Revelations Follow-Up

I was asked:

When I see products or tricks that have very specific forces built in (the jack of spades is holding the 3 of diamonds, the four of clubs hidden the Sharpie logo, and the like) I pull back.  Because of the magician's brain I am thinking it's just a force and the audience is going to think it is a force. OR even if they don't know that it is a force it feels less magical because it was preordained.

For example, I have no problem at all using a cross cut force. When I see another magician use that it doesn't cause the same response. I think that is because that is the method, where the reveal being etched in stone is effect and maybe(?) that is why I am bristling.

I'm not looking for convincing on the merit of any particular method or effect. Instead I'm asking how to manage this blind spot so I'm not missing out on something that creates a real sense of wonder for those I am performing for. —GM

The subject line of this email was: "How to get out of magician brain?"

The truth is, this is not "magician brain." This is just regular human brain.

We did focus-group testing of revelations back in 2018. Here's what our results were.

If you have a seemingly immutable revelation, then people are always going to assume the card was forced on them.

And if the force you used was a Riffle Force or a Classic Force or some other quick force that doesn't emphasize a genuine choice for the spectator, then that's all the trick is going to amount to in their head. "He must have made me pick the card that was embroidered on the back of his jacket."

The problem here isn't that they didn't believe the embroidering magically appeared on your jacket after they selected the card. They're never going to believe that.

Even if you spread an ungimmicked deck on the table face-up and let them select any card, they're still not going to think the embroidery popped into existence after their selection. They're still just going to think, "How did he make me pick this card?"

That's okay, because that's still a trick. There's still a mystery there.

The problem comes when you use a force they can easily brush off as a force (Slip Force, riffle, classic). If they don't have any conviction that their decisions made a difference along the way, then they will brush off the whole thing as a force.

You can't eradicate the idea of a force completely. You can't keep them from saying, "He must have made me choose that card." But with the right techniques, you can make them follow that thought with, "Wait… but how could he have made me choose that card?"

You can make “It must have been a force” an unsatisfyingly incomplete answer to what they saw.

Even then, as I said yesterday, I don't think Card Selection —> Card Revelation is that strong of a trick.

But if you're committed to doing one (or if you've invested in one of those props with the baked-in force), here's how to make it as strong as possible:

• Look for forces that involve genuine selections and free choices along the way.

• Consider Bi-Reveals

• Add trickery to the reveal itself. If I can show you the back of my jacket at the start of the trick and there's nothing on it, then you can't just brush off the whole thing as a simple force. Now we're approaching an actual strong trick (if still a kind of stupid one).

Revelations

You have talked and posted a lot on card forces along the years. Specially on making them bulletproof. Reverse psychology force, damsel technique, carte blanche, etc.

Do you have any interesting uses or revelations for those?—JFC

I'll start by saying I don't think a force followed by a card revelation is particularly strong magic. It's a little too much like… Set Up > Punchline. "You picked a card. And that's the card that's on the back of my shirt." It's too tidy for my tastes.

I don't really have catch-all revelations that I use frequently. Revelations that can be used in any situation tend to feel generic (because… well… being able to be used anywhere at any time is almost the definition of generic).

But there are some directions you can go in to create stronger card revelations.

First, let's imagine the most basic card reveal. They pick a card and you turn over an index card that was on the table and written on it is the name of the card they chose.

If that's the most "basic" reveal we can imagine, what directions can we take it to make it more powerful?

Here are some directions I've explored and what I've learned from them. I'll finish with my favorite technique.

Make It Bigger

The larger the physical revelation is, the greater impact it tends to have.

Not because the trick becomes dramatically more impossible (though it does become harder to imagine switching a large, committed prediction), but because large revelations are inherently more memorable.

When I revealed a force card with 100 candles, the moment stuck far more than it would have with a simple written prediction.

The scale of the reveal creates its own memorable atmosphere and ambiance. People don't remember the specific card necessarily, but they remember the feeling of walking into that candlelit room.

This works as a way to build up an otherwise standard card trick. But I think you really only get one of these moments per person you perform for. I used to think if their card appeared on a billboard one time, and then in skywriting another, then spelled out in seashells another, it could "feel" like three different types of tricks. But I think audiences are savvier than that. Unless you have a really compelling storyline that goes along with the reveal, I think they see them as similar effects.

Make It Permanent

Another direction to go in is to make your reveal permanent:

• A tattoo

• Etched in marble

• Carved into a tree

The fact that the revelation is going to live on long after the trick has ended gives the trick more resonance.

This works fairly well to lend weight to a reveal. But it can feel sort of arbitrary on its own.

Ideally, the permanence has some purpose. Otherwise they’ll feel like, “Wait… why didn’t he just write that on an index card?”

Make It Personal

I've found that the more the spectator is integrated into the revelation, the stronger it is.

For example, turning over a matching card on the table is nowhere near as strong as revealing that they're sitting on a matching card.

Other examples where the spectator is "close" to the revelation in some way:

- You ask them to close their eyes while you put a necklace on them before the trick. At the end they pull the necklace out from behind their shirt and see that the pendant matches the card they selected.

- In Joshua Quinn's Penguin Live lecture he has the participant repeat a specific sentence, which he records on his phone. The spectator then selects a card. When the sentence they spoke earlier is played backwards, it reveals the card they selected.

- You tell them you'll teach them a trick but they have to take an oath not to tell anyone how it's done. You take a picture of them taking the oath.

After that, they select a card, the 5 of Hearts, for example, without you seeing it. You "read their mind" and say they're thinking of the 5 of Hearts. "Want to know how I did it?" you ask. And you reveal they didn't freely select that card. They were drawn to it because you planted the seed, which they picked up on earlier in the interaction. And you draw their attention back to the photo.

People expect to be part of the selection of the card. Being part of the reveal of the card is unexpected and makes the whole thing feel a little more intimate and personal. Especially when compared to pulling out your Magician's Insurance Policy or something like that.

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All of these techniques work to some degree. But my favorite approach, which gets the most affecting reactions is this:

Make It Old

When I can make the revelation feel like the culmination of something that began days, weeks, or years earlier—that's when I get the strongest reaction.

Examples:

- In my last book, I had a trick where the prediction was found in my old high school yearbook in the message left by this "weird kid" I went to school with. (That trick wasn't strictly a card force/revelation, but it's close enough.) Making the prediction something that is decades old gives a whole new feel to it.

- Get an old photo of you as a kid sitting at a table. Photoshop a playing card on the table and then get a hard copy version of the photo printed out and display it somewhere. You can now offer to show someone the first card trick you ever learned. They select any card and before they turn it over, you say, "I already know it's the 10 of Clubs." You then explain it's always the 10 of Clubs and bring their attention to an old framed photo of you on a bookshelf with you and the 10 of Clubs on the table in front of you.

- Sit down with your friend, chat a bit. At some point say, "I'm having the weirdest sense of deja vu." Shake it off. Have them shuffle and deal off some cards. "Wait," you say, "Did I already show this to you?" Your friend doesn't think so. "Huh, it's that weird deja vu again." They finally select a card, turn it over. It's the 4 of Diamonds. You look at it. Furrow your brow and say, "No way. I remember what it is now." You bring them back to your bedroom and dig in your nightstand. "Last year I was keeping a dream journal for a few months. I sort of gave up on it because it wasn't that interesting. But look…" You flip to an entry you made 14 months ago about a dream you had where your friend came over and they picked a card and it was the 4 of Diamonds.

You can leave some blank spaces and write in Frixion pen or erasable ink so you can re-use that entry for other friends. You can leave a blank for what they're wearing as well, which you fill in earlier in the night before you do the trick.

Old children's drawings, letters from deceased relatives, a voicemail or answering machine tape, doodles in a school notebook, inscriptions in a book, etc. Anything that feels like it's been around for a while could make a good "substrate" for a prediction that seems old.

With planning, you can do something that genuinely is old.

Whenever I'm visiting friends or family with very young kids, at some point I will secretly shoot a video with the kid where I spread a deck and have them take one. I'm talking about young children, as young as little infants who have to crawl to the cards. I'll say, "Okay, Timmy. What card is she going to choose?" In some manner the kid will identify a card. Either by picking one up or moving it or whatever.

I will then wait as long as possible to perform a trick for their parent. The longer you wait, the stronger it is. I've waited years to finally perform this. The longest I've waited is 14 years. I had my friend pick a card and I said, "And Tim [her son] is going to tell you what it is." I called Tim into the room. "What card did your mom pick?" Tim, who is in high school now, is like, "I have no clue." "You forgot?" I say. "Oh, come on. Well… you knew it at one point, dude." I shake my head. "Hmm… maybe I still have that video." I look through my phone. "Yup, here it is." Now I'm showing him and his mom a video of him in his playroom as a kid crawling up to a spread of cards, pulling out some and chewing on one. The same one his mom would pick years later.

You might say, "Well, the reason that got such a good reaction was because of the emotional element of seeing her child from all those years ago." Yes, of course that's true. That's a particularly personal usage of the technique.

But even with the less personal examples cited above, there’s something about the apparent weight of time behind a prediction that makes it more intriguing. Whether they fully believe the “age” of the prediction or not, it can make people feel as though they’ve been swept up in a story that was already in motion. And that’s a much more powerful place to land than, “Here’s something I just wrote down about that thing you just did.”

Mailbag #163

I’m writing in relation to your recent post about John Bannon’s 51 Fat Chances. Like you, I also ran into issues with the final Australian count elimination. Much of my audience has a background in science, and they quickly realize that the process is entirely deterministic (although, admittedly, one probably doesn’t need a science degree to notice that).

For this reason, I very much welcomed your proposed alternative using prime number principles combined with a Flavio Josephus–style elimination procedure. I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this type of elimination significantly expands the options and flexibility regarding the final number of cards in the remaining pile.

Specifically, in addition to 7, nearby prime numbers such as 11 and 13 (and even 5, though it may be a bit low) work just as well. With 11 or 13, the procedure functions in the same way and arguably looks even more impossible. Numbers one above or below those primes can also be handled using the same solutions you already propose for cases around 7.—MO

Yup, this is a good point. You’ll have to handle the original discards slightly differently (perhaps only doing it twice if you’re going with 5, or having them discard “3 or 4” cards each time if you’re going with 11), but this would definitely work.

I may end up shifting to one of these options. When asking for a “magic word” to use with the effect, I feel you often get something in the 6-8 letter range, which isn’t ideal as far as looking fully random. So doing it with 11 cards may be a better option. Although that does extend the final selection portion somewhat, it might be worth it.

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As the #1 Jerx Points…haver… guy, I think it’s fair to say I’m your #1 fan. So maybe that makes me overly-defensive when it comes to your work, but I was wondering if it drives you crazy when you see your concepts shared without any recognition of your role in creating or popularizing the ideas. It makes me nuts. Like seeing someone cover your favorite band and not call it a cover song.

I read an article online about extending your magic tricks so they don’t conclude until hours or days later and your site wasn’t mentioned at all. As if this was just a common technique regularly used by magicians before you started writing about it. I see it all the time with various ideas you’ve written about. Even just the concept of “social magic” was something I never heard codified or talked about before you.

I told you before to start a Jerx Did It First series to deal with these guys. Don’t let your legacy be diluted! —EV

First, I appreciate your passion, but chill.

Second, no, it doesn't drive me crazy. If attribution was super important to me, I would have written this site under my own name.

A couple times a week people send me articles or posts that are reiterating concepts I've written about on this site without any reference back to it. It’s sometimes strange, but not at all upsetting. (It's weirder when they're charging people for their reiteration of something I wrote here for free.)

As dumb as this site can be, I also know that it changed the way people think about amateur/social magic, because it wasn't something people considered much as its own distinct thing before I started. The problem, I think, for anyone writing about the subject after me is that it wasn't like there were a bunch of people talking about this branch of magic and they're just adding their voice to the chorus of people writing about it. Instead, it was a subject that was hardly ever talked about. Then I came along and blitzkrieged the subject for years. And then other people came to it later. So it’s difficult for them to seem like they’re doing anything other than repeating ideas I already covered.

I genuinely don’t care one way or the other about credit. But if you’re writing about a niche subject that’s been covered extensively by a well-known writer in that area, then—for your own sake—you should credit them. Not as a courtesy to them, but because it helps you. It shows people what you’re building on, which lets them see what your unique contribution actually is. Without that context, your ideas just get absorbed into work people already associate with someone else, and your own work becomes invisible.

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When is the Zero Carry issue of Keepers planned for? —AMD

It probably won’t be a single issue. It will probably be a recurring feature in the magazine going forward. More details on this in a post later this week.

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Any advice for someone starting a magic blog in 2026? (Other than “don’t waste your time.”) —CR

Yes. Do not use AI to do the writing for you. When people read a blog, it’s not just for information. The best blogs allow you to feel connected to the person writing them. You get acquainted with their style, sense of humor, thought patterns, personality. And then, on some level at least, you feel: “Oh, I know this person.” And that satisfies a biological need for connection.

You may see your writing as this imperfectly jagged crystal and think, “I’m going to use AI to polish this up.” AI will polish it to a smooth sphere. It polishes everything into a smooth sphere. It will polish you to blandness.

We thought AI would help everyone express their ideas by turning them into “good” writers. Instead, it made “good” writing so commonplace it’s meaningless. And now individuality and personality matter more than ever. So make sure your writing expresses that and sounds like you.

Also, don’t waste your time.

Dustings #140

There is nothing quite like the gentle beauty of hand shadow puppetry.

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When I'm done with this site, I'm going to do a large-format, Taschen-style coffee table book of emails from people offering to send me their product for free if I'll talk about it on the site.

And then you’ll see my response where I say, "I don't really do that, but if you want, you can send it to me and if I like it and end up using it, I’ll write it up for my review magazine. Or if you want it on the site, you can send ti to me for my What's the Worst Thing About series.”

And then I never hear from them again.

Now, I don't mind. I don't need more stuff to write about. But it's somewhat telling how much "I'm going to tell people the worst thing about your product" scares people away. Is that not exactly what you expect someone reviewing your product to do?

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Craig Petty has made a habit of "exposing" his tricks on his YouTube channel (for example, this video that he put up just hours ago) so you know what you're getting when you buy it. That's a pretty bold thing to do, especially because I know Craig came up in the same era that I did, where we were told the secret is what you were buying.

In an email earlier today, Ellusionist tried a similar thing.

The Jungle Book Test - Method Revealed

A stupidly simple book test anyone can learn in like 10 seconds. There are 2 words to remember - and 1 of those words is 'remember' to make it even easier. The pages repeat the real story with the first word on each page changed to either the word MOON or the word REMEMBER. They open the book to any page. No force.

They remember the first word from that random page You ask them 1 question "could you easily draw a picture of this word? And then NAIL their freely chosen word - because nobody can draw the word 'remember' BOOM. Mind freaking read!

Here's a bit of marketing help for Ellusionist, or anyone taking a similar route in their marketing.

DON'T EXPOSE THE SECRET IF THE SECRET IS THE ONE THING EVERYONE IS HOPING IT ISN'T.

Inelegantly jamming the same two words at the start of every page of the Jungle Book is not a selling point.

The fact that you have to use your own book is already a weakness. The fact that they can only look at the first word is a weakness. The fact that it's fully unexaminable is a weakness. And now you're saying, "It also uses the first method a reasonably intelligent spectator might assume." You should have kept that part to yourself.

Here's what your selling point should have been: "It's bad, but that's why it's $15."

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Please Don’t Kiss Someone Using a Trick You Read on This Site

I know you said in Monday's mailbag post that you should only doing the kissing version of the candy heart trick if you're performing for someone you're *already* kissing in your real life. But I was thinking maybe it could be used to cross that kiss barrier with someone you've been flirting with. I'm 16 and the girl I'm interested in likes magic so I was thinking of showing her that trick to sort of break the ice between us. I would ask her first to make sure it's okay. What do you think? Besides that I'm a pussy for being scared lol —DF

Noooooooooooooo dawg.

[Sorry everyone. Most of you don’t need this post. As someone writing a blog about a subject some young people have an interest in, I feel compelled to step in here.]

I have a general rule about not telling 16-year-olds how to kiss. But I promise you that you don't want your first kiss with someone to be brought on by a trick you learned on The Jerx.

I get it. You're nervous. You maybe don't have much experience. And asking someone if they'll kiss you "for a trick" feels like a less risky approach. But I promise you, it will come off poorly. Even if she's into the idea of kissing you, she'll be bummed that you resorted to this as a way to make that connection.

Kissing is simple. Find an excuse to sit next to her and have a conversation. At some point scoot in a bit closer to her. Let your knees or arms touch. When the conversation lulls, lean in a little closer, your head towards hers. Pause here and say something simple and complimentary. "I have so much fun with you." Whatever. You're still just talking, but now your faces are much closer. After a moment lean most of the way in. Pause right before you get to her lips, make eye contact a final time then close your eyes, and go in for the kiss. Easy.

"At what point am I going to ask her permission to kiss her?" You're not. "Yes, but consent—" Ah-buh-buh-buh. Yes. You're getting consent every step along the way. When you sat close, did she shift back? When your knees touched, did she pull away? When you leaned in, did she move back? When you told her you liked spending time with her, did she smile or did she go into some long soliloquy designed to slow your roll? Is she making eye contact or averting her gaze?

I'm assuming you can interpret social cues. If you move close to her and she moves back, you have the information you need. She's not into you or not comfortable moving to the next step. Let it go.

You don’t have to follow the exact step-by-step thing I wrote above. The point is that you’re scared of making the move because you’re thinking of it as one thing. “I want to kiss her!” Like you’re going to sprint at her from 50 yards away and just pounce on her with a kiss. But that’s not how it works. What you want to do is make a series of small overtures, giving her time to react and respond. If she’s into you and not pulling back, there will be a point where you are so close that it will be awkward to not kiss her at that point. And that’s your moment.

If you must rely on a magic trick to help you on your journey, you can use the conversation heart trick, but don't ask her to kiss you.

Tell her to chew one up and then spit into your mouth and you'll tell her what the heart said.

If she refuses, she doesn't even want to get within spitting distance of your mouth. She's not into you.

If she gets close and gives a dainty little "twah" and just sends a little spittle your way, she might be interested because she's playing along in a cute manner.

If she hawks a brown, chewy loogey down the back of your throat, she despises you.

The Two Ways I Vanish Coins and Why

A couple months ago, I wrote about an inherent flaw I see when false transfers are used for a vanish, which is that people just sort of figure them out. Whether you're doing a basic French Drop or a more beautiful, refined coin vanish, the reaction is usually the same. The hand opens to reveal the coin is gone > brief surprise > then their eyes go to the other hand.

You might think, "Ah, I need to ditch the coin before I reveal it has vanished. That way, when they look to the other hand, it's empty."

That's the right instinct, but it's not enough. You can't just false transfer then ditch the coin in your pocket while you focus is on your other hand.

I mean, you can do that, and it will work, just so long as you're performing for the guy from Flowers for Algernon right as he's beginning to turn into a moron again.

This is something I see magicians do a lot. They give their spectators credit for having half a brain, but never a full one.

If we agree that a person might assume the coin never went in the hand, then it's also not a huge stretch to think that you might have done something with the coin while they weren't focusing on the wrong hand. Ditching it in your pocket isn't the master deception you imagine it to be.

After the previous post, a few people emailed to ask what I would use to vanish a coin.

Well, ideally, you need a vanish with a ditch that happens before the coin disappears and without the dirty hand going out of "frame." Without it being dropped by your side.

For that reason, here are what I consider to be the two strongest coin vanishes in real-world performing situations. Others may look more magical to the eyes, but I've found these to be the strongest when it comes to preventing the spectator from thinking, "Well, he must have never put it in the hand in the first place and then he got rid of it somehow."

First, there's the one where the coin is false-transferred via a thumb clip and then secretly ditched into the breast pocket while the dirty hand waves over the hand "holding the coin."

[GIFs below are just to illustrate what I’m talking about. I think these vanishes work best in the real world, not on video.]

I believe this is the Bobo Complete Vanish from Modern Coin Magic. (Thanks to Tyson R. for the credit.)

Everything here feels fairly natural. The wave is justified as a "magical gesture." But if you don't like that, you can find some other excuse to bring your hand toward your body briefly (you can bring the dirty hand up to scratch your chin, for example—I like to leave some scrambled eggs on my face from breakfast to dry throughout the day, that way I always have a fully justified reason to bring my hand toward my face: I'm a disgusting slob).

My second favorite vanish is what I called the "best coin vanish" years ago. Although at that time I didn't fully know why it was so good.

In that post there are GIFs used to point out the naturalness of this vanish as opposed to most vanishes. But in making that point, I didn't do what I do in real life, which is to lap the coin while I pick it up, and then pretend to place the coin into the other hand before vanishing it. (I'm not suggesting I came up with this. I think it's how most people do it.)

This transfer of nothing from one hand to the other really strengthens the vanish. It gives people an extra step they need to go backwards in order to unravel what happened, and I've found people are shockingly bad at going more than one step backwards with what they saw. It's like when you're listening to someone drone on and they say, "Are you listening to me?" And you say, "Yes." And they say, "What did I just say then?" And you say, "You said the grocery store wasn't stocking the brand of pecans you like anymore." Now, if the person asked you what they said before that, you'd have no idea. The fact is, you weren't listening. But we're good at reiterating something that just happened. But going two steps backwards is something we have to be prepared to do.

With this vanish, I feel spectators "remember" you placing the coin from your right hand into your left. But they don't really remember never seeing the coin in the right hand. And that's because the way the coin is picked up is so natural that it raises zero suspicion.

These two coin vanishes give me two options: one I can do standing (so long as I have a breast pocket) and one I can do seated at a table. These cover most circumstances that I find myself in.

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A final option:

A few people wrote in after the previous post to recommend a steal instead of a false transfer, and they all pointed to Ben Earl’s work on this as the place to learn it. I haven’t looked into this myself, but everything Ben does looks great and I’m sure this is an excellent option.

Quinta Crib

Quinta, the forcing procedure popularized by Phill Smith, has always been one of the go-to tools in my toolbox. Pick up Phill's ebook if you haven't already to explore all the ways this can be used.

After I posted the Paper Gameboard idea, Oliver Meech sent along this email regarding Quinta…

Try as I might, I find recalling the rules for where to start and how to move tricky to do under pressure. So, a while back, I came up with an idea for a crib sheet. While it didn't feel very organic, in the context of playing a game with sheets of paper, it could fit quite well.

The idea is to disguise the crib as a 'random number picker' - a page covered with different numbers, so they can close their eyes, drop their finger onto the page, and see what number they are pointing at. It's a bit like the ones in some classic choose-your-own-adventure-style game books.

This is good to see. Many people would be too busy hanging their heads in shame if they hadn't mastered the elementary school-level math Quinta requires by middle age, but rather than let it hold him back, Oliver came up with a way around it.

I'm just busting his beans. While I use Quinta a lot, I still have to build in some sort of natural pause in my presentation to go through the process in my head. It's not fully automatic.

However, with this crib, it will be. The numbers themselves tell you everything you need to know.

Here's how it works.

It looks like just a jumble of numbers (I made this with all two-digit numbers under 50, but you could do more or less), but it allows you to do Quinta with no thinking.

If they choose a number on the left-hand side of the Random Number Generator, you will start from the left-hand side of your row of objects. If it's on the right-hand side, you will start on the right.

(Or you may think of it as starting from the Force Side or Opposite Side. Or, if you prefer to do Quinta as I do where I always tell them where we're going to start, then if they choose a number on the right side, that means you need to switch the orientation of your selections.)

If the number is straight up and down, you'll be doing the Move Count. If it's tilted, then you'll be doing the Object Count. This should feel intuitive. The orientation of the number tells you if your finger (or game piece or whatever) is starting straight down on the first object or off to the side.

(If any of this feels underexplained, it's because I'm expecting you to have learned Quinta somewhere to fully understand it.)

Ways to Utilize It

As Oliver says in his email, you can have someone point blindly to the page and go with whatever number they think they're closest to.

You could have them pierce through the page from behind with a pencil and go with the closest number to the hole.

They could throw a dart at it.

If you have two people, one could point around the page at random until the other person (whose eyes are closed) tells them to stop.

Or the second person could be whistling or playing a song on their phone, and whenever they stop the music, the other person stops moving their finger, like Hot Potato.

The idea being that this is a way to choose a truly random number between two people. The first doesn't know when the second will say stop and the second doesn't know where the first is moving their finger to.

If you're only using one person, then your justification for using this is that just asking for a number is never truly random. "People tend to go for the same number," blah, blah, blah.

Thanks to Oliver for sharing the idea. You can download the version I put together here. Although you may want to put together something nicer looking. I'm fairly certain I got all the numbers in the right position/orientation, but I've been confidently wrong about simpler things, so you may want to double-check.