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There’s no fooling around in the April 2022 issue. Our cover feature highlights card mechanic extraordinaire Jason England in a piece by John Lovick. Richard Wiseman and Lawrence Leung’s “Hocus Pocus Live: The Davenport Séance,” brings the spooky gathering to the pages of a comic book, and Erika Larsen writes a fond farewell to the Amazing Johnathan.

And lots of fine tricks, too! There’s a showpiece with coins and a $100 bill in “The River” by Joshua Jay. Jon Racherbaumer’s “Exhumations” unearths a quick production of the four Aces, complete with a Triumph finale. David Britland’s “Cardopolis” shares his solution to a card trick described once only in a 1935 newspaper. Roberto Mansilla has an answer to the Any Card At Any Number plot in “Artifices.” And “Magicana” has three routines described by Jonathan Friedman including one that uses sugar and pepper.

David Kaye shows us how to get kids to say the darndest things in “Expert at the Kids table.” Vanessa Armstrong brings us the news. In “Knights at The Magic Castle,” Shawn McMaster focuses on Founders’ Day. John Gaughan lights up “Chamber of Secrets” with a Thayer lamp. And speaking of lamps, this month’s “Light from the Lamp” shines on new tricks with David Regal, books with Francis Menotti, and Ryan Matney covering videos. It’s all on the inside. We’ll see you there.

John Scarne was a gambling expert and magician whose career lasted through much of the 20th century. Here he shows you some amazing ways to cheat at gambling.

There are loads of ways to know where a card is in a deck, but some scientifically ambitious card sharps appear to have taken a very unusual approach. This strange story began when police in Berlin discovered unusually high amounts of radioactivity in a trash truck. They traced the material to a restaurant and discovered 13 playing cards that had been laced with iodine-125.

Thanks to a 60-day half-life, this particular strain of iodine stays radioactive for a long time. The detectives guessed that a player with a hidden detector would be able to identify the marked cards in a game, giving them an advantage over their competitors. Considering the restaurant where the cards were found didn’t have the permits for gambling, that’s still all conjecture.

Given the high risks of working with radioactive material, however, we’d recommend that you not try incorporating iodine-125 into your arsenal of card control tricks.