Spont: 30-Day Challenge

Last month, Oliver Meech sent in some ideas for Sponts, and I’ll be sharing at least a couple of them with you in the next week or two. Here’s the first:

Do magic versions of existing 'mini quests' that people do. E.g. Like you get printable tick-box charts for a 30/60-day Press Ups challenge (or so I've heard from friends who actually work out!), you could make up something similar for magic.

This is good. I always like putting the spectator in the position of helping me. People are so much more comfortable in that role than in the role of “spectator” or “person who should be impressed by what they’re seeing.” In my experience, if you seem to be doing what you’re doing for some other reason than their reaction, it relaxes people and allows them to actually be more genuine and less reserved with their reactions.

What Oliver is suggesting is having something similar to a Plank Challenge…

For example, you know those versions of Out of This World that just use 10 or 12 cards? That could work well for something like this.

You could have a sheet that says, “Color Intuition Challenge.”

Day 1-25 gradually works your way up to being able to determine the colors of a full deck of cards

Day 1 - Separate a deck face-up in under 30 seconds.

Day 2 - 30 minute meditation focusing on red cards.

Day 3 - 30 minute meditation focusing on black cards.

Day 4 - Rest

Day 5 - Mix 2 red and 2 black cards face-down, separate by color face down until correct.

Day 6 - Mix 4 red and 4 black cards face-down, separate by color face down until correct.

And so on.

Up to day 25, the “challenge” is all about your ability to find.

On day 26 you begin to attempt to channel that ability through someone else. As they are meant to separate 4 cards, 2 red and 2 black.

On day 27, the challenge is to get them to separate a mixed group of 12 cards.

Up through day 30, where they separate the whole deck.

You have the printout of this challenge, which has ✔ next to every day, through day 26.

Now you can ask someone for their help and introduce this printout, or you can just leave it out somewhere to be “discovered” by someone you’re spending time with.

You tell them about how it works. It’s a 30-Day Challenge designed to build certain abilities.

“I’m pretty good at knowing the colors on my own. But now I’m on the part where you channel the ability through someone else, which I have much less confidence in. I did it yesterday with my friend, Simon. But that was only four cards. It feels like it could have been luck. The odds with 12 cards are like 5000 to 1.”

So instead of a spectator randomly separating 6 red cards from 6 black cards, they are part of this much larger story and progression.

By putting them near the end, but not right at the end, of this challenge, I can also do other tricks for them with a similar premise, if they’re interested. A couple of weeks later, if they ask about the challenge and if I completed it, I can now show them a full deck version of Out of the World.

Giving your spectators a reason to consider that this brief exchange is part of something much bigger is a strong way to get them to give more weight to the trick in their mind.

OOTW is just an example effect. You could do it with anything, really. Perhaps it’s a 30-Day Rubik’s Cube Challenge. It starts off normally enough. Solve the cube in 10 minutes. Then the time gets shorter each day. And near the end you just have a split second. Or you’re supposed to solve it so it matches a random cube mixed by the spectator.

You could use this technique for believable skills like memory, gambling sleights, psychological observation.

Or completely unbelievable skills like vanishing a coin. If you have a super clean coin vanish, one of the issues with it is that it’s over so quickly. And if you make a routine with multiple coin vanishes, you dilute the impact of the vanish. But if you have a reason to build up the focus on a single vanish, you can make it very powerful. So you would walk them through some of the stages you went through to learn to vanish a coin. You’ve been able to make coins slightly lighter. You’ve been able to shrink coins. But you haven’t yet made one completely vanish. Now with their attention primed, you can focus them on a very clean coin vanish (using a Raven or something similar).