the wrong cards. Coughs out the card and no matter what language they speak, they will understand that what they have just seen was intense!



Okay, before we can perform this trick there is a method that we need to learn in order to control their chosen card to the top of the deck. There are multiple ways to do this and one of the best and easiest way to do it is by doing the move known as the 'hindu shuffle'. Watch the video below to learn how to do this shuffle. This video isn't one of me but the guy who teaches it, does a very good job at explaining it.Once you have a good understanding of how to do it, come back up here and read rest of the post.

Performance: Have the spectator choose a card and place it back on top of the deck. You then do the hindu shuffle in order to keep their chosen card on top of the deck. After you complete the shuffle, announce to them that you are going to place the deck behind your back and find their card. You are, at this point in time, going to take the top card and fold it into eighths and place it under the third card in the deck. When you are done placing the small folded up card in position, bring the deck up to your mouth and blow on it and pull off the top card. This wont be their card so do it over again and again until you come to the card that is just above the folded up one. As you bring the deck up to your mouth, push the folded card into your mouth so that it is in between your cheek and gum. you should still be able to talk if need be. After you blow on the deck and once again reveal that it is not their card, act frustrated or what ever. After a little bit of acting it up, start to cough up their card. This trick, when done correctly, will get a pretty sweet reaction.

note: This trick works best when you use thin cards. normal Bicycle cards are usually pretty thick and hard to fold up small enough. If you go to the Dollar Store or Dollar Tree you can usually find some thin cheap cards there.