Out of This Darkness by Kaleb Wade

This is a half deck out of this world where the spectator purposefully misses one card to make it feel more real. Kaleb set out to solve 3 gripes about Out of This World. These are more or less in his words:

1. It’s too unbelievable so it feels like a magic trick and not mentalism.

2. Dealing 52 cards is tedious and takes too long.

3. Switching the red/black markers halfway through is illogical.

Now I don’t necessarily agree with all of those gripes, but it set Kaleb on his path to creating this. It utilizes a normal deck with a half deck set up that is really simple, but Kaleb does walk through how to do it impromptu later in the pdf. At the core of the routine is a very simple move to get things sorted. The move happens as part of the one missed card which is why it is essential that they miss one card in this version. That miss provides all of the cover and misdirection to make the necessary actions, and it makes the move completely logical. The “clean up” is sort of a typical clean up for Out of This World where you combine stacks, flip them over, and spread them. Kaleb provides a link to a couple of videos that shows the secret moves in action just so it’s perfectly clear. 

After teaching the main method, Kaleb covers alternative ideas such as allowing them to pick a pile they’d like to use, adding a false shuffle, adding a false cut, revealing a correct card along the way, and letting the spectator genuinely shuffle half way through the deal. 

He also suggests that you could predict that they’d miss one card in a written prediction and even teaches a simple method to predict the exact card they’d miss. I think those additions are really great, and to me, the ability to predict the exact card that they miss is where this routine is different and stands out from other OOTWs that are out there. 

Kaleb also includes a variation with a marked deck and a variation with a full deck. Personally, I prefer full deck OOTWs so this is the version I’ll be using. 

We then get a Bonus Routine that uses the same method as Out of This Darkness but with a couple of slight tweaks that allow it to be used with different “cards.”

The main bonus routine is Dexter or Sinister. Here, the spectator separates the cards to their right and left, and the cards in the right pile are revealed to all have the letter “R” on them and the cards in the left pile all have the letter “L” on them. Of course, they get them all correct except for one, but even this miss is predicted. I like the premise of separating rights from lefts. It is weirdly logical. Kaleb offers some suggestions for other words that you can use this method for: Noughts and Crosses, Yes and No, Living and Dead, Positive and Negative words, Magician and Muggle, etc. 

Overall, I think this is a great OOTW method. It’s simple but effective. I like it so much that I think it will become my go-to method for OOTW (the full deck version.) For my readers, I’ve made a video of my small touches/tweaks that I think take this to the next level. If you have purchased Out of This Darkness, send me an Instagram DM (@themagicreview) with the password to Kaleb’s video tutorial from the book and I’ll be happy to share the video with you. You’ll see my exact handling that makes me say this will be my new go-to version.