A Brief History of Magazines for the Amateur Magician

This is brief, not because I'm being lazy. It's brief in the same way an article with the title, "A History of Joshua Jay's Heterosexual Sex-Conquests," would be brief. By necessity. (Yes, Josh is married, and yes his wife is a knockout. But let's be honest, no one has said, "Actually, I think I'm just in a cuddling mood tonight. Cuddle-Monster time!" more than our boy, JJ.)

In researching magazines geared towards the amateur magician, the first thing I came across was this magazine with outstanding cover art, but a dubious title. 

No, I kid. Of course, magic is fun. I mean... not the way you do it. It's a big chore the way you do it. But it can be fun.

Magic Is Fun was published by D. Robbins & Company. It was an "Independent Magazine for the Amateur Magician" that came out in 1946 and 1947. There were 7 issues all together. You can get a complete digital file on Lybrary.com. 

What made Magic Is Fun different from other magic journals is that it was released to the general public on newsstands. 100,000 copies of the first issue were printed! Holy Christ! I mean, I don't know how many were sold, but that's a pretty insane number regardless.

And because it was sold to the public, magicians of the time, predictably, threw a shit-fit because their precious secrets were being discussed. This, ultimately, led to the publisher removing the magazine from the shelves and it died soon after. Here is the publisher talking about the demise of the magazine in the final issue:

Magical organizations wrote us letters protesting the sale of a Magic magazine on newsstands, claiming it would ruin the professional magicians, that we were unethical in selling it at newsstands. Some of the old, established magazines even refused to accept our ads of magical effects. We could have paid no attention to the protests, but on second thought, decided that perhaps it would be better to retain the good will of magical societies and publishers, so earlier this year 1947, we discontinued the newsstand sales of Magic is Fun. By printing only a small quantity of magazines, we found that subscriptions did not cover our costs. There was only one thing left to do . . . stop publishing.

In all honesty, that may have been an excuse as to why the mag folded. I haven't read the magazine itself, but looking at the contents of it, it looks to be a real snooze. 

The next reference I found to a magazine for amateur magicians was in this book Harry Harrison, Harry Harrison by, unsurprisingly, Harry Harrison.

In writing about a guy named Alfie Bester he wrote:

While I can find more info about Alfie Bester, I can't find any other reference to this magazine for amateur magicians. Perhaps he "wrote the whole thing himself" and then "read the whole thing himself" and never actually published it. I don't know. I'd be curious if anyone has any other information on it. 

Now, the truth is, of course, that all magic magazines are for amateur magicians to a certain extent. It's not like Copperfield is flipping through the Linking Ring to find stuff to add to his show that weekend. 

When I say my new digital magazine, the JAMM, is geared towards the amateur magician, I specifically mean the amateur who connects with the style of performance I champion on this site, in JV1, and in TAATKT. Yes, it goes without saying that eventually my ideas will just be the standard for amateur magic, and everyone will walk around feeling like goofballs for the time they spent harping about patter and routining effects together and all that junk. But until that bright future comes, I'll continue to proffer these ideas here and in the new Jerx Amateur Magic Monthly.

That's not to say it will be of value only to amateurs. While its primary focus is casual performances, even professionals perform casually. And there will be ideas and effects that can be used in many settings. The first issue has something that could easily be transposed to the stage. A future issue has a friend's table-hopping routine. But yes, the POV will be the that of the amateur magician. And that's a lifestyle for me. This is a lifestyle magazine. Like Oprah's.

The premiere issue comes out this Saturday and new issues will come the first Saturday of every month. This is a Saturday type of magazine. Not a Sunday thing. This is going to be fun. Not filled with whatever sedative Sundays naturally possess. 

The layout and design of the JAMM will start pretty simple, but will grow as I become more proficient with the design software. Not that many of you give a shit as long as the content is good. I'm content with a relatively simple style starting out. And if anyone complains I'll say they've got it good. For much of my youth, the most popular magazine in magic looked like this shit-show:

And every month they would just swap out one cruddy black and white promo picture for another. The designer apparently asking, "What's a Pantone color that's good for a suicide note?"

The interior looked like it was composed on this:

As I mentioned when the JAMM was first announced, its design is inspired by an old exploitation rag called Secrets.

They had "color" printing on the inside as well. But just one color. Red.

Here was the first test at mimicking that style (before we got the color right) with a shot from The GLOMM membership kit photoshoot.

The entire JAMM isn't in that style, because A) it would be annoying to read, B) it would be wildy time intensive, and C) the pdf file would be huge. It's just the cover and one of the feature articles that are like that. Why did I choose that style? I don't know. I like it. Plus I like the double entendre of a magic magazine aping the style of a magazine called Secrets. See? I'm pretty clever.

This site can only exist via people supporting it through subscribing to The JAMM.  So, if you like this site, and you're not destitute, I hope you'll consider subscribing so we can keep this going for a while. My goal is to get to 100,000 subscribers to match Magic is Fun's publication numbers. As of now, I'm falling short of that goal by nearly 100,000 (if we round). 

And yes, I realize I could shutter the website, just release an 8-page ebook with one effect once a month, type it up in Word with no thought into presentation, and charge more for it than I am for this. I'd probably make more money or, at the very least, save 95% of the time I put into this site. Don't look to me for business savvy. This site isn't about creating a business, it's about creating a symbiotic good thing with all of you.

Subscribe!

Here is the cover for the JAMM #1, hitting your email this Saturday. With Jessica, our lovely JAMM model for February on the cover. (Is there a good name for this? Like you have Playboy Bunnies. And Penthouse Pets. What would make a good JAMM model name? I thought of JAMM Mistresses (after Jam Master Jay) but that's a stretch. Perhaps JAMM Bunnies is good, to keep the magic connection. I don't know. If you have a good idea, send it to me. There will be a reward for you. (JAMM Tart, suggested by Jon Shaw, is frustratingly almost perfect. I'm trying to convince myself it wouldn't be seen as derogatory, but I don't know if I can manage it.)) She's doing everyone's favorite overused "Shush, I'm a magician who sucks at palming" pose. I considered having every JAMM cover model do that, to beat the joke into the ground. But it's just going to be this once. And don't get excited by the headline above the title, that's always going to be taken straight from an actual Secrets magazine cover.

Intent and Approach

[If you're at Magi-Fest this weekend and you would like to connect with other Jerx readers on the down-low, use this subtle code phrase to see if they're part of the Jerx "in crowd." Stare at their crotch, lick your lips, and say, "Oooh, daddy, it looks like you're packing a long-barreled cum gun in your trousers." If they say, "Fully-loaded," then you know they're a fellow reader. If they say anything else, they're probably not a fan. Also, please let me know what they say.]

This is another long, rambly post about presentation. Don't worry, there won't be a ton of these. But things kind of reset with the beginning of year 2 and a lot of new readers have come to the site, so I want to clarify some things for those who haven't read the huge archive of posts. 

In his review for The Jerx, Volume One, Jamy Ian Swiss wrote this, in regards to some of the more immersive effects outlined in the book. 

[T]o me the situation risks leaving the participant with an underlying sense, when the dust settles, of having been the victim of a practical joke. I am willing to accept at face value that the author manages to avoid this, largely by way of his degree of conviction and commitment, and probably a fair degree of personal charm. But I’m not much of a practical joker, and the kind of magic that is sometimes presented with that implied sensibility invariably rubs me the wrong way. At the end, the spectator recognizes that you were prepared for the event, you planned it, you carried it out, you made it happen. Some people will delight in that. Some might be profoundly turned off by the sensation of a sneak attack.

While his assessment of my "fair degree of personal charm" is spot on, I don't think his apprehension about people feeling like they were taken, or the victims of a "sneak attack" is a real concern, even for a charmless bastard like you. Or, at least, it shouldn't be.

I can understand why Jamy thought it could be an issue. One of the reasons I was not particularly hyped to have The Jerx, Volume One reviewed in Genii or other places is that I felt there was a good chance of it being misunderstood. Not because it's so "deep" or "revolutionary," but just because it's kind of a companion piece to this site. I didn't know how well it would work as a stand-alone thing. (As it turned out, I was fortunate to get really positive reviews from Kainoa Harbottle and Jamy Swiss, as well as from John Lovick in his review of AATKT. So now I'm happy they exist and are "in the record," so to speak.) And without the background of having followed this site, it's possible the intent and approach I take when performing wasn't 100% clear. (It may also be due to a failure of my writing because there were a couple issues in Jamy's review where he got what I was intending completely backwards.)

So, for new readers, and as a reminder to old readers, I want to talk about intent and approach. And also give you the rules I follow to keep my style of presentation a fun experience rather than a manipulative one.

First, my history, quickly.

For a long time I didn't perform much because it made me feel awkward. I didn't like performing because I was accustomed to seeing magic as an exhibition of my skill or power. In the best case scenario, people walked away thinking I possibly possessed these abilities. In the worst case they walked away thinking I wanted them to believe I had such skills or powers and just did a bad job faking it.

People would say, "Ah, to perform magic for someone is to give them a gift!" But if that's true, it's often like giving someone a gift that consists of a framed picture of you flexing your muscles. Like, yes, technically that's a gift. But it seems designed to reflect attention back on the giver.

I think a lot of amateurs have this feeling about magic, and so they become people who study magic, but never performed it. That's where I was until I realized I was like a person who read a bunch of cookbooks but never cooked anything. And that's kind of retarded.

What I wanted to do was shift the emphasis off me and on to the experience. (This entire blog could be seen to be the results of those efforts.)

We are accustomed to presenting magic with a certain pace to it. There is a traditional rhythm to performing that is nearly identical between the professional and the amateur. What I was trying to do was take all of the prevailing rhythms away.

And that leaves us with something new. And it's new for both the performer and the audience. If you're interested in the style I suggest here, you have to get used to it. And you have to ease others into it as well.

Here are the rules I follow to draw people into this style of presentation. And once they're in, you don't have to worry about them feeling tricked or manipulated. They're on board.

1. Start slowly - My first trick for someone is never some two-hour weird excursion that comes out of the blue. Instead it's something quick, done in one of the pared-down performance styles I've mentioned on this site. If they're receptive to this then I can push the boundaries on each subsequent performance. Eventually they are just game for whatever you do because there is a history there of them buying in and being rewarded with an interesting experience. Imagine I take you on five dates and we have a really great time. If I suggest we go on a weekend trip, you're not going to think, "This will probably suck," you're going to be pretty positive it will be worth the effort. (And come on, baby, it's been five dates. When are you going to put out?)

2. Perform for people who enjoy seeing this type of stuff - This may seem obvious, but you will read on the Cafe questions about how to perform for people who don't like magic, or grabby spectators, or people who are constantly trying to expose what you're doing. The simple answer is, you don't. Don't bother with them. Seek out the people who are into these types of experiences and proceed with them. That way the experience will feel like something they invited upon themselves, not something that was forced on them. 

3. Don't toy with their emotions - 

Here's a joke you can tell your friends:

You: Did you hear about that actress who stabbed her husband?

Them: No. 

You: Yeah. She stabbed him to death. It was... dammit, what's her name? Uhm... Reese... Reese...

Them: Witherspoon?

You: No. With her knife.

Do people get upset when you tell them this joke? Are they bothered to find out it wasn't a real news story and instead just a bad pun? Do they feel set up? No, because they didn't invest much into it. And they realize that you were setting them up for their benefit.

Traditionally magic has felt like a set-up for the magician's benefit. And that's a bad corner to paint yourself into. Magic can never feel like a "gift" when it's self-serving or manipulative. 

The key is I'm not toying with their emotions by trying to present something as real. I interest them with something obviously fantastic. I don't play around with something hyper-personal to them. If their kid died in a house-fire, I'm not like, "I call upon the ghost of little Toby to move this sponge ball from my hand to yours." I don't even like presentations where it's like, "Our cards matched because we have such a strong connection." I think that's pretty creepy. Instead I like presentations for my immersive effects that are based on alternate universes, time travel, ghosts, esp, aliens, haunted locations, secret societies, long lost twins, dreams, ancient curses and those sorts of things. Things that are interesting, but things that no one takes so personally that they would feel duped or suckered for being wrapped up in them for a moment. As I've stated before, my absolute favorite style of performance is to suggest that what's about to happen is due to something the spectator knows is nonsense. And then do something which gives them no other explanation to fall back on other than that same nonsense. (See The Sealed Room With the Little Door)

Look at something like, "Will You Let Me Into Your Dream." (I'm singling out that one because it's one of the only tricks on this site I haven't had the opportunity to perform myself, so I can look at it as an outsider.) It was a four-day effect when my friend performed it. At the end, everything comes together and it's clear it was all part of a trick. Would anyone feel manipulated or set-up if they were on the receiving end of this? I can't picture that. It's not at a trick at their expense. You would only bother performing it for someone who was into that sort of experience. Someone who would see it as a trick for their benefit.

A practical joke implies someone believing something is real and then finding out it's not. What I want is for them to not know what to believe and then have that ambiguity crystalize into a unique experience.

So the main reason the style I advocate for doesn't come off as a practical joke is that people are under no delusions about what they're seeing. They know it's a trick. The dichotomy of this style is that I suggest removing yourself as the magician behind the effect, but I don't suggest you remove the notion that it's a trick. I never want the spectator to think, "I thought it was going to be something cool, but then it turned out to just be a trick." I want them to feel like, "I knew it was a trick, but it turned out to be something cool." 

As I've said before, I want the trick to feel real in the moment. You go to the movies and you know you're going to a movie, afterwards you know you've seen a movie, but in-between you get caught up in it. 

The point of not taking credit for what is occurring is not so people really think it's a voodoo ritual (or whatever) that caused the effect. It's for three different reasons.

First, it's to free the spectator from feeling obligated to acknowledge your talent/skill. I often find, outside of a formal magic performance, people are a little awkward about how to respond to magic. If someone plays the flute for you—or does any kind of artistic performance— you feel compelled to say, "Hey, nice job," when they're done. But magic, whether it's done well or poorly, is a different thing altogether. They're not quite sure whether to treat it like a trick, or if you want them to pretend you really read their mind, or what. What are they supposed to be complimenting you on?

Second, it puts the two of you on the same side. You're experiencing something together. You can guide their reactions by your reaction.

Third, it forces them to sit with the mystery a little while longer. I had the experience, literally just fours ago, of performing a trick in a fairly traditional way, and the woman I was showing the trick to said, "Ah, you just did something without me seeing it." Like, that was her explanation for how I did it. So she essentially wrote off the whole thing almost immediately. How did that magical thing just happen? Well, he did a trick. If instead I had come up with an alternative presentation that took the focus off of me, she couldn't have backed out of the moment so quickly. 

But she would still know it's a trick. 

Yes. I'm not quite sure how to explain this. Just because someone knows what is true in reality, they can still indulge in the feeling of a fantasy. If you buy your wife flowers she may be grateful or she may be suspicious, but either way it's a fairly straightforward transaction. You buy flowers, she thanks you for them. But what if you sent those flowers anonymously and signed it from a "secret admirer"? She may still know they came from you, but as long as you scratched your head and said, "Huh. Wasn't me. Who is this guy? I'm going to murder him!" Then she just gets to live with the feeling of being someone worthy of receiving mystery flowers. She can't immediately wipe out that debt by saying thank you, because you won't take credit for it. And maybe you spend the rest of your relationship sending her anonymous gifts and never taking credit. Maybe Valentine's day rolls around and you buy her a hand-held vacuum cleaner, but her "secret admirer" sends her a diamond tennis bracelet. "Goddammit!" you say. She plays along and holds her heart and bats her eyelashes thinking about her secret admirer. If you never actually cop to it, then the bubble of the fantasy is never really popped, regardless of what everyone knows the reality to be.

Is this all getting too fruity? It's a little ethereal, I know. I'm just telling you the things I've learned in the past 5-10 years about performing. And what I've learned is that it is always wise to emphasize the interactivity and the mystery because people are craving these things.

People have suggested that technology will kill magic. And I think that's probably true for magic on tv and online. But this is a actually a golden age for live magic. Especially close-up magic. And extra-especially amateur close-up magic. I don't want to sound like Old Man Jerx here, but we don't live in a time of sock-hops and taffy-pulls. We don't even live in a time of going to the arcade and interacting with people while you play video games. These days, if you can give someone a unique experience—one that requires their presence and engagement, that is happening in the moment and playing out live in front of them, that is perhaps grander and more personal than a typical magic trick—it truly is a kind of gift. 

Short and Sweet

I don't really use my twitter much. I already have this site as a place to speak my mind, and if I'm desperate for dull political opinions, I can get that in real life.

But I've decided to start using it more frequently. And, in the ultimate act of subversion, I will be using twitter to say nice things. 

Not in a sarcastic or insincere way.  Not even in clever way. And there is no ultimate payoff to this. I'm not setting you up for anything. So don't be like, "I can't wait to see where this goes!" It's not going anywhere.

So why are you doing it?

I don't know. Why did I pretend like I was doing native advertising for Old Gold cigarettes through the month of December? I follow my whims.

---

Are you interested in The Jerx, Volume One? If so, I would get on that soon. One way or the other they will be gone by the end of February. (I'll either have sold out or I'll take the few that remain to keep for myself.)

But what will my wife say, if I spend $300 on a magic book?

The bigger question is, what will she say 20 years from now when she finds out you could have bought the book that redefined magic—of which only a couple hundred were printed—in its first and only edition for a scant $300? She probably won't say anything. She'll just punch you straight in the jaw. And you'll deserve it.

Raw Materials

I have two tricks I'm working on that I could use some help with. 

For the first, I'm looking for someone near Osaka, Japan who has some free time this weekend. If that's you, get in touch.

For the second, I'm trying to track down this deck of cards.

Ideally a complete deck, if possible. 

If you're able to help with either of these requests, let me know. There will be compensation for both. And you'll see behind the scenes on some tricks I'm working on that will likely never be written up on this site because they are either too complex or the situation is uniquely personal to me.

Wait... the tricks you write up for this site are your non-personal, non-complex ones? 

Yeah, pretty much.

---

This video of a stickman drawn in dry erase marker and doused in water got a bit of traction the past couple of days. I thought it might be bogus, but I tried it with a shitty dry-erase marker I had on hand and had a similar (but shittier) result.  In 3 months when it's forgotten I think it would make a good element of a magic trick, although I'm not quite sure in what way just yet. 

---

I saw Split this weekend and thought it was pretty good. 

I feel like multiple personality disorder would make for a good premise for something because it's inherently fascinating and seemingly somewhat bogus in a way. But I don't have the acting chops to pull it off, so I'd never be able to come up with something I could actually do in order to write it up for here. 

You could do that ace trick where the four aces are lost in the deck and you find each one in a different way, and it could be a different personality that finds each ace. "Hi, I'm Lance, the shittiest personality, so I'm going to spell to your card."

Or perhaps a good long-term gambit would be to tell people you have an alternate personality who can read minds. That way you would never feel like you were compelled to perform, you could only do it when your alter was around. Or if you fuck up a trick in the middle of it you could be like, "Oh damn, Dr. Mesmerbrain has just left. It's just me, Pete. What's going on? You're thinking of a number. Oh, dear. I have no idea...uhm...is it 9? What? It's 400 billion? Damn. I was barely close at all. Come back, Dr. Mesmerbrain!"

---

I want to market condoms that, instead of being lubricated, are coated with Adams Mystic Smoke.

Then, when you're fucking someone, it will start smoking. And if you record it and play it back at triple speed, it will look like you're going so fast your junk is catching on fire.

You can go ahead and add this idea to my file of "100% perfect ideas."

Slay-Them Finalé

Coming in the JAMM #1

Last year I ran a series called Project Slay-Them that was devoted to trying to get people to perform more. In the premiere issue of the JAMM (which comes out the first week of February, btw), I will be running the last article in that series. This article covers the best technique I've found to induce people to ask you to perform. It's a technique stolen from the pick-up artist community where it undoubtedly didn't lead to gallons of poon-tang for anyone, but I've found it very useful in reversing the weirdness inherent in saying, "Hey, can I show you a magic trick?"

It involves wearing this vest and casually opening it every 3 minutes to scratch the side of your torso.

No, it's a little subtler than that. 

If you're interested in the JAMM you can subscribe here.

Rest In Pieces

Imagine

A friend is visiting your place.

"Oh, would you do me a favor?" you ask. You bring out a small box the size of a bible, wrapped in brown paper. "Would you hold onto this for me until Sunday?"

She agrees and asks what it is.

"Uhh... this is going to sound lame," you say. "So I joined this secret game and puzzle club. Yeah... I know. There's this guy called The Puzzlemaster and no one knows who he is, but apparently he's this crazy genius. And if you know the right people you can get on his mailing list and sign up for this interactive challenge he has where every few weeks you get a puzzle of some sort in the mail and if you solve it correctly you get to keep on in the challenge. It's kind of weird. You never get to meet The Puzzlemaster but he holds meet-ups for the members a couple times a year. I mean, ultimately, it's just like this somewhat exclusive secret society and the puzzle thing is the gimmick that keeps it interesting."

"When you finish one of the puzzles you take a picture of it and text it to The Puzzlemaster. If you're the slowest person to complete a puzzle twice in a row you're eliminated from the club or something. They don't talk about what happens if you get booted out. It's some big secret."

"You're into some real weird shit," she says.

"Anyway," you continue, "we're not allowed to start on this one until Sunday and I'm so tempted to open it and work on it that I don't trust myself. He says if we open it early, he'll know. Will you hold onto it for me until then? I thought I could come over on Sunday and we could work on it together."

You shake the box near your ear and tumbling pieces are heard.

"This one sounds like an actual jigsaw puzzle. Usually it's something more cerebral than that, like complex logic puzzles. At any rate I thought maybe we could get together Sunday and put it together and then see a movie or something."

She agrees and takes the box home with her. 

Five days later you show up at her place with some doughnuts. She grabs the box from where she's kept it and brings it over to the coffee table. You ask her to open it (as you finish up your doughnut) and dump out what's inside. Out falls a few hundred puzzle pieces and an envelope with the words "Your Next Puzzle" written on it. 

You open up the envelope and pull out two folded pieces of paper. The first is a short note that says, "I hope you find this to be a really interesting puzzle!" You unfold the other paper and it's a grid of little images.

You notice that all the puzzle pieces are identical in shape, but each has a colored side and a brown side, and on both sides is a little icon that matches one of the images in the grid.

"I guess we just follow this grid," you say. "That seems pretty straightforward. Should we do it colored-side or brown-side up?"

You eventually decide you'll do it brown-side up because the colored side would obviously just look like the image on the instructions. 

So you go through, square-by-square on the grid, placing each individually marked puzzle piece in the location and orientation indicated by the directions.

"This is fun but it's way too easy," you say. "This might just be the first step in a bigger puzzle or something. Who knows."

You continue to put the puzzle together as you watch tv. After an hour or so, you're finished.

You step back from the puzzle and see that it's an image of a woman's face. It's pixelated, but the further you step back, the more the face emerges. What looked like a jumbled mass of nothing up close becomes very clear from across the room. This itself is already kind of magical.

"Huh... " you say. "Wait... I think I know her. I think she's part of the puzzle group. I met her last spring. Her name is...Margaret...I think. She's an older woman now, but I believe she used to be a semi-famous singer or something in the 70s. Maybe that's part of the challenge. To figure out who it is. Hmm...."

You look again at the instructions and the envelope they came in and check out the box to make sure nothing is missing.

"I guess that's it," you say. "That's all there was to it." You shrug. She shrugs.

You take a photo of the completed puzzle and text it to The Puzzlemaster.

A couple of minutes later you get a return text. It's a URL. You click it.

"Holy shit," you say. "She just died yesterday. That's awful."

You let it sit a moment.

You pick up the letter that came with the puzzle and read it again. As you go to fold it back up you stop. "What the fuck..." you say. "This might not be a coincidence."

Your friend looks at you. You show her the letter then fold it part way up.

"That obituary is 16 hours old. He couldn't have had that puzzle made in such a short period of time, right?"

"Andy," she says [or whatever your name is], "I've had that box in my house for five days."

You both stare at each other.

Your phone buzzes.

It's two more texts from The Puzzlemaster. The first is a cropped and modified version of the picture you just sent. The second is just two letters repeated that send chills down your spine.

---

Method

First, I want to thank Leo Reed for sending along the idea that formed the basis for this trick. 

Leo informed me about a puzzle called Jigazo. I'd never heard of this thing. Maybe it was the most popular thing outside of the US, but as far as I know, it wasn't here. Or maybe it was a big deal in the US. If you're like me and you have a DVR and you never watch a single commercial, you'll often miss out on things entirely. "The McRib is back? How did I miss that?"

Anyway, Jigazo is a puzzle you put together that can be put together to be anything you want. It's a pixelated image, but it's definitely the thing you intend it to be. How this works, I have no idea. I mean, I guess I understand how it works (you put a picture into the software that comes with the puzzle and it spits out the instructions on how to assemble it to make that picture). But the fact that it works at all is amazing to me. And you can find it on Amazon for, like, $6. It was created, at least in part, by magician Mark Setteducati—a name I had heard but not someone whose work I was familiar with. 

So Leo wrote and clued me in about the existence of this puzzle and included a really nice "Jerx inspired idea," as he put it, for a presentation. 

His idea was to invite someone over, have them write down any friend or relative of theirs and you would attempt to read their mind. You get the information via a center tear, but then act like you've failed to figure it out. "Don't tell me who it is. Maybe it will come to me later," you say. 

Instead you suggest working on this weird puzzle you got at the thrift store and you dump out the pieces on the table out of a plain brown box. Noticing the instructions are missing you run upstairs to get them. While you're upstairs you find a picture via facebook of that person's friend or relative and print out the instructions to make that person's face. Then you go downstairs and construct the puzzle and they find it's their aunt or whomever they had thought of.

I thought it was a great idea, but there were a few issues I had with it.

1. If the person is familiar with this puzzle (it was at least publicized enough to have a commercial for it) or they google around about a pixelated puzzle or they tell someone the story and that person is familiar with the puzzle, then it all falls apart. They would say, "Oh, he must have went upstairs, found a picture of my aunt via facebook and printed out the instructions." I don't necessarily mind when things fall apart later, but if I can prevent it, that's great.

2. The other problem was that it might become clear to the person what the puzzle is going to be halfway through. And then it becomes a mildly awkward situation where it's like... are we going to complete the puzzle or stop now because we already see where this is going? I wanted more control over when the climax of the experience is.

3. While I love the personal nature of having one of their friends/relatives be the subject of the puzzle, as a narrative, it doesn't really make sense. It too quickly suggest that the whole thing was a trick that I'm behind. (As there's no rational reason a thrift store would have a puzzle of her aunt.) Doing it with a celebrity (an idea Leo mentioned as well) might make it a little more possible that it was a magical coincidence, rather than a "trick." But you'd still have the other issues.

The way I addressed the first issue is that I decided the instructions couldn't be something I went and got. They needed to be in with the puzzle pieces from the start. But how do we do that? Well, the instructions are going to be in an envelope, and then you are just going to use any headline prediction technique to load the instructions or switch the instructions. There are undoubtedly techniques you can use that would let the spectator open up a sealed envelope and remove the instructions herself. There are a lot of ways to go with this. I'll be honest and say the time I performed this (like 4 hours ago). I simply had the instructions folded and palmed and just "dumped" them out of the envelope with the other piece of paper (the note) that was pre-loaded in there. This is not a technique that's strong enough for a headline prediction, of course, but in this type of situation, where they don't even know a trick has started, it flew by.

And now it doesn't matter if she knows about this puzzle or learns about it later. The question becomes, "Yeah, that's a puzzle that can make any person's face... but how could he have known to have the instructions for that particular person in there?" Either way, they're fooled.

Well, then you can't use a freely selected person for the puzzle. Yes, that's true, for the most part. So that's when I had the idea that I would leave the puzzle with the person for some time and let nature "freely select" the subject. I would give a sealed box of puzzle pieces to someone and say, "Hey, next time a celebrity dies, give me a call." Two weeks later, Queen Latifah dies, I go over to my friend's house and we assemble the puzzle and it's Latifah. 

While I liked that idea a lot, it didn't solve issue 2. After half the puzzle, they'd know who it was. I really wanted the mystery of putting together a puzzle that, supposedly, neither of you knows who it is, or what it will be.

And that version wouldn't really make sense. If I'm saying I can predict who will die, then I'd just write that information down and seal it in an envelope. I wouldn't do the whole puzzle thing. 

So that's when I came up with the presentation above. It simply involves looking in that morning's obituaries on the day you plan to perform it and picking out someone who died. Then you use the software that comes with the Jizago puzzle to create the instructions to build their face from the puzzle pieces. 

If you have a friend to help you out, you can do the texting business like I did.

If not you just say, "This person looks so familiar." It dawns on you that the person is one of your puzzle group members and you google their name to show your friend a picture. It's at that point you learn they died just the past day. And yet your spectator was holding on to this puzzle and the instructions for days. 

Is it morbid or profane to "use" someone who just died for such a thing? You know, that's a question you have to answer for yourself. Not in my world, it's not. If I was dead I would have no problem with someone I didn't know using my likeness to entertain another person I didn't know. Nor would I have an issue as a living person if someone used a recently deceased relative for such a thing. But maybe I'm weird.

All in all, I really enjoyed working on this and performing it. Putting together a mystery puzzle is a very compelling lazy Sunday activity. And the idea of The Puzzlemaster, and some secret club, and the notion that maybe he comes and kills you if you suck at the puzzles too much—that all has a freaky, Outer Limits style weirdness that I appreciate.

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If you haven't tried something in this style you might wonder what happens next. "What.. do they call the police or something? Tell them a mad Puzzlemaster has killed someone."

No. I mean, maybe if I had performed this for someone I just met who knew nothing about my interests they'd think something truly sinister had happened. But I'm performing for people who know me and know I enjoy sharing unusual experiences with them. The woman I performed this for today hadn't witnessed any similar long-form effects from me, but I had shown her other things in the past and she knew I dabbled in magic. For her, the whole thing was believable. She believed I was part of some puzzle and games club, she believed there was someone who curated all these games for people, she believed I wanted her to hold onto the puzzle so I didn't succumb to my curiosity. All of that was unusual, but not out of line with my personality, and not inconceivable. 

At the end she realized this was a trick of some sort and something done for her enjoyment. Like a spooky story told around a fire, but in real time and involving her. She didn't quite know what, if anything, was real. She knows no one was killed, of course, but there is still a pretty deep mystery there and a fascinating story to tell.

In Jamy Ian Swiss' review of The Jerx, Volume One, he wondered if these sorts of immersive effects could come off as a practical joke. Like maybe the person would feel manipulated or "duped" at the end. They don't. And I'll explain why in my Friday post.

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Once again, thanks to Leo Reed for suggesting the idea to me in the first place. And Leo would like to thank his friends Tomas B. and Justin W. 

Thanks to Mark Setteducati for creating this dope puzzle.

In researching Mark, I found this brief thread at the Genii forum where friend of the site, Jonathan Townsend suggested using the puzzle as a prediction. As with most of Jonathan's posts, this was completely ignored. Due to the time it takes to put together the puzzle, it couldn't be used in a professional show, most likely, but Jonathan certainly gets credit for having essentially the same idea.

And finally, rest in peace Maggie Roche.

The One Step Process for More Engaging Performances

Wait... can a single step be considered a process? 

I don't think it can. Well, whatever, I'll just add another step. Now it's the two step process for more engaging performances.

Step One: Uhm... wash your hands. 

Step Two: Eliminate confidence.

In the world of amateur magic, I've found the more confident you are in what you're showing someone, the less interested they are in seeing it. When people see a magic trick, we'd like to think they're thinking, "This is impossible!" But it's more likely that they're thinking, "This is fake." You can't blame people for thinking that way, because it's completely true. And confidence actually emphasizes the fake aspect rather than the impossible aspect. 

Not only that, but confidence makes things look easy. 

When you're on a date or a job interview, you want to speak confidently. You want your conversation with this other person to seem easy to you. You don't want interacting with someone to seem like a struggle.

But what if you're walking a high-wire?

Person A walks the high-wire and he eases himself onto it and throughout his journey he pauses and wobbles and has to repeatedly center himself and seems to be on the verge of falling off once or twice.

Person B walks confidently across the rope to the other side with no more difficulty than you or I would walk down the sidewalk.

Most tight-rope walkers could walk across the rope as Person B does, but instead they choose to do it as Person A does. 

That's because an audience member seeing Person B doesn't think, "She's really good at that!" What they think is, "I guess that's easier than I thought."

You might think, "Ah, but I want it to look easy. I want to be the guy who makes the impossible look easy." But you won't make the impossible look easy. As I mentioned above, people's default reaction to a magic trick isn't that it's impossible, it's that it's fake. So you'll make the fake look easy. When things seem easy and fake they're essentially pointless.  

So how do you apply this idea practically? 

Well, this whole site is essentially an exercise on the principle of removing confidence from your presentations.  

The Distracted Artist style involves the magic happening with no preamble. The spectators never get a sense of your confidence because there is no build-up to the trick.

The Peek Backstage style is lack-of-confidence as presentation. It's simply you saying, "I need your help with this because I don't know if it's working right."

When I talk about removing yourself from the role of the "magician" behind what you're presenting, it's because that puts the magic outside of your control. And you can't be confident about something that's outside of your control. 

When I say "remove confidence" I don't mean you should be an awkward, mumbling, sweaty mess. It's not your personal confidence that I think you should eliminate. It's your confidence in what's about to take place. Eliminate certainty. Certainty doesn't make for compelling experiences.

This is why overly-scripted patter tends to be a turn-off to people in a casual performance. "He's so certain of what's going to happen he made up a dumb little story about it!" This doesn't feel organic or personal to them. It feels like you might as well be replaying a video of the trick as you did it for someone else. 

A lack of certainty suggests that you and your spectator are going to discover what happens together, in the moment. What happens when we try this gypsy good-fortune ritual? What happens when we follow these weird instructions I found crammed in the seat crack of the bus? Does this new technique for cheating at cards really work? Why is there this big warning on this website not to view this optical illusion three times in a row, what could be the harm?

Presenting without certainty pushes you to come up with alternative contexts for tricks. It removes the one big weak justification magicians use most often: "I'm going to do this because I can."