| Questions & Answers |
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| What is The Joyal Index? |
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An index of 15,000 card tricks, extracted from English-language books written between 1584 and 2000, from Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft to Allan Slaight’s The James File. |
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| How many titles were consulted to produce The Joyal Index? |
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More than 1,700 books were consulted, including periodicals that were reprinted in book form. This represents an incredible 175,000 pages of text! Of these 1,700 titles, more than 700 were selected to produce the index (some totally indexed, others partially indexed.) |
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| How many magicians are featured in the index? |
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More than 2,000 magicians are part of The Joyal Index. |
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| Is it complete? |
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Unfortunately no. |
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| Are the items organized into categories? |
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Within the total of 15,000 card tricks, some 12,000 tricks are organized into more than 100 categories, such as Animated card, Collectors, Oil & Water, Spelling trick, Stapled card, and Tunnel. |
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| Are any moves or techniques covered in the index? |
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The Joyal Index is mainly a card trick index. Moves and techniques account for less than 5% of the entries. Moves and techniques appearing in their own chapter were usually not indexed. |
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| How many entries include technical information? |
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About 30% of the entries provide details on the type of deck, the use of special cards, the initial order of the cards, the kind of selection, if accessories are required, and so on. |
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| Are there some errors in the index? |
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With the first edition of a research project of this size, some errors are inevitable. But I honestly think that the error rate is quite low. Readers who find errors are encouraged to contact the author by sending an e-mail to martin@joyalstack.com. Also, your comments are always welcome on the Joyalstack Message Board at www.joyalstack.com. |
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| How long did it take to produce The Joyal Index? |
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This has been a labor of love since I started it in 1992. And I’m still indexing tricks and constantly adding to the index. |
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| What differentiates The Joyal Index from other magic indexes? |
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The unique strength of The Joyal Index is its genealogy of tricks. There are more than 15,000 cross-references tracing the origins of a trick and its evolution as it has passed from one magician to the next. |
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