Sunday Public Service Announcement

Found this video really inspiring. I hope it can help someone ❤️ pic.twitter.com/JzXY7BjepY

— nick ciarelli (@nickciarelli) December 7, 2020

The Juxe: Hark! Part One

We continue Christmas music month with some more Christmas and Christmas-Adjacent songs that I enjoy.

Christmas Auld Lang Syne by Bobby Darin

The mid-century Christmas music can’t be beat. This song isn’t super well-known (well, the Christmas version of this song isn’t) but this version by Bobby Darin is pretty great. The video is nicely put together as well.

Santa’s Beard by They Might Be Giants

It’s a song about jealousy, not Christmas. But I did say “christmas-adjacent” music, so lay off. The chorus is a banger.

If you look around for meanings of the song online, most talk about how the narrator’s wife is cheating on him with their friend who plays Santa Claus. I think I used to think of the song that way too.

But now I don’t think of it that way. I think it’s a song about a woman who is being playful and festive with their friend and—at most—harmlessly flirty. And this fucking nerd she’s married to can’t take it.

Twas the Night Before Christmas by Art Carney

This is nothing but Art Carney saying the classic story/poem in a syncopated manner over a jazz drum beat. I don’t know why i like it as much as I do. I just get into it. “NOW Dasher! NOW Dancer! NOW Prancer and Vixen! on-comet-on-cupid-on-donner-and-blitzen.”

Christmas Song by Joy Zipper

Joy Zipper was a great, dream-pop duo from the early 2000s. The song isn’t really a “christmassy” song, but occasionally you’ll hear it played in stores during christmas time. I’ve had a few friends who worked in retail and fell in love with this song that way. After hours and hours of festive Christmas music, this song comes up and it’s synthy and vibey and sort of romantic (if you don’t listen to the lyrics too closely), and people become hooked on it because it’s unique amongst all the other songs they’re hearing throughout the day. It’s one of the few songs you’d hear on a Christmas mix that you’d consider putting on your make-out mix. (Unless you’re a total psychopath and like to fuck to this.)

Dumb Tricks: Numeric-Alpha

Here is a somewhat dumb trick, but with the potential to be a better trick.

I asked for my friend’s help with something. I had him think of anything in the world. Then I took a slip of paper and wrote something down on it. I folded the piece of paper and set it down on the table.

“What are you thinking of?” I asked.

“Orange Soda,” he said.

“Nice,” I said, smiling. “Was there a thought process that brought you to ‘orange soda’ or did it just pop in your head out of nowhere?”

He explained the chain of thoughts that brought him to orange soda.'

“Okay, one final question. This may seem insignificant, but it’s important. Did you think of ‘orange soda’ or ‘orange sodas’ plural?”

He said he thought of orange soda, singular.

“Great.” I picked up the paper on the table and unfolded it.

It didn’t say: Orange Soda.

It said: 12.

“I’m kind of impressed with myself,” I said. “I almost got tripped up on the whole ‘soda’ vs. ‘sodas’ thing.”

I then brought up this image, and showed to him that I had predicted the scrabble score of the word/phrase he thought of.

Okay, as I said, it’s a bit of a dumb trick. My reasoning behind the effect was that I was trying to strenghten my Scrabble game using some of my magic/mentalism skills. “Typically you get better at scrabble by having a broader vocabulary. It’s all an offensive game. Trying to come up with words that will score more points. But if I know what words people are thinking of—and thus know what word they’re thinking of playing—and the points those words will garner, I can play defensively and block that spot on the board.” The logic doesn’t make complete sense. But I feel I could defend it if I was called on it.

Obviously this is just a way of predicting a number using a thumb-writer. But I think it feels more impossible/impressive than if I had just said, “Think of a number between 5 and 25.” (Which is about where most words would score.) Doesn’t it seem like it’s more impossible? I haven’t played around with it enough to say so definitively, but I think there’s a chance some spectators will feel I must have known what word he would think of to know what the score would be. I suppose how the trick is interpreted will depend on how analytical your spectator is.

Now, to ramp the trick up, here is something you could do.

Let’s say you’re performing at a table. As soon as the person says their word, you write it on the back of a business card in your lap. Now, after you show you predicted the scrabble score you can say, “Of course, you might think there are a lot of words that have a scrabble score of 12, so I didn’t necessarily know you would think of Orange Soda, that’s why I put something in this envelope before we started.” And use a Card to Wallet type of load to put the word in a sealed envelope in your wallet.

You have quite a bit of time to do some dirty work when they’re calculating the score of their word.

Or, imagine doing a parlor version of this. The scrabble game is in its box, on a table back behind you. There is a hole in the short end of the box, that is near an off-stage area. After the word is named, and while you’re showing that you predicted the score, an offstage assistant sets some scrabble tiles on one of the tile racks to spell out the thought-of word, and then just slides it into the hole, so it’s now in the box. Now you can go back and grab the box and reveal you set the word up on one of the racks before the show began.

Of course, the question remains, how do you know what score to write down? Yes, you have to memorize the letter scores, but it’s easier than you’d imagine. (And if your memory really sucks, I’ll give you an even easier way to do it after I explain this way.)

You can memorize the letter values it in a few minutes.

All the letters you would think of as really common are 1s. (I’m just taking it for granted that you have an innate understanding of what letters are common.)

Here’s how I remember the rest:

Score - Letters - Mnemonic

Two points - G and D - GoD has two big balls (I’m guessing).

Three points - C, M, P, B - You’re going to have three drinks at the CuM PuB. Where they serve semen and you chug it down in pint glasses. Lapping the thick nectar up as the jizz drips down your chin. (They say a strange/dirty image helps you remember your mnemonics. That’s why I went into detail there.) You swallow those loads so fast you have a cute cum-stache under your nose. (That extra imagery wasn’t for memory sake, I just thought it was funny.)

Four Points - H, F, W, Y, V - I just remember the sounds in the word “halfway” and the I throw V in there because it’s half of a W. So it’s easy to group all them together. There are three point groupings above and below this. So 4 is the halfway point.

Five Points - K - You run a 5K. (Well, not you. But a person like you who’s not lazy might.)

Eight Points - J, X - The JerX ate (8) some buffalo-wings covered in red-hot jism at the old Cum Pub.

Ten Points - Z, Q - I don’t need a mnemonic for these.

When I got “orange soda,” i just went through it in my mind, adding up the values. It’s not too hard because most words are made up of the common letters which are 1s. Plus you have some time to do this while you ask about what caused the person to think of that word.

“Orange Soda” was a fairly long word to get. Which is good, because it made the number a little higher. Shorter words are easier to calculate, but less impressive.

The Easy Way

The easy way to do this (and perhaps better way in some respects). Is to pretend to write something down, ask for the word, then have them calculate the total of the word, and then unfold the paper and reveal what you wrote down. So that way you don’t have to calculate anything. You just write down whatever total they get, once it’s known to you.

Where I’m Thinking of Going With This

I’ll set a small bag on the table in front of them.

I’ll ask them to think of any word.

I’ll write something down (apparently), fold it up, and put it on the table.

They’ll name their word. “Chair.”

I’ll think: C is 3 (3 drinks at the Cum pub), H is 4 (Halfway), so 7, plus A, I, R (8, 9 , 10)

I’ll unfold the paper, thumb-write 10, and show it to them.

I’ll have them dump out the objects in the bag. They will be scrabble tiles and a small box.

I’ll have them find the letters that form CHAIR.

As they concentrate on finding the letters, I will have far more time than I need to write “Chair” on a business card in my lap, and fold it into quarters with my right hand. At the same time, I will be poking through the letters along with them using my left hand, so I still seem engaged.

We will determine that my prediction was accurate.

I will then open the box that they dumped out of the bag earlier and dump out my other prediction which matches what they said perfectly. (Using any type of effect where a folded card appears in a small box. I wouldn’t use one of the gimmicked boxes for this. But something like this should work well.)

The combination of methods used here would make this quite difficult to figure out for anyone unfamiliar with magic methods. And the process of having them find the letters to verify your initial prediction would give you all the time you need to write your other prediction.

It’s still missing something presentationally to tie it all together (hence the reason it’s in this Dumb Tricks post). But I actually think all the component pieces are there for something pretty strong.

And Found

Here’s an idea I received from supporter, Leigh H. It’s pretty fully-formed, so I’ll post it as is and just add a couple quick at the end.

I stumbled into the opportunity for a pretty strong piece of magic recently, which I thought had a useful underlying idea in it:

I had my girlfriend choose a card, and we lost it in the deck. I tried to find it a couple of times, and failed, so we gave up.

Later, I remembered something my grandma used to do when she had misplaced things: a little superstition which was supposed to help you remember where you'd left something you lost. I suggested we use it to try and find the card.

We conducted a little ritual, focused around the card box, to try and help us locate her lost card.

Unexpectedly, it seemed to work: something appeared inside the box.

I dumped out the contents of the box…

The reaction was really strong. Not because the card was correct, but because some of the things in the box were legitimately lost and had suddenly reappeared, supposedly summoned/found by the ritual.

This came about because over a year ago, my girlfriend let a friend of mine borrow a padlock she had (he was staying with us, and going to the gym in our building). He ended up heading back home to England with the lock, and neither me nor my friend thought anything of it.

Months later, in passing, my girlfriend mentioned that the lock had some sentimental significance, and she was pretty sad it was gone (but knew it was 'just a silly padlock', so had already given up on it).

I reached out to him, he had it and mailed it right back. I was planning to wrap it up as a gift and give it to her at Christmas (not as part of a magic trick).

But then... we have these little plastic figurines we hide around the apartment as a game: put the guy somewhere funny, and wait for the other person to stumble across it.

They often get hidden and forgotten about, and turn up a couple days/weeks later so we only know where 1 or 2 are at any point in time.

Goose had not been seen for months. Neither of us remembered the last place we hid him, so eventually we concluded he must have been hidden in a cereal box or something and thrown in the trash.

But, months after we assumed he was gone, I found him when she wasn't around (he was in a box of Christmas tea bags, which had stopped getting used after the holidays). I immediately had the idea to put him with the padlock and gift them both back at the same time.

But then I realized I was in a unique position where I had possession of multiple items which were assumed lost, and could use that as the basis of a magic trick.

The opportunities to use this effect are likely pretty rare, but it feels like a useful tool to have in the back of mind in case it does come up.

I suppose you could also just start stealing small objects from your friends in order to eventually give them back, but that changes up the sentiment a little, I suppose! —LH

I like this idea a lot.

Note that the idea is not to use a magic ritual to find a spectator’s lost object. You don’t say, “Let’s use a ritual to find your lost ring,” or whatever. Instead, the lost object is found as a repercussion of a “ritual” used in the context of a card trick. So it’s the fictional magic world and their real world intermingling in an unexpected way.

You’ll see a similarity with this idea and the trick In Search of the Castaways in book #2. And the subject of Reps (repercussions) is covered extensively in the next book (#4).

The only tweak I would make is to do some sort of card case switch. So the person you’re performing for hands you the empty card box and while you’re arranging things for the ceremony, you switch in the pre-loaded box. I recommend this not because this is a trick about items magically appearing in the card box. But because this has the potential to be a “big” trick in their memory. And the empty card case might be a detail that gets lost in the moment (under the surprise of seeing their lost object). But it can be a little magical time-bomb that they remember when they think back to the effect. “Wait… there wasn’t even anything in the box when I handed it to him.” It’s good to “seed” big effects with smaller magical details that might get remembered later. And that’s simply because big effects are the ones people think back on the most, so it makes sense to pack them with as many little moments as possible.

And I agree with Leigh that I wouldn’t just steal something in order to perform this effect at a later date. I would wait until I serendipitously found something that someone had lost. Ideally you want something that has been missing for weeks or months, not hours or days. However, after I found such a missing item, I probably would steal something else to round out the effect a little more. I think the ideal “cache” to appear in the box would be something like what Leigh had:

1. Something that’s been missing for a while that you genuinely stumbled over.

2. Something else that is both inessential, but also will be noticed missing. Most likely this would be something you take yourself. And I emphasize “inessential.” Don’t steal their credit card or car key or something for your trick.

3. The missing playing card.

4. And then fill it out with some random “missing” items. The sort of things people lose all the time, but aren’t necessarily remembered like change and the button in Leigh’s example. Also little screws (from when you’re putting together furniture), guitar picks, rubber bands, hair ties. Maybe an M&M that rolled under the fridge back in May.

Of course, there’s a decent chance whatever lost item you find won’t fit in a card case, but you can use the same basic idea with any type of larger container as well.

This isn’t something you’ll have the chance to do often (although I did recently find my friend’s earring at my place, so I’m set up to do this soon), but when the situation to perform it does arise, I think it has the potential to be a really strong moment for the spectator.

Thanks to Leigh for sharing this with us.

Wiki-Squared

Today’s post is for people who use Wiki-Test. It’s an application of the Squared Anagram concept to the thought of words used in the second phase of that trick. If you already have a good grasp on the concept, then all I need to tell you is that the first “impulse” is between S and T, and the second is between U and V. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then I’ll link a pdf that goes over it all in excruciating detail at the end of this post.

I’ve gotten a ton of feedback on Squared Anagrams. If you are at all into anagram work, it’s something you need to give some thought to. As I write in the pdf to come…

The nice thing about the “Squared Anagram” approach is how much less it feels like letter guessing than the traditional anagram. It feels more like you’re actually sensing something. You’re not guessing two letters at once. You’re feeling an impulse and then verifying where that impulse was directed. If they say “yes” for an S, and “no” for a T, that’s not one hit and one miss. That should just come across as one hit that required some clarification. Like if someone was pointing to something on a high shelf and you were asking, “Do you want this one, or this one, or both?”

Although not as universally applicable as traditional anagrams, it’s a much more streamlined technique. And the “misses” almost vanish. (As I discussed in this post.)

Okay, I won’t try to sell you on it anymore

Here is a pdf with the information related to the Wiki-test version. (Password is voice)

HIT Thoughts

If you’re familiar with it, what are your thoughts on Hit by Luke Jermay? I’ve been playing with it since he taught it on his Vanishing Inc. Masterclass, but the reactions have been only so-so. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a multi-phase blackjack effect (sort of) where the spectator has a free choice between two blackjack hands and you always influence them to pick the losing hand.

Here’s the demo (it’s long).

I really like the trick, but the people I’ve shown it to have been sort of lukewarm on it. —FP

Oooohhh… luke warm. Luke Jermay. I get it. Good stuff, FP.

While I like the construction of this routine, the presentation used in the demo is not one that I would recommend to anyone performing for friends and family.

Imagine yourself as the recipient of this presentation.

First, imagine yourself in a hotel bar. You strike up a conversation with a stranger. He mentions that he studies “influence.” After some conversation about this, he offers to show you a demonstration. And somehow he causes you to pick the losing blackjack hand every time.

You might think, “That was crazy. Was he really influencing me? Could it have been just a card trick. I don’t think so. He didn’t seem to do much.” It would be the sort of encounter that would leave you wondering.

Now, imagine it’s your brother performing this. “I’m going to use subtle psychological influence to cause you to pick the losing hand each time.”

“Uhm… no you’re not, Todd. What are these… trick cards or something?”

It’s a completely different situation when you know the person.

“Influence” is the least attractive type of presentation to use with friends and family. There are a few reasons for this.

First, you’re claiming to have special powers. This, by itself, can rub some people the wrong way. (Although there are plenty of ways to present it in a palatable manner.)

Second, you are claiming to have special powers that actually exist. It’s one thing to say you can float a dollar bill with your mind. Everyone realizes that’s a fantastical premise and no one is supposed to take it seriously. On the other hand, there actually are influential people and influential techniques. So claiming you’re one of these people or you have mastery of those techniques (when they know you and know it’s not true) could be off-putting.

Third, you’re claiming to have a special power, that actually exists, that allows you to exert your will over them. You’re not just pretending to have a skill you really don’t possess, like a super-memory or the ability to do rapid math. You’re demonstrating your ability to control other people. This is the sort of thing that might be compelling from a mysterious stranger. But it’s much less attractive when it’s coming from your co-worker, Melvin. Out of all the impossible, magical “stories” you could tell… you chose the one that makes it seem like you have an incredible skill that makes you more powerful than them. You’re almost begging people to push back against this. In fact, if they’re really supportive of this presentation, it suggests they think you’re a little pathetic. “Wow! You really influenced me to lose each time. Good job, Peter! Good for you! What a clever young man you are!”

But the good thing about this trick is that you’re not locked into this presentation of influence. My understanding is that Luke goes over some other options in the download. (I haven’t seen it, so I can’t say for sure.)

I would probably do some sort of “lucky charm” type of presentation.

I’d bring out a small box, open it up, and reveal a lucky rabbit’s foot.

I’d tell my friend I know they have some big opportunities and challenges coming up and they need all the help they can get. “If you’d like, I’ll sell you this rabbit’s foot for $800.” When they look at me like I’m crazy, I’d say, “Okay, $750.”

Of course they wouldn’t take me up on the offer, and would be wondering where this joke/trick was going.

“Okay, your loss,” I’d say. “This thing is the real deal. I’ll show you.” And I’d go grab a deck of cards and use Luke’s routine as a demonstration of the power of the rabbit’s foot.

This allows an additional decision during the process of the trick. Not only does the spectator get to decide who gets which cards, they also get to decide which of us get’s the rabbit foot.

This nicely shifts the trick away from a result of: “You lose. You lose. You lose.” Now it’s a matter of the luck following the rabbits foot. So the result might be: “I win. You win. You win.” But the “you or me” aspect doesn’t matter that much. I’m not causing you to lose. This is just a fair and powerful demonstration of the luck of this rabbit’s foot. But they won’t get the sense you’re really trying to convince them of that. So they can play along and just enjoy the effect without indulging a presentation that’s about me being some psychological, machiavellian genius.

If they’re someone who’d want to keep the rabbit’s foot, I’d let them. “Why don’t you hold onto this. No payment needed… right now. We’ll see what luck comes your way. And anything you may luck into financially, I’ll take… say…10%.”

Monday Mailbag #36

What’s the latests we can send Christmas cards to you for the purposes of the trick you’re working on? —WP

Well, I’ll take Christmas cards at any time. But it’s probably best if I have them by the 20th or so. My plan at this point is to try out the trick with a few different people, and I may do so throughout the holidays, so I’ll likely be able to use cards I get after that time as well, but that would be best for my purposes. Thanks for asking!

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If you’re like any other magician I know, I’m sure you have a large quantity of tricks and magic supplies you don’t use. Being in quarantine has had me thinking about offloading a vast majority of my surplus. If I were to individually sell playing cards on eBay, I’d probably still be selling them in several years from now. Any ideas on how to offload in mass quantities? And also maybe a good charity to offload some of the lower cost magic items? —JT

I assume you mean individual decks of playing cards. At least, I hope you do, or you will be selling those for probably centuries, not years.

I don’t have an answer to your question, but I’m putting it up here in case someone else does. I’ll let you (and everyone else) know if I get any good responses.

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Will you be releasing any stand-alone effects in the future? Either to your supporters or just to the general magic community? —RS

Yes, most likely. I’ve had some stuff on the back-burner for years now that I’ve been wanting to put out and I intend to do so starting next year. It’s always been a scheduling issue. With three different writing outlets (the site, the newsletter, and the books) there just was never a point of downtime to make other projects a priority. Next year, I’m planning on implementing a new schedule with blocks of time set aside to work on some stand-alone effects.

If you’d like to go on scavenger… At some point in the last three years I did release an effect. It was a normal magic release that you can find available through pretty much any magic site online.

The idea to do this came from one of the friends and supporters of this site who is a magician/mentalist who regularly releases tricks to the magic community. He wrote me an email about one of my posts and said that I should have released it as a separate item.

This got us talking about different effects we had worked on and the response they received from other magicians.

This was an email exchange that went on for weeks and went all over the place. But the upshot of the emails was that we decided he would release a trick of mine commercially as if it was his.

We worked out the financials of how this would all go down, and a few months later I sent him three tricks to consider. I asked him what he felt was the strongest trick and the weakest. Then we agreed that he would release the weakest trick as if it was his, right around the time I released the strongest trick here on the site. (When I say “strongest and weakest,” we’re not talking about the difference between “good and bad”—it was more the difference of “great vs pretty good.”)

There wasn’t really any big purpose to this experiment. And I don’t know what, if anything, we proved. My “pretty good” trick (which he released under his name) sold very well, got a lot of praise, and generated an extended thread on the Magic Cafe that went on for months.

The better trick, which I posted here for free, created a small buzz in my email box for a couple days and then I was on to something else.

You might think that would make me want to release stuff commercially so that it “gets it due” or whatever. But for better or worse, I don’t have that inclination. A lot of the stuff I put up on the site is silly or limited in value, and there is a lot of stuff that is also very powerful. I sort of like just throwing it all out there and letting people come to their own conclusions. I know there are some people who overlook stuff here, because they assume it wouldn’t be up for free on a blog if it was any good. But I also know there is a group of readers who weigh the value of everything, and that’s really my target audience. I just want to have fun writing the site, not hold people’s hands through the whole thing.

In a future post someday (or maybe in a book that details the behind the scenes goings on of this site), I’ll tell you who the other magician was and what the trick we released was. But for now we have some other secret collaborations planned that I don’t want to tip you off to.

Going back to the topic of releasing individual effects, yes, that is something that is likely to happen. They probably won’t be released broadly. Just here on the site and in limited quantities.

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Don’t forget my favorite use of the faro shuffle, which I realize doesn’t fit your performing style, but I love throwing it in unnecessarily when a trick doesn’t require it. Really throws off knowledgable onlookers. —CW

That’s a great idea. I’m fortunate enough not to spend too much time with people “in the know” (i.e. magicians). But if I find myself in their company, I’ll use that.

“Okay, so we just give the cards a random mix….” Hold the deck three inches from my face, weave and unweave a couple of times like I didn’t hit it exactly. That sort of thing.

I’d probably use it with a one-way force deck with one random card on the bottom. Have them cut to a card and look at. Hold an obvious break when the packets are put back together and get an obvious peek when I turn the deck over for no reason. Ask for any number between 1 and 52. Act like I’m calculating the in and out faros I need to do to get their card at that number. Do a few faros. Then deal down to the card at their number.

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And yes, I did see the article about potential sexual impropriety and racism at The Magic Castle. (I have a google alert set up for news stories with the worlds magician and abuse in the same article. For the most part, all the articles that have come up this year have been about some British show called Coronation Street which apparently had an abusive magician on it or something?)

I have no real thoughts about it as I’ve never been to the Castle, much less been a member. And most of the allegations weren’t really magician-specific. (Except the ones that were like, “Magicians are creeps to women on stage.” Yeah, no shit.) So I don’t have much to say.

However, I always love juicy gossip so if anyone has any inside dirt I’d love to hear it. It could be for my eyes only. Or if you want others to read it, I’d be happy to post it anonymously.

This goes for the Magic Castle situation or anything else magic related. Is Brad Christian constantly making comments about his staff’s “taut buttocks?” Did a certain former precocious child magician and now current co-owner of an online magic shop, watch this kid on the Ellen Degeneres show and say, “You dumb mick. You think you’re going to pull off the cute child magician act? I invented that act, motherfucker. I will always be that cute child. You come at the king, you best not miss, bitch.”

If so, you can spill the dirt to me. I’ll keep your secret or broadcast it. Whatever you want.