Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Daley's Delight

This secret exchange of two cards, one held in each hand, done as the hands cross, was first published in a Follow the Leader routine of the same name by Dr. Jacob Daley. See Phoenix, No. 220, Jan. 12 1951, pp. 878 and 881. The fingering used seems modeled on that of a Bottom Change.

Curtis Kam spotted a slate exchange that uses the same fingering in Mahatma, Vol. 1 No. 2, Apr. 1895, p. 3. The anonymous author of this switch of slates—presumably George H. Little—compares it to “a pass analogous to that employed in shuffling cards.” He may have been thinking of a Bottom Change. An important point, though, that distinguishes Daley's Delight from the Bottom Change and the Mahatma slate exchange is that Daley, after the fingers had made the exchange, continued to move the right hand to the left and the left hand to the right, crossing the hands, rather than having them retrace their paths.