The Greatest Trick You Should Never Do

Never do this trick.

This is for entertainment purposes only. If you try and do this and something goes wrong, you're on your own. This is a piece of fiction written up as if it's instructions for a magic trick. Yes, it's probably one of the top 5 magic ideas ever created and yes, it's actually do-able. But don't do it!

Effect

A dollar bill is borrowed. A corner is torn off. The bill is vanished.

It reappears in your spectator's vagina without you ever touching her or even getting near her.

Imagine

Your friend Meg is coming over for the evening. After getting dinner together and watching a movie she asks if there's anything new you're working on magic-wise.

You: Oh, don't even mention it. It's just going to put me in a bad mood.

Meg: Why?

You: There's this convention coming up next week where a bunch of magicians get together. And there's this one woman named Esmerelda who will be there. I'm not even sure if that's her real name. We've had this kind of back-and-forth thing going for a few years.... You know how some people will get in a prank war? Where each person tries to one-up the other with a more devious prank? Well magicians have a similar thing with this trick called "Bill to Impossible Location." The idea is you vanish a bill and make it appear somewhere that seems impossible. And they'll go back and forth over the course of years sometimes, each trying to top the other person, trying to get the bill to reappear in a more impossible location until one of them finally gives up.

Meg: This is the strangest hobby...

You: So maybe you'll have the bill reappear taped to the ceiling. Or in someone's salad at dinner. Or in the cash register at the next store you walk into. These are all the sorts of things we would do. But last time we got together she really blew my mind. She borrowed a bill from me. Made it vanish. And it reappeared back in my wallet. 

Meg: That was the most impossible location?

You: Well, for me it felt that way. Your wallet is so personal, you know? And it's something I had on my body. So it seems unfathomable that she could breach that personal space. And now I'm racking my brain trying to come up with some place that would be even more impossible.

Meg: Hmm...

You: What do you think? I mean....

Meg: What if you had it appear in an egg? That would be impossible.

You: Hmmm... yeah, I guess... I'm trying to think of someplace more personal. Because she kind of raised the stakes when she had it go to my wallet. Can you think of a place on her that would feel like a real violation of her personal space like that? I don't know... maybe in her sock or something?

Meg: Oh, I know.

You: What?

Meg: [laughing]

You: What?!

Meg: Her vagina!

You: haha. Yeah, perfect! "Uhm, excuse me madam, could you please remove your panties? Now, I haven't touched your pussy, have I? I've never met your pussy before? I didn't speak with your pussy before the show? Your pussy isn't a stooge, correct?" Can you imagine? 

[Silence]

You: But you know.... I wonder if.... It could be possible. Do you have a dollar on you? Can I try something?

Meg: No way. What are you thinking?

You: Can I try it with you?

Meg THAT?!? Uhm, I'm not sure this is the best time. You know... time of the month, I mean.

You: What am I? 14? You think I'm scared of your period? It doesn't matter. I don't even need to touch you.

Meg: Aggghhhh... Okay... how can I refuse this. 

You borrow a dollar from her and ask her if she has a pen or marker. When she says no, you say it's not necessary and you rip a corner off the dollar for her to keep. You place the dollar between your hands and close your eyes for about 10 seconds. When you open your eyes you look and the dollar it is still there. You say cryptically, "Hmm... it must be too big to pass," and you fold it up into a smaller package, hold it in your hand, and when you open your hand it's gone.

Meg: No way.

You motion for her to remain still and your eyes look up and dart around like you're trying to sense something in the distance. "I think it might have worked," you say. A look of disappointment crosses your face. "Actually, it might have just gone to your back pocket. Can you check?" She checks and there's nothing there. "Damn, this might actually have worked. Go see. You might have to dig around in there a bit." 

She leaves for the bathroom. A moment later you hear a scream. She comes back in the room holding her tampon string in one hand with a bloody dollar bill dangling from the end. 

You grab the bill and unfold it. "Does the corner match?" you ask. Of course it does.

Method

You're going to gimmick a tampon so your wife/girlfriend/hook-up/close friend ends up loading the bill inside herself without knowing it. 

Being magicians, I know a lot of you are completely unfamiliar with a woman's anatomy. For you a pussy really is an impossible location. You couldn't find the clit with a geocaching app. So you sure as hell aren't familiar with how a tampon works. Here's a quick lesson. The tampon is just a piece of tightly pressed cotton with a string attached. It often comes in a cardboard applicator which is a small tube inside a slightly larger tube. The tampon is inside this and when the small tube gets pressed into the larger tube, the tampon goes inside the woman. 

When the tampon is in the applicator the only part of it that can be seen is the very tip, like the tobacco in a cigarette. What you're going to do is pop the tampon out of the applicator, remove 80% of the cotton, and replace it with a dollar bill set up with the torn corner. Then you're going to reinsert the tampon into the applicator and put it back in its original wrapper and seal it up. The details vary from brand to brand and you're just going to want to pick whatever brand your spectator uses (and "spectator" was never a more inadequate word to use than in this trick.). The ones I have spread all over my coffee table at the moment are Tampax. These are easy to work with and come in a paper wrapper that is easy to secretly open and reseal.

I'm not going to get into more specifics because you're not really going to do this.

Now you just have to get this tampon in play somehow. I think the easiest way to do that would be to invite your friend over, swap this with the tampon in her purse without her knowing, and then just spend enough time together until she needs to make a change down there. Or if you live with the person you could mark the wrapper in some way and put it in her box of tampons and just pay attention until it gets used. Or you could set up a whole box with Joshua Jay's torn corner technique. And then no matter which one she chooses, you'd be ready to go and you don't need to track which is the right corner to have on you. (You can find Joshua Jay's torn corner method in a number of places including at least one of his online lectures and DVDs. You don't have to buy it individually. It's really good. And I'm sure he's super happy I'm mentioning it in association with this atrocity of an effect.)

Of course this all is predicated on a certain level of intimacy because you would need to know when this person is on her period. But if you're not close enough to figure that information out, you shouldn't be contemplating an effect where something goes into someone's vagina. This is not a tablehopping effect.

You might wonder if the bill can be felt. I think the answer is "probably not." I had a willing friend test this for me. I gave her one of the gimmicked ones and she thought she could feel it at first. But then we did a double-blind, russian roulette style test where 1 of 3 tampons that I gave her were gimmicked. She tried each one in turn and she decided that she couldn't really tell which was which. Of course, some women may be more sensitive down there than others. If she notices it before the trick -- if she comes out the bathroom saying "There was a dollar in my tampon." --you just play dumb. Say something like, "That's a strange way to give a rebate."

The rest is just a traditional torn-corner bill effect. ("Traditional" other than the whole vagina part.) Your spectator will do the loading of the bill herself. See below:

And now you're set for a bloody miracle!

Sundry Drive No. 3

It feels like TV magic is bigger than ever in the US. No, there's not really a Copperfield or Blaine who is doing one of those big annual specials. And that's unfortunate. But what's kind of amazing to me is that there's a bunch of smaller shows that are bringing in an audience to watch magic on a weekly basis. And from my understanding, show likes Penn and Teller's Fool Us, The Carbonaro Effect, and Wizard Wars have all been successes ratings-wise. One thing to note is that, inherent in the premise of all of those shows is the notion that these are tricks. In one way or another they're all celebrating the idea that it's not real. Those of you still holding onto the idea that a magician has to convince people that there is "real magic" are being left in the dust in regards to what an audience considers artistry in modern magic.

---

A lot of people say they don't like doing Out of This World with the full deck because it takes too long for the spectator to deal through the whole deck. If you can't keep people interested for the length of time it takes for someone to deal through a deck of cards, then perhaps entertaining people with magic isn't in your future. You might be better suited to a different hobby like... oh... say, crushing cardboard boxes to get them ready for recycling.

---

I wanted to thank Andy Martin for letting me steal the picture of the $14 card from Color Monte off his site. Well, I mean, I asked him after I had already done it, but he was cool with it. I follow the maxim: It's easier to ask forgiveness than ask for permission. (But beware that I did not find that to be an adequate defense in my sexual assault case.)

---

An easy way to fuck with people's heads is to have one of those cheap plastic money printers in your house and then, without saying anything, print out some $20s in front of someone before you go out to dinner or order food in. When you're done just say, "Don't tell anyone you saw that." To make the charade complete you need to pay for dinner.

By the way, the reviews for this on Amazon are outstanding.

Look at This Adorable Knucklehead

It's Saturday so I'm taking it easy, but don't worry, I've uncovered a goldmine of comedy/magic writing. Back in the waning days of my Magic Circle Jerk blog, somebody got a wild hair that they were going to take me down a peg or two by creating a... well... I don't really know what to call it. Like a satirical version of my site?

But Andy your site was already a comedy site. That doesn't really lend itself to parody.

Yeah, I know that, and you know that, but this guy hadn't quite figured that out. So in the spirit of someone doing a spoof version of The Onion or parodying a Weird Al song, he created a blog called The Magic Circle Jerk and for one morning in November of 2005 he fumbled his way through three posts dedicated to me. His angle was, "This guy jerks off!" A "critique" that would perhaps work better if his target audience weren't magicians, a group whose dicks are rubbed so raw they could lay them across rice and technically consider it sushi by FDA standards. I mean "Best Masturbator" is a FISM award. Producers of The Magic of David Copperfield VI had to inform a shocked Copperfield he couldn't lazily stroke his cock to Turning Japanese by The Vapors as he floated over the Grand Canyon. That's just how accepted self-pleasure is in the magic community.

But still, I give him credit. If I wasn't intelligent or funny and had nothing to say, I would never have the gumption to start up a site -- even if only for five hours. So, to whoever that anonymous goofball is, I salute you. I'm sorry it took me 10 years to even stumble upon your scathing critique, but I'm here now to give it a wider audience. It was a giant swing and a miss, but at least you tried. Here is THE Magic Circle Jerk.

Practical Magic Week Part 5: Youtube Magic in the Real World

One of the first things that showed to me that the online magic community was full of shit was when you would hear people -- mainly on The Magic Cafe -- say, "It doesn't matter that this can't be examined. If you're a good magician the audience won't be interested in the props." You hear this a little less now, but back in the early days of the Cafe this wasn't even debated really, it was just taken as a fact. You would hear it from well established names in magic. And I kind of believed it at first myself, but then I noticed something. The more interested and captivated the person I performed for was, the more they wanted to see the props. It was only when someone was indifferent to what I was doing that they would give a polite, "Oh, cool," and then move on. 

And the better I got at performing, the more I experienced this problem, not less. On the Cafe people continued to beat the drum that if you're talented enough, people won't be interested in the props. And I can see that being true in some circumstances. If you're doing something with a gimmicked clipboard then the audience shouldn't be clamoring to see the clipboard. But if you're doing something where the effect is a state change in an object (it changes color, grows in size, links to something, etc.) then isn't wanting to see that object the most natural, positive reaction for a spectator to have? Even if Jesus himself came to earth and picked up a green leaf and changed it to red, my inclination would be to want to see the leaf. Not because I question if he really did it, but because the human response is to want to see something that has undergone some kind of transformation. And if I reached for the leaf and he immediately put it in his pocket and said, "Let me show you something else." I wouldn't think that was good audience management, in fact I'd go from thinking he was the son of god to thinking, "This asshole has a trick leaf!"

That's when it dawned on me: These people are all shitty performers and they're trying to reframe the lack of interest by their spectators as something positive. "I'm such a good magician my audience couldn't give a fuck about what I show them!" That is some grade-A rationalization.

I love a really beautiful, visual trick. But so many of them can't be examined and/or require your audience to be at a very particular angle. These tricks are often derided as "youtube magic," because a lot of people think they're only good for putting up on youtube. But that's not really the case, you just need to create a situation where you can naturally control a person's viewing angle and remove the notion of an immediate examination of the props. 

Here are three ways I do that.

Skype

Okay, this one is perhaps too obvious, but it bears mentioning. Performing for people live over skype is a great way to perform your visual/non-examinable magic. Skype and Facetime are normal methods of communication these days. There's nothing gimmicky about it. Step into the Now, grandpa. 

My favorite thing to do is to text someone late in the evening and ask if they're free to stop over. Because it's late the answer is usually "no," which is what I wanted in the first place. I didn't want them coming over and eating my chips. When they say they can't I act disappointed and ask if they can hop on Skype for a few minutes because I have something I want to show them. I then show them a trick taking advantage of all the benefits of performing magic to a webcam: the static angle, the ability to drop stuff off screen, switching things out of frame, secret assistants just out of view. I take advantage of ALL of this. My friends are less likely to think of these methods because the implication is that I wanted to show them this effect live and have only settled for doing it over Skype.

One of my favorite Skype performances involved calling up my friend on her birthday and talking to her from my bedroom. Behind me was an easel with a covered painting on it. I told her it was her gift but I wasn't sure if she'd like it and before I gave it to her I wanted to ask her some questions about gifts. So I asked her what the best thing she got this year was. I asked her what the best gift she'd received in the past. And I asked her what would be the best gift she could ever imagine receiving in the future. When we were done I said that I thought she actually might like what I made for her. I brought my laptop over to the easel, uncovered it, and it was a funky, impressionistic painting of her and the three gifts she mentioned in our conversation. How? I had a friend laying behind my bed painting the picture as we talked (it was done with paint markers, actually). He painted my other friend before the Skype call even started so there was plenty of time to do her, but he still did it in a somewhat simple style to match the rest of the painting. As I talked with her he would paint each thing she mentioned, and I would just keep her talking about each gift until he gave me the sign to move on. A good artist can paint something that is at least representational of, say, a toy stuffed elephant, in a minute or so. When he was done he just slid the painting up under the sheet that was covering "the canvas" and hung below the frame of the video. (There actually was nothing under the sheet except a rod to give it the shape of something being there.)

Through the Looking Glass

As is true in a lot of cities these days, you can't smoke in bars in NYC. I don't smoke myself but I always step outside with my friends when they do because I like being outdoors. My one semi-regular hangout is a bar populated by mostly by actors and comedians. The front of the bar is head to toe windows. One chilly fall night I was outside with some friends and while they were smoking I was looking through the window at some other friend who were still inside. I had my messenger bag on me and inside was a trick I'd just received in the mail earlier that day. I'd been playing with it as I rode the subway into Manhattan. The trick was The Poker Test. A trick that looks great but pretty much demands to be examined when it's over or else the obvious explanation is "tricky cards." I pulled the cards out of my bag and tapped on the window to get the attention of my friends who were inside the bar. When they turned towards me I performed the trick. They were definitely into the performance and fooled bad by the trick. Had I planned for this I would have had a duplicate set of cards to have in my hand when I walked back in, but instead I just put the cards back in my bag as I went in. Because they weren't seeing me in the immediate aftermath of the trick, the impulse to examine the cards had blown over.

In the time since then I've performed dozens of tricks this way. I actually find it very esthetically pleasing to perform magic outside, through a window, to a group of people inside. It's also interesting visually to be outside -- possibly in the rain or snow -- lit by a street lamp and doing something impossible. It's a different thing for me because I'm performing silently, which is obviously a big change from the verbose presentations I usually have. I like to incorporate the window itself when I can. For instance I'll draw a circle on it in dry-erase marker and have objects in my hand change in some way as they're seen through the circle, then change back as I pull them outside the circle.

This might not be the most practical suggestion but it works for me and some of you might find value in it.

Camera Obscura

This, on the other hand, is a very practical suggestion for any time you want to perform something one-on-one that is particularly angle sensitive and might have issues.

It's a very simple idea but I use it all the time. It gives your spectator a sense of getting an insider's peek at your process (which, as I've mentioned before, is something I find people really enjoy), it gives them a different context to view an effect, it anchors their perspective, it creates a potential souvenir of the moment, and it gives you a natural offbeat to switch or ditch gimmicks. It's simply this: I just ask them to use my phone (or theirs) to record the trick. You tell them it's something your working on and you'd like to get it on film. When you perform they generally watch the screen of the phone and aren't trying to get in potentially bad angles. At the conclusion of the trick you get a moment to relax and ask, "How did that look? Did you get everything?" etc. And in that moment you can switch out your gimmick (if possible) or at least defuse their inclination to immediately examine something in a way that seems natural because you've given them something else to think about without rushing them on to another thing entirely. And if the trick looks great on video you can send them a copy as a souvenir. At the very least you have a copy for the purposes of self-critique. It's like a win-win-win-win-win-win.

Practical Magic Week Part 4: Fixing Your Elmsley Count

Practical Magic Week Part 3: Billets

This is a simple idea for anyone who uses billets in their magic and mentalism. In fact it's such a simple idea that it must have been mentioned before in some classic mentalism book that I've never read. But if it has been then people clearly missed it because it completely solves one of the issues people have with billets. 

What should you use for a billet?

Some people use their business cards. The argument against this is that you shouldn't fold or tear your business card because you're essentially not respecting your own brand by destroying this thing that is a representation of you. I don't know if I believe that. That seems like some voodoo shit. But I don't completely disagree. Your business card also might not be suited for billet work. It might be too thick or an odd shape. Or you might not even have business cards which is more of an issue for the amateur magician who is my target audience.

Some people use blank pieces of heavy paper, perhaps on a little pad that they carry with them. Do you want to carry a little pad along with you? Are you trying to get beat up? "Where's my little pad! I thought I put it in this pocket with my coin purse." No, the little pad or stack of blank business cards is only acceptable in a formal show where you're expected to have props. For the casual performer these things are a no-no. 

So what do I suggest?

Business cards!

Uhm, Andy, that was the first thing you mentioned, dingleberry.

Oh, right. No, I don't mean your business card. And I don't mean going to the Chinese restaurant near you and grabbing a stack of theirs. I mean going to Vistaprint and spending 10 bucks to print off 500 business cards for a real or fictional third party and then using those when you perform. There are some obvious and not so obvious benefits to this.

1. You're not destroying your own business card.

2. You're not carrying around a little pad of blank paper like a little fancy-boy.

3. It's a normal object that you would expect to find in a wallet.

4. If you use your business card or a blank card then the idea of duplicates is inherent in the prop itself. You don't ever buy just one business card, or one piece of blank paper. These items only exist in multiples. So it's not difficult for a spectator to hazard a guess that there might be a switch involved. Alternatively, if you open your wallet, flip through some stuff, and toss out someone else's business card, this feels much more like it's the only one of these that can possibly be in play. Want to ramp up this singularity even more? Take a pen and write "4:00 Tues." in one of the corners on the business card. Do the same on a pre-folded duplicate. You can now switch these in and out and a duplicate will be so far away from people's thoughts.

5. They can be an unspoken status symbol. Remember, you can create a business card for anyone you like: someone prominent in your area, someone in the entertainment industry, someone in politics. You don't make a big deal about this. Let the other person mention it. For example, maybe I'm about to show someone a trick, I open my wallet looking for something for them to write on and toss Elon Musk's business card onto the table and say to myself, "yeah, I don't need this...." The other person might look at the card before or after the effect and ask why I have it. I'd just be like, "Oh, we were at the same event a couple weeks ago. He wants me to do his Christmas party this year. But that time of year is all about family for me. And as far as I'm concerned, fossil fuels are the future."

6. For me, this is the biggest benefit. Your business cards and blank pieces of paper are presentational dead ends. But you can create a business card to use in one effect that could lead the conversation in any direction you'd like it to go for a follow-up effect. You could have a business card for someone at the FBI, for a parapsychologist, for a futurist, for a casino CEO, for anybody. Why do you have this business card? You've been asked to consult, or give your input on a project, or they want to study you. Whatever, but it's all very fluid. If you're going to perform more than one effect in a casual situation then the transition has to be completely natural, and this gambit allows you to seamlessly flow into any other type of effect. 

Now obviously this isn't the solution for an effect that requires a lot of billets ("Why do you have ten business cards for Alan Thicke?"). But for any center tear, peek, billet switch, or even just an effect where you're writing down a prediction, a sham business card can be a valuable tool. 

Practical Magic Week Part 2: Three Analogies

Imagine you met someone who was into LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) and he was saying to you, "I'm a 12th level mage and so I only dine on elf meat and I turn invisible at 2am and 2pm or whenever I encounter a princess. My dragon's name is Vincent and we live on the Isle of Valderloo where there has been a fairy uprising for the past 1600 years."

Now imagine you meet someone who is into LARPing and instead he talks to you about trying to track down some period-appropriate buttons for his jacket on ebay, and how there was this big argument at the last gathering because some people wanted a gluten-free menu and others were up in arms that they wouldn't have had such a thing in the Middle Ages, and how at the last weekend-long gathering the two rival kings were caught having sex in a sleeping bag, or whatever. 

In the first scenario you may find it interesting to hear about this fictional life, but you won't connect with that person on any level (unless you're a fellow LARPer) because it's all fantasy. He's not giving you anything to relate to. In the second scenario you can connect with this person because he's expressing his love for this hobby in a manner that allows you to draw correlations to things in your life. 

I mentioned yesterday about breaking down the barriers between you and your audience. Try to put things in a context they understand. Not by anthropomorphizing your props, like you would with a child. But by giving them insights into this notoriously clandestine hobby. You might think that will "break the spell" in some way. But it doesn't. What breaks the spell is saying, "This is the most powerful ace and all the other aces follow it." That's pure fantasy. And worse, it's dull and boring fantasy. I mean at least with the LARPer there was a fairy uprising. By giving people ways to help understand magic and ways to understand you, you are giving them ways to connect to the experience. And I've found that this makes the actual magic effects you do more powerful, because it's harder for them to dismiss the whole thing as weird, or childish, or un-understandable. 

Here are three analogies I've used in the past which help to give insight into magic as a performing art, or justify a process, or explain the limits of your "powers."

1. "Do you come up with these tricks yourself?" 

I would not be surprised if this is a common analogy to use. But I haven't personally read it before and I think it really helps people understand a little about where tricks come from and what your role is in the process.

When someone asks, "Do you come up with these tricks yourself?" 

My answer is, "A lot of them I do, yes. And some of them are like my versions of effects that have been around for years. There can be many different ways of accomplishing the same effects. Some magicians specialize in messing with what your brain processes, some in messing with what your eyes see,  and some in messing with what your mind remembers. So there can be all sorts of ways to achieve the same effect. Think of it like recipes. There are 1000 different recipes for chicken parmesan. A real chef is probably going to have her own particular recipe for that dish. And a truly great chef will have a lot of recipes for things no one else have even thought to create. It's kind of like that in magic too. I would say about half of the things I do are unique to me. 45% are my version -- my recipe -- for an already established effect. And then 5% of those things are just me doing another person's trick. You can be a great chef, but there are times where you come across a perfect recipe and don't want to change a thing. Here, let me show you one of those perfect effects now..."

2.  "If you can read minds, how come you didn't know I put my testicles in your milk?"

I don't do too much traditional mindreading these days. Or effects where I'm picking up body language hints or something like that. But in the past when I did I could sometimes sense a strange energy at the end. If you're performing for friends, family, co-workers, or anyone you might see again in real life, they're often left with one of two thoughts:

"Who the fuck is he kidding. I know he can't read minds."

or

"Can he really do this? I don't want him constantly analyzing me."

Here is an analogy I use to address both situations i.e., those who know I can't read minds or those who are concerned I might be able to. So if someone says, "If you can read minds, how come you didn't know I put my testicles in your milk?" Or if they say, "So are you just always analyzing everything someone says and trying to look into their minds?"

I say, "That's not really how it works. It's not just something you can do all the time. It's something you have to focus your mind to do. Like, try this, I want you to pay attention to how many Ts are in the words in the following sentence. Ready? [Slowly] 'I went to the store and got some toothpaste." Any idea? Six? No it was eight. Reading minds is like tallying the letters when someone speaks. Except not just the Ts, but every letter. It's something you can train yourself to do, but it's so mentally taxing that it's just not something you would go around doing unnecessarily. So don't worry, your thoughts are safe." (Or, "So yeah, I didn't know you put your testicles in my milk. I'm not always 'on.'"

3. "If you're reading my mind, why do I have to write it down?"

This is a question a lot of mentalists worry about a lot. The concern about this question demonstrates a profound lack of creativity in the mentalism community. First a lack of creativity about coming up with rationalizations for writing something down. And second a lack of creativity with coming up with presentations that aren't such direct lines between method and effect. Yes, if you have someone write something down and then you immediately tear it up while kind of obviously looking at it, it's not much of a stretch to figure out that you just read what they wrote down. So much of mentalism is "You write it down, I secretly read it, then I write it down." That's a failure of structure. 

Regardless... if someone were to ask me why they needed to write something down one of the things I might say is, "Do you really want to get into it? It's kind of complicated. Okay, have you seen the studies on how writing something down increases the likelihood of you remembering it? Well, that's because when you write something down you need to link the spatial part of your brain -- the part that you use when making marks on paper -- to the verbal part of your brain. It's like when you take notes during class as opposed to just listening to the teacher. Anyway, it's the link between the spatial and verbal parts of your brain that I'm able to tune into."

"Oh, so it always has to be written down?" they might ask.

"No, not necessarily. It's just a more difficult process. We can try it without writing anything down. It helps if you can see the word in some form even if you don't write it down [then I'd go into a bulletproof version of the Hoy book test I do] or if you just want to think of something I could probably figure it out but it wouldn't come to me as a full word [progressive anagram]."

The beauty of this is that it not only clarifies an effect but it also justifies the process of it and the different processes of the follow-up effects.