I'll just put out some thoughts on what's been said so far. ACAAN is one of my pet effects, it's my favourite effect (tied with one other), it's the one I've performed most often, it's my opener, and often the only trick I perform.
On d+M's Advocate ACAAN - There are two versions given. They're not fantastic. Nice idea, but I think there are better applications of Advocate. I particularly like Advocate Wedge - the only sandwich trick I've seen where the two cards actually mean something and make sense - and Advocate Omni, which is just using your imagination. The ACAAN versions aren't bad, but there's definitely better out there. As far as conditions go, I think some are more important than others, and the tradeoffs of Advocate ACAAN outweight what you can do. There are better versions.
KK, technically, this does in fact fulfills the conditions of ACAAN though. Spectator freely names any card, any number, deals down themselves, magician never touches the deck. I like your thoughts about the plot though, and I believe I've read that essay as well.
On ACAAN conditions - Something I think is easy to forget is that we perform for laymen. See, it's all very good and well to say that the magician should never touch the cards, to use one example. But let me give you this scenario. Say I perform ACAAN twenty times to twenty different spectators, magicians and laymen alike. After 20 perfect performances, all 20 swear on their mothers' lives that I never touched the deck. There has been nothing strange, nothing dodgy, but all of them can recount the effect step by step and agree that I never touched the deck. But say that I did in fact touch the deck.
I personally feel that this effect would pass the aforementioned condition. To say that the magician MUST NOT ACTUALLY touch the deck is like saying, "Create an ACR where the card actually goes into the middle and is actually left into the middle". Well, if it's actually left there, then it's in the middle, there's no illusion. There's no magic. It's only when you allow a magician to perform a pass, or perhaps a top change, that the illusion of magic can happen.
Now, granted, there are some limitations. Ideally, I don't believe ACAAN should be performed with a gimmicked deck, for example. No matter how normal it may appear. But with a gimmicked deck, a spectator may look through the deck and see that it is in fact gimmicked upon close examination. With something like touching a deck, a spectator, no matter how hard he tries, will not be able to recall that you touched the deck, if you perform it properly, and that's the difference. Therefore I'd argue for some leeway in terms of interpreting the conditions, and remind us all that we create the illusion of magic for spectators.
In other words, I think it's a matter of perception. If laymen perceive the condition as passed, then it is passed, with the stipulation that laymen could not possibly discover anything to the contrary.
On my ACAAN - For those who are interested, there are a lot of sources on ACAAN. The version I use is a mixture of numerous different ACAAN effects and ideas rolled into one combined with a number of other miscellaneous ideas and principles as well as a tightly scripted performance. And yes, it fits all the criteria above. It's definitely not impossible. I like to think of it as a lateral thinking puzzle. Logically, it feels impossible. The conditions are there to rule out all possible magician intervention. So the challenge is simply to circumvent it.
