Mail: Tag Question Alternative

This email came in after Monday’s post where I wrote about—what I’m calling—the “tag question” ploy. “It’s not a red card, is it?”

Tag questions (which is the name for the “is it” part of that statement) are so inherently confusing that there are dozens of youtube videos discussing how to even answer those questions.

Alexander F. C. writes in with this alternative, which is interesting, but may present other issues.

Relating to your latest post, I wanted to share a variation of that type of ploy that I've been using. 

Rather than asking a closed question and interpreting it (laughably transparent), I make a statement. You could argue it's a different technique altogether (a hanging statement vs a closed question), but it accomplishes the same thing for the performer. 

I start with a confident smile, and then say:

"Okay, so this is obviously a red card". Here I pause for a very short amount of time, gauging their response. If their card is a red card, most people will react almost instantly to this. If they don't react, I immediately follow up with: 

"or a black card, it's a 50/50 percent chance I guess this." Now I would know their card is black. Here I would continue bullshitting a bit, with that newly gained piece of information.

Both statements are natural, and unequivocal: 

"Okay so this is obviously a red card." 

"Okay so this is obviously a red card or a black card, it's a 50/50 percent chance I guess this."

It works great for Which Hand too. 

"It's obviously in this hand" (now I tap one of their outstretched fists) If no reaction:

or in this hand, It's a 50/50 percent chance (now I tap the other fist while saying this).

Let me know what you think of this. I think it's something I came up with and started doing a while ago, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's been taught somewhere before. —AFC

Thanks for sharing this idea. I can see this working quite well most of the time, but I can also see it failing a good amount of the time as well.

Here’s why…

You need someone who is expressive enough to react to you saying: “The coin is in this hand.”

But not so expressive that they react to you by saying, “No, it’s not.”

The only way to guarantee they don’t say “No,” is to tell them not to give anything away. But if you were to tell them that, then you wouldn’t know if the coin was in that hand.

I feel like, at the very least, you’d probably have 10% who are non-reactors, and 10% who react when you don’t want them too. Leaving a 20% failure rate. Which is just too much for me.

But I’m a baby. I don’t really like any technique that requires me to gauge my spectator’s reaction in some way. My friends are too unpredictable.

Techniques that require me to interpret what people are doing or saying in real time don’t follow my Carefree philosophy.

But I can see this working well for people who do like to take more risks in their performing. It’s just not my particular style.