Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

This seeming marvel depends upon a very simple principle. It will be found by experiment that a complete set of dominoes, arranged in a row according to domino rules (i.e., like numbers together), will invariably have the same number at each end. Thus if the final number at one end of the row be five, that at the opposite end will be five also, and so on; so that the twenty-eight dominoes, arranged as above, form numerically an endless chain, or circle. If this circle be broken by the removal of any domino, the numbers on either side of the gap thus made will be the same as those of the missing domino. Thus, if you take away a “five-three,” the chain thus broken will terminate at one end with a five, and at the other with a three. This is the whole secret of the trick: the performer secretly abstracts one domino, say the “five-three;” this renders it a matter of certainty that the row to be formed with the remaining dominoes will terminate with a five at the one end and a three at the other, and so on with any other domino of two unequal numbers. The domino abstracted must not be a “double,” or the trick will fail. A little consideration will show why this is the case. The removal of a double from the endless chain we have mentioned produces no break in the chain, as the numbers on each side of the gap, being alike, will coalesce; and a row formed with the remaining dominoes under such conditions may be made to terminate in any number, such number being, however, alike at either end. A domino of two different numbers, on the other hand, being removed, “forces,” so to speak, the series made with the remainder to terminate with those particular numbers.