A magician took a suit of 13 cards and held them in his hand face down. As he spelt out the name of each card in the suit in turn letter by letter (A-C-E, T-W-O, T-H-R-E-E, ..... , Q-U-E-E-N, K-I-N-G), he took the top card and placed it at the bottom of the pile in this hand. As he finished the last letter of the name of each card, instead of placing the card at the bottom of the pile, he threw it on the table face up.

Every time the number or value on the card he revealed was the same as the one he had just finished spelling. How did this work?

Starting with 10 cards numbered 1 to 10, can you arrange them in such a way that -starting with the arranged pile face down ? you can spell out each card and reveal it as you announce its last letter?

Can you explain a way of doing this systematically so that you can quickly arrange any number of cards to make the trick work?

What would happen if you counted the number of cards equal to the value of the next card (so, if the next card was due to be a six - you would put five cards on the bottom of the pack and reveal the sixth)?