SINCLAIR WIZARDRY Meet magician David Hambly, and learn a couple of new tricks for your Spectrum. THE FIRST TIME you saw a home computer put through its paces you may have felt there was something magical about the machine. David Hambly goes a step further than that. He performs a magic act using the Spectrum. David's career in magic began over twenty years ago, when he was ten years old, and took up conjuring as a hobby. Since then he has become a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, and has performed throughout Europe as a cabaret artist and close-up magician. Recently he has appeared on television in Video and Chips and Me and My Micro. One of the more unusual bookings he had was to perform an illusion act from a boxing ring, to warm up the audience before a full-contact karate competition. Close-up magic is that branch dealing with the manipulation of small objects such as cards or coins, requiring great skill and sleight of hand to accomplish. He says manipulation is going out of fashion among young magicians, who prefer to concentrate on the spectacular self-working tricks involving mechanical apparatus. David first became familiar with computers while working for an electronics company which used what David describes as a temperamental Digital PDP/8. Although he wanted to buy a Commodore Pet, it was not until Sinclair released the ZX-81 that David was able to afford his own machine. His initial use for the machine was to handle accounts and other aspects of his magic career. Give a magician any sort of object, and sooner or later he will start to develop a magic trick using it. The ZX81 was no exception. Before long David was incorporating effects using the computer into his acts. As his skill at programming grew, so did the complexity of the magic he was able to perform, although David is the first to admit that he is no machine-code wizard. "I'm sure there are better ways of writing the program," he says. "I'm just satisfied if it works." His most complicated program, which he has surrounded with safeguards against copying, actually devises its own tricks, some of which have been published in specialist magic magazines. David felt the next step was to collect all the notes he had made and write a book, the first ever on the subject, entitled Computer Magic. David says he regrets now some of the secrets he revealed in the book. "There are two techniques in particular I wish I hadn't put in," he says. "They're far too good to use in a book." If you want to learn those secrets you will have to buy David's book, but in the meantime, here are two of David's programs especially for Sinclair User readers. Please read the instructions on the first page of Program Printout before typing in the listings. FIND THE RABBIT, for the 16K Spectrum, is based on the very well known effect called Three Card Monte, also known as Find the Lady. Load the program and three cards will be displayed on the screen, face up, two showing a top hat, while the third shows a rabbit, After a key is pressed, the cards are seen face down. Your audience must now guess where the rabbit is. As an additional trick stick a piece of blank paper onto an old playing card. Draw a rabbit on it and place it in your pocket. At any time during your performance, press key 4. That, as before, will display three cards, face down. Have one of the cards chosen by a friend, and stand by for the Big Surprise. Displayed will be three cards face up, but now showing three top hats and not two. Explain that the rabbit has nearly vanished and then produce the card from your pocket, to reveal the rabbit. In TELEPATHIC COMPUTER the computer is able to identify a card which has been selected from a shuffled deck. First of all, remove all of the following cards from the deck: A-2-3-4-5-6-7 of Spades; 8-9-10-J-Q-K of Hearts; A-2- 3-4-5-6 of Clubs; and 7-8-9-10-J-Q-K of Diamonds. Shuffle those 26 cards together, so that they are well mixed. With the remainder of the pack, consisting of 26 cards and two Jokers, remove the Jokers and place them on top of the pack. Now place the other, shuffled, cards on top. You are now ready to begin. Pick up the deck and show that all the cards are different. Do not alter the order of the cards. Note where the two jokers are, cut the pack at that point and hand the top half to someone to shuffle - these will be the cards that you removed to set up, at the beginning. The remaining cards are returned to the table. The rest of the instructions are contained within the program. Computer Magic - Amazing Tricks on the ZX-81, by David Hambly. Price #3.00 from Martin Breese Publishing Ltd, 31 Richmond Way, Hammersmith, London W14. The programs within the book will run on the Sinclair Spectrum.