The Paper Gameboard: A Quinta Concept

When Demian Max wrote me about his Quinta Trainer which I posted last week, he also mentioned using The Pointer Principle (as explained in this trick) with Quinta.

I liked the idea, but really only thought it would be good for situations where you already have a deck of cards in play.

But after giving it more thought, I came up with this framing for Quinta.

It’s the most neatly constructed way to present the Quinta concept that I’ve ever come up with. All the “pieces” make sense, nothing has to be justified, and everything seems to be under the spectator’s control. And it’s fully impromptu. (You will need to know Quinta for this to make complete sense.)

Here’s the general idea…

You ask for a sheet of paper and a pen.

You fold the paper and tear it into these pieces. (The letters are just there for reference. They’re not there in performance.)

Fold piece B in half the long way, and ask them to tear out a little paper doll human from it.

While they do that, you write the potential options for the selection procedure on pieces D, E, F, G and H, the force object on piece D, which is the slightly larger corner piece (exaggerated in the image above). Place those face-down on the table.

When they’re done, give them piece A and tell them to crumple it into a ball.

While they do that, draw an arrow on piece C, pointing towards the rough edge.

When they’re done, ask them to mix up the smaller pieces face-down on the table. After they’re mixed, place them in a straight line, with the force piece (obvious because it’s the larger corner piece) in the force position.

Now you explain everything.

“Okay, what we’ve done is made a little gameboard here. These pieces are the spaces you can land on. This little man is your game piece. This arrow is the spinner. And this ball is one of those big 50-sided dice. We’ll use the die to determine how many spaces you move, and the spinner to decide which side you start on.”

Have them roll the ball and tell you what number they imagine they rolled.

You now know where they need to start from.

“This arrow doesn’t really spin, of course, so I’ll just turn it over and rotate it a few times….”

Turn the arrow face-down and rotate it a few times, stopping with the untorn-edge facing the end you need to start the counting from.

“Now it’s up to you. Do you want to turn the paper over to the left or to the right. Wherever the arrow ends up pointing is the side we’ll start from.”

Due to Paul Harris’ Pointer Anomaly, it doesn’t matter which way the arrow is turned over.

You now take the game piece and set it on the first piece on that end or just outside of it, depending on what you need.

Verify the number and then count, using the game piece, to that position on the gameboard and it will be the force outcome.

You can, and probably should, emphasize that they mixed up the pieces, “rolled” the number, and determined which side to start from.

You’ll need to find the broader presentation for this yourself. This works great with Phill Smith’s Nameless Example patter in the Quinta Ebook. Or you can use it to force the one good option in a sea of bad. Or the one bad option in a sea of good.

You don’t need to be doing a presentation based on “games” for this to make sense. Ultimately, this can be seen as just a more fun and “random” way to select one of five possibilities. So whatever your premise is, you can potentially fit this version of the force in it. It is, of course, a rather leisurely way to force one in five items. So the pacing would be a more important consideration than whether the “game” concept is thematically consistent with the rest of the trick.

The value of the Paper Gameboard presentation is in these elements:

1. That it stretches out the selection procedure (which is usually what I want).

2. That it turns that procedure into a more recognizable process (counting along a game board is something people have done since they were three).

3. That it makes the process more interactive and fun than just naming a number. The paperdoll they tear out is frequently an abomination and good for a laugh by itself.

4. That it adds more randomization elements.

5. That it’s fully impromptu.

6. That it smooths out the Quinta “rough spots.” (How you count and which end you start on.)

Baseline Magic

One of the questions I get most often is:

“I like this trick a lot. The reactions have been so-so. How do I make it stronger?”

And then they’ll link me to some Tenyo-esque nonsense or some garbage where you draw a stickman on a card and he jumps around to different cards or something like that.

Here’s the thing, you can’t take every goofball magic trick that appeals to the 13-year-old in you and make it some overwhelming mystery.

The good news is: you don’t have to.

It’s fine to have stuff in your repertoire that are just obvious “magic tricks.”

In fact, I recommend it.

My overarching narrative is that I’m “into magic.” As part of that interest, I’ve gone down some bizarre paths, explored unusual techniques, and wandered into subjects only loosely connected to magic. That’s the true(ish) story behind my interest in magic and the more obscure concepts that I’ve learned about.

But my narrative never suggests I gave up on standard tricks. Showing someone a straightforward effect doesn’t undermine the more unreal or immersive material I might share later.

And having part of my repertoire devoted to just regular “magic tricks” gives me something to perform when I don’t feel like doing anything substantial—or when I know the people I’m with wouldn’t appreciate the heavier material.

Plus it allows for interactions like this…

Them: Do you have any new tricks?

Me: Not really. I haven’t been focusing on magic much the past few weeks. I got sucked down this weird rabbit hole recently. Actually… can I try something with you?

This allows me to use basic/baseline magic they’ve seen from me in the past as a standard and springboard to present them with something stranger or more interesting.

I’ve always aimed to create presentations that work best as a contrast to standard magic. But most people don’t have a magician in their life. So it’s up to me to establish the baseline with fun, lightweight, maybe forgettable material—so that later I can come back and blow their minds.

This is not only a strong long-term way to share magic. It also means there’s room in your repertoire for anything you enjoy.

Mailbag #149

When you were starting to explore weird presentations, Presentations that are so over the top that they “self disclaim”… what helped you get used to keeping a straight face and treating it like a “fact” (inside the fiction)?

I find that depending on the premise, its very hard for me to always keep a straight face.

I have noticed i can keep a straight face if there is a “logic” that I can understand and follow. For example: if i imagine something, is it in my head or is it a window to another dimension? (To me this has a “logic”, even if its weird. The logic would be that if there are multiple dimensions that also means that whatever i imagine is necesarily happening in some other dimension… so imagining something could be just a window to it)

On the other hand lets say i dont have a logic that to me “makes sense”.
For example. Another idea im trying to play with: so there is this ritual that the CIA discovered when they were experimenting with remote viewing. The problem with it was the middle step of this ritual involved palm reading the targets. So they planted multiple gypsy agents that could “offer” palm readings to the targets they wanted to spy on. Obviously it wasnt a real palm read, but it acted as a bridge…(Unless i actually say that this story is horseshit im actually not confortable keeping a straight face. I just end up laughing myself)

So, how do you keep a straight face when you are trying to have fun but also be convincing and not break the fiction for them? Even when they know its all made up. You dont actually want to be the one that takes them out of it.

It might just be too big of a jump for me right now. Maybe i just have to build to it more. —JFC

Honestly, this never really came up for me. Mostly because I wasn’t following anyone else’s blueprint by reading about it on a blog. I was just doing what felt natural, so I wasn’t pushing myself past my comfort zone in that way.

It sounds to me like you have a hard time keeping a straight face when you can’t manage to fully buy-in to your presentation. It’s not like you’re just “so amused” that you’re compelled to laugh. It’s more like you’re lacking confidence in the premise and “breaking” is your way to lower the tension in that moment.

This is very common with magicians. They often do things “with a wink” or “with tongue in cheek” as a way to say, “Relax, I’m not taking this too seriously.”

It’s human nature to do that when we’re not fully confident. Playing it off like you’re just screwing around lowers the stakes. That’s why guys are usually more comfortable tossing out a corny pick-up line than walking up to a woman and saying, “I just had to say you look incredible in that dress.”

That being said, I think you have three options.

1. Filter it. Use your inability to keep a straight-face as a filtering system. If you don’t have the confidence in the premise to play it straight, then it just doesn’t make the cut for your repertoire.

2. Frame it. Explain early on in your presentation that the premise sounds ridiculous. “I can barely keep a straight face when I think about it. But apparently it’s true. Or, at least, there are a lot of people who believe it.” In this way, you’ve “framed” your inability to keep a straight face in the narrative of the presentation.

3. Sit in it. If you’re letting yourself smile or laugh as a sort of “escape-valve” to break the tension—as a way to say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m in on it too’—just realize you don’t need to do that, because magic has a built-in escape-valve: the climax of the trick.

Try to practice sitting in the tension at least until that point. Afterward, you can drop all the pretense and make it clear it was all bullshit. “Yeah, I was just messing around.” But train yourself to sit in the discomfort without needing to let them in on it at least until that point.

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Re: The last item in this Creep Update

The venue (House of Magic) that hosts the SAM#4 and Jeff Carson is owned and operated by Marc Desouza who should know better, he's currently Vice President of the SAM and a multi time national award winner. Yes, the SAM that just months ago (May 2025) had a cover story about Youth Protection in Magic in their MUM magazine. 

The Theater (Smoke and Mirrors, inside the Venue is owned and operated by Danny Archer and Marty Martin). 

Those 3 plus former SAM president [Mike Miller] and Jeff Carson/Leach/Ron Geoffries used to run  "The East Coast Magic Spectacular" together. They are all close which is why Jeff continues to be welcome at SAM #4 events and that venue. I prefer to be anonymous but a google search will turn up those names all over the place together.—XX

Hmmm… okay. That sort of explains things. I was wondering why this essentially unkonwn performer was even being asked to lecture at this place, given his history.

Here’s that “history” courtesy of Philly Mag.

According to the indictment, he was accused of molesting a girl more than a dozen times, starting when she was 10. In that indictment, Leach was accused of “placing or rubbing his penis against her,” “having the victim touch his penis for the purpose of sexually arousing or sexually gratifying himself or to humiliate or degrade” her, “showing videotaped pornographic images of adults engaging in sexual behavior” to her, and “masturbating in view” of her. Because Carson pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, there was no trial and no judicial determination that those were the specific acts in which he had actually engaged.

But okay, I guess this clears things up. The people behind the scenes are buddies with the guy. So they’re cool with it.

Let’s just hope they’re not that cool with it.

I mean, the last theater that hosted Jeff Carson was this one…

Which was run by this guy…

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Do you still do the focus group testing of magic tricks and moves and all of that? I’ve missed reading those posts. —CA

Yes and no.

The friends I started testing with years ago and I still get together a couple times a year. These days, most of that work is contracted testing for a performer we’ve been collaborating with.

Part of the reason you don’t see as much testing written up here is:

1. It’s really expensive.

Which I’m fine with, but also…

2. We’ve already tested most of the “big” questions that have a real impact on performance.

I don’t want to test stuff just to test stuff. I want results that either answer a fundamental question or give us data that’s broadly useful. Things like: which forces are most deceptive, whether audiences inherently understand invisible thread, if conditions should be stated or implied, whether props need to be examined, what triggers suspicion… those felt worth the time and financial investment.

But once the question becomes, “Does this specific move in this specific trick fool people?” the return on investment drops off.

All of that is to say, yes, the infrastructure to do the testing is still in place. We’re just waiting for the right questions to test.

Dustings #131

GLOMM Lodge #1 has finally been established. (See here for how the GLOMM Lodges started.)

Lodges are local chapters of the GLOMM. (See how to start your own chapter here.)

You might ask, “Are these real organizations?” Well, much like true love or Bigfoot, they’re as real as you want them to be. Do they have meetings and dues? Not as far as I know. Unless they want to. People are free to run their Lodges however they like.

We currently have four recognized branches:

GLOMM Lodge #1
West Lafayette, Indiana

GLOMM Lodge #2: The Mastodons
Melbourne, Australia

GLOMM Lodge #3: The Coyotes
Eugene, Oregon

GLOMM Lodge #4: The Otters
Sacramento, California

If you’re in one of those areas and want to “join,” let me know and I’ll connect you with the contact person for that branch.

GLOMM Lodge #1’s mascot is The Does

Doe? A deer? A female deer?

Yes. This name references West Lafayette’s white-tailed deer population.

It’s also a nod to the fact that Lodge #1 currently has two female members and one male, marking the first time in magic history that a magic organization organically had more women than men.

(Not counting the all-female groups that feel suspiciously like they were dreamed up by men to keep women out of the “real” clubs. You know, like the Brilliant Order Of Bewitching Sorceresses. Or the Koven of Illusionists, Thaumaturges, Conjurers, Heroines, Enchantresses & Necromancers, with their telling slogan: “Are you a woman in magic? You belong in the K.I.T.C.H.E.N.”)

Any men in the West Lafayette Lodge will be known as Gentleman Does.

But that doesn’t make any—

Zip it. The South Carolina women’s basketball team was the Lady Gamecocks. There’s precedent here. Plus, the Gentleman Does is a dope name.

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From Demian Max:

I’ve updated the Quinta Trainer with some great suggestions:

1. You can now adjust the difficulty by choosing the timing in Adaptive Settings.

2. You can also use audio — someone says a number, and you need to identify which side to start from in Speak Number. This makes the training much closer to real-life conditions.

3. And the best one: instead of clicking in three different places (left, right, basic, or bounce), now you just tap the side you start from — by clicking on 1 or 5 — with the new Fast Tap mode.

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Look, I don’t promote my stuff here (or anywhere, for that matter). And I don’t encourage others to do so either.

But, that being said, if you have the Jerx App and you haven’t been using the Echo Sync trick, you’re missing out. I know if you already had the app when this dropped, it might feel like a “freebie” and easy to shrug off. But just imagine you paid $60 for it instead. It’s that strong.

For the past month, I was pairing it as a lead-in to Christian Grace’s excellent SAM app. But I had to stop because Echo Sync was consistently hitting just as hard, if not harder. At a certain point, it didn’t make sense to stack them.

When they can see themselves on video reading your mind, it’s incredibly strong.

The Jerx Impact Law

From the article: Nobody Wants A Robot to Read Them a Story!

I don’t intend this site to become an anti-tech or anti-AI site, but it may become, more and more, a pro-genuine-human-interaction site.

That’s always kind of been the point since the beginning of the site. But as the world drifts further online, further depersonalized, and further disconnected, the impact of your magic will rise dramatically to the extent you can make it offline, personal and a source of connection between you and your audience. (See the concept of Front Porchers.)

The Jerx Impact Law

• Magic shown directly to one individual is at least 10x more impactful than the same trick shown generally to a crowd.

• Magic shown in person is at least 100x more impactful than the same trick seen online.

• Put those together, and magic shown in person, for one specific person, is at least 1000x more impactful than the online version.

I’m not just throwing out a large number to make it sound impressive. If anything, I’m underestimating.

In fact, with the right presentation, you can take a trick that would be forgotten within 2 minutes if someone watched it online and make it a moment they will remember for years. That’s actually far greater than a 1000 to 1 impact.

Jason Ladanye has almost a million Instagram followers. He’s doing great for himself in that medium. Two months ago I met someone who told me he was a “big fan of Jason Ladanye.”

“I haven’t watched too much of his stuff,” I said. “What are some of his videos I should check out?”

He couldn’t name one. This “big fan” didn’t have a district memory of a single video. He didn’t have a favorite one. Or one he hated. Or even just a random one that popped in his head.

That’s not a Jason issue. It’s emblematic of magic online. It’s fun, maybe interesting, but instantly forgettable.

In real life, though, it can be the highlight of someone’s week at the very least. It could be the moment they think of and the story they tell whenever the subject of “magic” comes up the rest of their lives.

Some magicians worry that online magic will “destroy” magic. But I think it’s just destroying online magic. It’s too easy to write it off as a camera trick, AI fakery, stooges, etc. This distrust and disconnection to digital stuff actually gives the offline material you do more weight. That’s not just wishful thinking. People are accustomed to seeing and scrolling past the unbelievable and impossible online. But when you can do the unreal in the real world—and do it well—you unlock the potential for something undeniably powerful.

Quinta Trainer

The Quinta forcing procedure by Phill Smith is something I’ve written about on this site for almost a decade.

Only recently did I learn that the idea predates Phill and actually belongs to Stephen Ablett. It can be found in his book Body Tricks in the effect True Love. Well, it could be found in that book if that book was anywhere to be found anymore. It’s not, from what I can tell. (There’s a video with the same name that’s available, but it doesn’t have that trick.)

This is not to underplay Phill’s contributions to the Quinta concept, which are immeasurable. He expanded, simplified, and popularized the idea. And may have even independently created it. (I don’t know the exact history of if he was inspired by it or hit upon the idea himself.)

I’m not trying to strip Phill of his credit, only to recognize that Stephen Ablett put it into print first (about a year before Phill) and should be recognized for that.

That being said, the definitive place to learn the technique and the possibilities with it is in the Quinta Ebook from Phill.

For those who are learning the technique or need a refresher, Demian Max has put together an online app that helps you practice. You can check it out here. It will allow you to test yourself rapidly without having to actually count it out each time to make sure you got it right.

Thanks to Demian for letting me share it with you. As I’ve said often, I think Quinta is an essential technique to know for casual performers, and this will help you get comfortable with it quickly.

24 Disarmers

Magic is so much associated with expressing how clever or “special” you are, that anything you do that undermines that notion is incredibly disarming to people.

It’s like the classic conman move where you give the mark something first (a little money or a small gift). That upfront generosity lowers suspicion, because if someone’s giving you value, your brain resists the idea that they’re trying to take from you.

In magic, I try to do the same thing—except instead of giving away money or favors, I give away the power behind the trick. Sometimes in a way that feels real, sometimes in a way that feels fantastical—but either way, it scrambles expectations. Because the subtext of most magic—whether it’s your seven-year-old nephew or David Copperfield—is basically: “This is a contest. I win if I fool you. And fooling you proves I’m special so you must clap or validate me in some way.” That’s the dynamic people expect.

I want to break that expectation. So in almost every trick I do, I frame it in a way that undermines that model. A framing that downplays my power. That’s very disarming for people who assume the only reason to do magic is to show-off. And it primes them to experience the trick in a different way.

I’ve been writing about this since the beginning of this site, but now I’m formalizing this type of technique with a name: A Dis (plural: Disses)

“Dis” is short for Disarm. But it also plays on the slang “diss” (as in, a diss track). Because in a way, that’s exactly what you’re doing—you’re dissing yourself, undercutting your own power on purpose.

Which brings us here. Below are 24 Disses—broad categories of framings you can use to strip your power when performing

Disses

1. I didn’t do it, someone else did.
   A real or imaginary third party is the one responsible for the magic.

2. I didn’t do it, you did.
   Spectator-as-magician/mindreader.

3. I didn’t do it, some formless power did.
   Fate, luck, coincidence, karma.

4. I didn’t do it, this mystical object did.
   A crystal, charm, cursed relic, haunted object

5. I didn’t do it, this new piece of technology did.
   A futuristic device, app, AI, gadget.

6. I didn’t do it, something paranormal did.
   Ghosts, spirits, ESP, aliens.

7. I didn’t do it. Nothing happened. You’re imagining things.
   Magic as gaslighting (or gaslighting as magic)

8. I didn’t do it, that’s just a weird quirk of mathematics.
   Probability, number patterns, statistics

9. I didn’t do it, that’s just a weird quirk of psychology.
   Suggestion, perception, memory.

10. I did it, but I didn’t mean to.
    Happy accident.

11. I did it, but I was trying to do something else.
    The effect appears as a mistake or failure, not something you’d take credit for.
    “I was trying to make it vanish, but it just shrunk a little. I suck at this.”

12. I did it, but the amount of time I put into this worthless skill is more pathetic than impressive.

    Undermining the impressiveness of what you did by suggesting you invested too much time/energy to make it happen.

    “Yes, I can cut to the aces, but only because I was a loser with no friends who could devote three hours a day for years to learning this skill in high school. You could learn it too if you invested that much time. In fact, you could probably learn it in less time than I did.”

13. I did it, but I don’t know how I did it.
    Performer plays confused or out of control.

14. I didn’t do it, this is just something that always happens.
    An improbability that bizarrely always occurs

15. I didn’t do it, nature did.
    Gravity, magnetism, animal intuition.

16. I didn’t do it, this old custom did.
    Tradition, folklore, rituals.

17. I didn’t do it, science did.
    Framed as physics, chemistry, or other science demo.

18. I didn’t do it, a temporal disruption did.
    Time travel, time loops, multiple universes.

19. I didn’t do it, your perception did.

    Déjà vu, lost memories, Mandela effect.

20. I didn’t do it, it was always going to happen.
    Destiny or inevitability frame.

21. I didn’t do it, the trick does itself.
    Framing something as “self-working” when it’s not.

22. I did it, but only because I cheated.
    Presented as exposure, but really layered deception.

23. I didn’t do it, this is just the way the world works if you pay attention.
    Magic presented as heightened observation

24. I want to do it, but I don’t really know how. Can you help me with this?
    Changes a trick from “Behold, my power!” to a humble, collaborative experience where they’re pulling for you.

Notes:

1. The audience doesn’t have to believe your framing to be disarmed by these things. The simple fact that you’re not explicitly taking credit changes the dynamic. They don’t need to buy that your childhood invisible friend is whispering the card in your ear. Just by framing it that way, you’ve shifted the experience out of “battle of wits” territory into an immersive fiction.

2. You do have to actually invest in the premise, though. If you just toss off, “Do you believe in fate? I believe I’m fated to win every poker hand I play,” before going into your card trick, it will just come off as patter. And they probably won’t even remember you said it.

   But if you build a premise around the frame, you can make it matter to people in a way that hooks them. “I haven’t really played poker in…gosh…over 20 years, I guess. I used to play every week back in college. But one time I was rushing to a card game off campus and I ran over my neighbor’s cat. She was this old woman—everyone called her The Witch. We meant it as a joke, but when I told her what happened, she just held out her hand, twisted her fingers into this awful shape, and muttered something in what sounded like Latin, or maybe something even older. Then she told me I was cursed to never win another poker hand. Ever. No matter what, the cards would always turn against me. I can show you. Let’s make it simple and just use 10 cards…”