Another GH Idea

Another effect it's worth adding to your Google Home (or possibly similar products) is the Trick that Fooled Einstein.

I have a little stack of change on my end table, behind a lamp. If someone mentions the Google Home and asks what it does or whatever, I can be like, "Yeah, it's capable of some crazy stuff. Do you have any change?" I grab my stack of change, then we both shake our coins in our hands while I ask Google, "How much change do we have?"

The GH gives its response and the semi-odd phrasing is passed off as being due to the "weird algorithm" Google uses to figure out how much money you each have. 

With a second, slightly different, key phrase you can repeat the trick after each of you have added or discarded some coins to show it's "not a fluke."

I've only done this once so far but it got a good response. And when the person I performed it for mentioned it later to a third friend he said, "We shook our change in our hand and it could tell us exactly how much money we had." Completely forgetting that it didn't quite do exactly that.

The Google Home Word Reveal

Google Home is the little speaker/virtual assistant thing put out last year by Google. It's a similar idea to Amazon's Echo and Apple's new HomePod. You can use it to play music, make phone calls, answer questions, and control different things in your house (lighting, thermostat, tv) so long as those things are "smart" (so it won't work on your wife, right guys? hahahahahaha, that dumb old bitch!).

I have to be honest, when reader L.B. wrote in to suggest maybe utilizing the Google Home as part of a trick, I thought it might be mildly amusing but not really all that great. I thought that both about the concept of using it in a magic trick, and about the Google Home unit itself. But, after having a unit for a few days and playing around with it, I'm actually surprisingly happy both with the unit itself and the responses I've received when using it for a magic trick.

When it comes to technology and the Product Adoption Curve, I'd put myself as a "late early adopter." So somewhere near the right side of that green area. I'm not a super tech-savvy guy, but I usually have a pretty good eye for what technology is going to stick around and what's not. (I remember when my friend was buying his movies on LaserDisc in the late 90s and I was like, "You really think this is a technology with a shelf-life greater than 6 months? You don't see a slight issue with this as a storage medium?")

Google Home (as well as the other similar products on the market) didn't seem like something I needed to have, but at the same time I knew it was probably just a matter of time before I got one and I'd end up finding a number of uses for it. 

So, when L.B. suggested the idea I went and bought one. The Google Home Minis are $50. So it's not a super-big investment.

Let's start with the basic, somewhat obvious, idea of how to use this as part of a magic. 

You can configure the Google Home to respond in a certain way to whatever you say. So if you say, "Hey Google, what card did she pick." You can have it respond to that with, "She picked the three of spades," or whatever. So then you would force the three of spades, ask google what she picked, and that would be the trick.

That's fine, and I'm sure it would go over as well as any standard card revelation. But I wanted to build on the idea a little and add a few more elements to embellish the presentation and also hide the idea that there is something pre-set.

Here's how it looks. 

My friend Sara comes over, notices the Google Home and asks me if I like it and what I'm using it for.

"I didn't think I was going to be such a big fan of it, but I'm actually really glad I bought it. I might get another one for my bedroom." Then I demonstrate some of its features, like how it can control my lights and music.

"It's a little weird though to think that's it's always listening. And they say it's not constantly recording, but who the fuck really knows. And it just does some... strange things sometimes. Like it will play a song I had stuck in my head when I ask it to play music, even though I don't specifically name that song out loud. And sometimes it starts answering questions before I've completely verbalized them, like it knows what I'm about to say." 

"I know it sounds like horseshit, but I'm not kidding. It kind of makes sense. It picks up audio waves, so why not brain waves? That seems like it could be possible, at least in some rudimentary form. I'll show you. Think of something."

Sara settles on something in her mind.

"Hey Google, what is she thinking of?" I ask.

I can't tell. There are too many thoughts coming in at once.

"Okay. Yeah, it helps to have one particular idea that exists outside your mind to concentrate on. So... uhm... grab a couple books from the bookshelf. Two that have a similar number of pages." 

I now run through the process of the Hoy Book Test to have her settle on a word to think of. You could also do some kind of peek of a word they wrote down. Or, less ideally, have them freely choose a card and figure out what it is in some manner. My preferred usage is with the Hoy Book Test. Nothing is written down, it's not playing cards, it feels very random because any two books could have been chosen. 

So my friend is now thinking of a word. I ask again, "Hey Google, what is she thinking of?"

And again the reply comes: I can't tell. There are too many thoughts coming in at once.

"Dammit. I swear this works. I'm not crazy," I say. "Wait, I know."

I go to my kitchen and come back a few seconds later with a large square of tin foil and start shaping it around my head. "This will help block out my thoughts so she can home in on yours."

[There is very little in my magic performances that is "scripted" in the traditional sense. But saying "I'm not crazy," right before going and putting on a tinfoil hat is one of those beats I always intend to hit.]

Once I have my tinfoil hat on and I'm looking like a complete dork I say a final time, "Hey Google, what is she thinking of?"

This time Google replies, "Okay. It's coming through clearer now. I think there is an S sound in there somewhere. No. Wait. I know what it is. She's thinking of the word: history."

She is and she freaks out. 

"It knows everything!" I say. "Pick something up off the table." She picks up a remote control.

"Hey Google, what is she holding?" I ask.

"She's holding a remote control," Google Home says.

Sara tosses the remote aside like it's a cursed object.

"This thing is too scary," I say, and I chuck it out the window.

[No, I haven't thrown it out the window. But for $50, it might be worth it. What I really do is I unplug it like I'm a little freaked, and thus putting an end to asking the thing more questions.]

Method

I'm not going to dwell too much on the technical details other than to say it's very easy to set this up.

So, we want to Google Home to reply a particular way when we say something. And then we want to be able to change that reply to something else in just a few seconds. This is how we're going to add a little shade to the method. Instead of just being a card force and a little robot that always replies the same way to a certain question. We're going to have it respond different ways to the same question.

Getting Google Home to Respond What You Want It To

Method 1 (Don't Use) - In the Google Home app there's something called "shortcuts" where you supposedly can get your GH to reply whatever you want to a particular input. I tried it and it didn't work. So I don't recommend it.

Method 2 IFTTT - IFTTT stands for If This Then That and it's just an app that connects two apps/programs/smart objects in your house so that when one thing happens it triggers something else. I'm not even going to get in the potential uses for this, but I have a feeling there are all sorts of magic related ones that you could find.

So you get the IFTTT app, which is free, and it connects to your google home. And you create an "applet" which is just a simple conditional statement. "If X happens, then make Y happen." Again, if it sounds complicated or techy in any way, it's not. The image to the left shows you the extent of the "programming" required. And this video walks you through the whole process.

So that "applet" gets saved and now whenever you say "What is she thinking?" you will get the "I can't tell..." response.

Now what you do is go in and edit that applet so it has the following line in the What do you want the Assistant to say in response? field

Okay. It's coming through clearer now. I think there is an S sound in there somewhere. No. Wait. I know what it is. She's thinking of the word

So this is everything but the actual word itself. Don't worry about the potential non-hit in the middle.  If there is an S sound in the word, it's a minor hit before the actual reveal. And the "No. Wait," suggests "No, I'm not just getting a letter, I'm getting the full word." And if there's not an S sound then the "No. Wait," makes it seem like it's correcting itself. Either way the statement will make sense. And it makes the revelation bigger so that it's not just the word itself.

Keep in mind: you don't save this new message yet. You just turn off your phone at this point and set it somewhere in your kitchen near the tin foil.

This is all pretty straightforward from here. 

You try to have it read her mind in a general sense, and you get the "I can't tell" response.

You say, "Ah, we need you focusing on a single thought." Then you go through whatever process (Hoy book test, peek, card selection) to get them to narrow it down to a single thought. You ask Google Home again what your friend is thinking but you still get the "can't tell" message.

You realize you need to block your own thoughts. Go to the kitchen, turn on your phone and type in the one word at the end of the phrase you already entered then hit save. Put the phone back and grab a piece of tin-foil you've already removed from the roll. This shouldn't take long. Maybe 10 seconds, 15 at most, to type one word. That doesn't seem like an unusually long period of time to get some foil.

Return. Make yourself a hat. Ask again what she's thinking. React. But remember, you're not supposed to know the word so get her to verify it first.

But what about that bit at the end where I tell her to pick up something off the table and the GH tells her what it is? This is simply a matter of only have a few items on the table and then having a key phrase for each one. "What did she pick up?" "What is she holding?" "What's in her hand?" Etc.

You might wonder why that bit is even there. In a theatrical magic presentation you would never follow up the revelation of seemingly any word in the English language with a 1 in 5 revelation. Certainly not within the same broad "effect." You might feel like the correct structure would be, "Let's see if Google Home can guess which object you picked up." And then follow that up with, "Okay, let's up the ante and have you think of any word in the English language." But the reason I prefer to do it in the opposite order is because it feels less like I'm showing concern for dramatic structure. I don't want it to feel like a two phase "routine." I want the "what item is she holding" bit to come off kind of as a throwaway afterthought. I get into it before the reaction from the first effect has died down. What I really want to do is confuse the issue. Since there is a bit of a build-up before the first reveal, they might start formulating some hypotheses about what happened and when it happened. By slapping on another similar effect—but with a different method—at the end, I think that helps obscure the method used in the main part of the trick.

Other Ideas

1. I don't know if there's a limit to how many IFTTT statements you can create, but assuming there's not, you could theoretically create an "if this" statement for every card in the deck. Then you could have a card freely chosen (say from a stacked and/or marked deck), cue it to Google Home in your question and have it name the correct card in a very fair way. You could use a crib. Or you could do one of those things where the first word of the sentence cues the value and the last word cues the suit. Then you only have to remember 17 things (suits and values) rather than 52 different phrases for each card.

2. Most laypeople don't realize how few items there are that people draw when asked to draw something. You could have cues for the top 25 most drawn items. Then you could peek a drawing, or openly just watch the person draw whatever they want and then cue the correct drawing with your question. "Hey Google. What did he just draw?" He drew a car. "Isn't that crazy?" you say. "I found out how it works. It actually listens to the marker strokes while you make the drawing. That's how crazy sensitive this thing is. What will they think of next"

3. You can, of course, just use these same tools to do dumb stuff like this.

Coming in MFYL: The Damsel Technique

From the post, The Force Unleashed

The Damsel Technique: I'll probably write this up at some point next year. It's a tiny idea but one that can have a big impact. This was the technique I originally wanted to test when I went off to NYC. It can be used with almost any force (it works amazingly well with the cross cut force). In our testing we used it with the dribble force. We performed a standard dribble force for 11 people and their "fairness" rating was 54. We performed the same force with the Damsel technique for another 11 people and its fairness rating was 86. And it has applications beyond card forcing. You won't get all the details any time soon, but I mention it now just to whet your appetite. Y'all whet?

The update here is that I will not be posting this on the site. Why? Because I like it too much and I've found it to be super valuable. Not just for stronger card forces, but for all sorts of tricks where your spectator is forced to a particular outcome. I've used it with the Hoy book test and other mentalism effects. In fact, the technique originated in a Rubik's cube trick I was working on. So it has all sorts of applications. 

The reason I'm not putting it on here is because it's something I want to save for paid supporters of the site, so it will be appearing in the 2018 supporters bonus book, Magic For Young Lovers. 

If you're like, "What the hell... you said you were going to post that here and now you're not?" My response to you is: get fucked.

Here's the thing, the absolute most valuable stuff I've ever written about magic is available for free on this site. And that's the stuff about presentation style and amateur/social magic. I wish I had those insights at a much earlier age because they have completely transformed my performances and increased the spectator reactions and enjoyment by an order of magnitude. I would have paid a lot of money if someone had pushed me in that direction long ago. And all that's here free. So you can't say I'm holding out on you.

But at the same time, I need to reward the people who keep this site going. That's who I write it for. So the best tricks and some of the better techniques are going to be saved for them. That's just how it is. 

I'm grateful for everyone who supports the site. And I have no issue with those who are indifferent to it or dislike it. But, "I don't think it's worth $20 a month to support the site and I demand you make every single thing you write available to me beyond the 150 essays and effects you make available for free every year" is not a position I find tenable. 

I try to make sure everything is available at a reasonable price because I know I've been in situations when I was younger where money was tight. So even if you went for the highest level of support, that comes to $5 a week. And even when I was struggling I still had $5 per week that I could waste on something. So it feels fair to me.

Look, I could have followed this lady's approach and had a $10,000 per month reward level. At that reward level you can get yourself a non-nude video of her. $10,000 per month and you won't even get a single goddamned nipple, son.

For those of you who support me at the $20/month level you'll be getting full-frontal and my a-hole spread wide. Metaphorically, I mean. (Although for $10,000/month you can have it literally).

Social Magic Basics Pt. 2

How to Know if Social Magic is the Style For You

Which of these interactions would you prefer? Which would you feel more comfortable presenting and which would the people in your life be more interested in witnessing?

Interaction #1 - You're out getting some drinks with friends. You pull out three half dollars and pass them around to be looked at. "You know," you say, "the eagles on the back all look identical, but they're actually all different and they each have their own unique personalities. You see, the first eagle is Bob, and he's a bit of an adventurer. So even though the coins are all in my closed left fist, Bob just needs to make a break for it and now he's over here in my right hand. That leaves two in my left and Bob in my right."

"Sonia is the next coin in my left hand. She loves Bob, so she'll follow him wherever he goes. That's why there are now two coins in my right hand."

"That just leaves Petey in my left hand. Petey is scared of being alone, which is why...," you slowly open your left hand and the coin that was there is gone. You open your right hand and now there are three coins there. 

You place the coins back in your left hand. "Of course, you can't keep Bob in any one place for long. So there he goes. Sophia follows. And Petey tags along behind." You look off into the distance and brush your hands together and the coins are all gone. 

Interaction #2 - You're out getting some drinks with friends. One of them asks you if there's anything you're working on. 

"Eh, kind of, but I'm not having much luck with it. There was this... I think he was Russian... or maybe Eastern European physicist in the 1960s who was also a magician and he came up with a way to make a small object go from one hand to the other. And I've been working on it for a couple weeks but it's really hard because his magic style was very physics-based and I just grew up learning more traditional sleight-of-hand type stuff. I'll try it for you."

You pat your pockets. "Do you have a coin?" One of your friends gives you a quarter. You pick it up and hold it tightly in your right hand. 30 seconds pass. "Oh, it's going," you say. Another 10 seconds pass. You drop the coin on the table. "Nope, not going to happen." You shake out your hand, then press it flat on the table and lean into it like it's been painfully contorted and you need to stretch it out. "Ah... holy hell that hurts."

You pick up the coin again and hold it in your hand, "I've seen people who are really good at it who can make it go in just a couple of seconds. But as I said, it's not really the style I was brought up—wait, wait, wait...." Your eyes go wide and you stare straight ahead. You slowly look to your right hand, and open it finger by finger. Then very slowly you turn your head 120 degrees to the left. So slowly, as if there is something precariously balanced in some alternate dimension, and if you move too quick it's going to topple over.

Eventually you're looking at your left hand which is holding a glass of cider. A silent moment passes. Then the coin falls from your palm, ting'ing against the glass, and wobbles to a rest on the table.

"Well I'll be damned," you say quietly.

✿ ✿ ✿ 

The first is an example of a theatrical style of performance. "Watch while I present to you this performance piece I've put together." You might say I'm trying to deter you from this style by giving you a shitty example with the bird flying patter. I'm not. That patter is just a variation on some Tommy Wonder coins across patter. For our purposes you can imagine the most well scripted patter for a multiphase coins across ever created. Or you can imagine performing it in silence.

I'm not trying to convince you a social style is better. I'm just trying to elucidate the differences between the two styles, so you can identify which you're more comfortable performing.

With theatrical/presentational magic there is a more overt beginning and end to the trick. With social magic the trick is, ideally, more enmeshed with the natural interaction.

Theatrical magic is usually more about the effect, whereas social magic is usually more about the context of the effect. (This is due to the fact that theatrical magic's context is well established. It's a "show.")

With theatrical magic you are presenting yourself as a magician (not necessarily a "real" magician, but you're taking on that role during the course of the effect). With social magic you are presenting yourself as someone with an interest in magic. 

That may seem like a minor difference but I think it's actually very important. 

I, Magic Enthusiast

I'm hoping this post, and the example of a Social Magic presentation above, will clarify something that I haven't stated clearly enough in the past. Something I think both fans and detractors of the style of magic I've endorsed on this site may have misunderstood. 

I've often said that social (née amateur) magic should be presented without the trappings of a "show" and that you should take the focus off of yourself as "the magician." 

I think some people reasonably interpreted that to mean that I was suggesting you do magic secretly. Like you should do effects and act like you have nothing to do with what's happening. While that can be an interesting dynamic, and I will occasionally do something in that manner, it's just not something that is workable for the long term with friends and family. "Wow, Andy's fortune cookie had a description of what he was wearing in it." "Wow, Andy got a $20 bill in his package of M&Ms." "Wow, Andy found an envelope in his mailbox that said not to open until after the Superbowl and when we did there was a written prediction of the winner and the score." 

Eventually, unless your friends are morons, they'll catch on that you're orchestrating these things. (Now, I suppose it's possible you could say, "I was struck by lightening as a kid, and ever since then, strange coincidences and weird events have been happening all around me." But to really sell that you would have to hide any interest in magic that you have from everyone else in your life. Which is not something I'm willing to do.)

I don't think you should try and hide your interest in magic, or suggest that you're not responsible in some way for the things that are occurring. On the other hand, I don't think it's great to call yourself a Magician if you want to perform Social Magic. Taking on the persona of a magician outside the context of a "performance" is off-putting to people.

Instead I think it's best to just establish yourself as someone with an interest in magic. That's how I handle things. And occasionally that interest manifests itself in the form of me presenting a trick to them, like it's a show. But those are rare occasions. 

More often, tricks are introduced in a sort of back-door way, e.g., I'm talking about some new technique I'm working on, or a new concept I read about, or an effect I need their help with, or a convention I'm going to, or some interesting person I met, or a strange object I was given. Some of these entryways into performing are legit, and some are as fake as anything you'd see in "theatrical" magic. No one cares too much either way. Because of the fact you're not presenting these things in a magician-centric way—intended to glorify yourself—people quickly become comfortable with the idea that there's a mixture of fantasy and reality here.

You see, Social Magic isn't about just getting lucky and hoping the conversation will turn to a subject for which you have an effect prepared. It's not even about willfully orchestrating those moments (necessarily). It's about expanding people's perception of you to include your interest in magic. Then it becomes something they bring up because it's natural to do so.

At least that's what I experienced with my evolution as a performer. I used to just be like, "Hey, check this out," and I'd show them a coins across or something. People liked it to a certain extent, but it felt a little a little show-off-ish at best and needy at worst. So then I went the route of crafting better presentations. No longer was I just like, "Hey, I can do something amazing." Instead they would witness a little "show" from the me. But that felt awkward and out of place and still put the focus too much on me. 

That's when I kind of stumbled into a way to build a foundation for Social Magic, which is the last thing I want to mention today.

What I did was, for a month or so, I stopped performing. And instead of performing I was world-building. I was creating a world that was half truth and half bullshit about how magic was learned and secrets were kept and passed around. And I would mention some book I was reading, or a convention I was going to go to, or this old man I was hoping to visit who taught this one effect to someone only once a year. And it was all magic related stuff, but I wasn't actually performing for them. Instead I was just talking about magic with enthusiasm the way my friends talk about their hobbies. Prior to that, the only time I ever brought up magic was when I was doing it. But here I started just mentioning some interesting or intriguing ideas in passing which made magic a normal subject for us to talk about. After a couple of weeks of setting the table like this, people quickly picked up on it and they were asking me if I'd learned that technique or met that person. When they lead you into the trick like that it eliminates the boundary between effect and interaction. This helps create something that feels like real human interplay and not a performance. And that's the fundamental idea behind Social Magic.

Gardyloo #46

Going forward I will try and put more thought into trick titles. In The JAMM #12 there is a trick called The Immortal which was my variation on a trick by Christian Knudsen called Angel. But, as it turns out, Knudsen's trick was a variation of a Christian Chelman and Gaetan Bloom trick called... The Immortal. 

Methodologically they're not the same. Knudsen's version uses a gimmicked deck. The Chelman/Bloom version uses two gimmicked decks. My version uses a normal deck. 

Thematically they're all similar as mine was based on Knudsen's, but I was like, "Let's dump this goofy angel theme and just go with the subject of immortality." Not realizing he had thought, in regards to Chelman's trick, "Let's dump this immortality theme and go with the subject of angels."

So, I'd like to one-up everybody and take every possible iteration of the immortality naming concept and re-name that trick, Immortal Vampire Angel of Dorian Grey Who Is Also A Robot.

If you have that issue, please make this simple fix. 

• Buy an HP Laserjet Enterprise 700 Color Printer
• Print out that issue on high quality magazine paper.
• Hire a graphic designer to redesign every reference to the trick The Immortal so it now says: Immortal Vampire Angel of Dorian Grey Who is Also A Robot
• Buy a high quality scanner (if you don't spend at least $2000 you might as well make a copy with silly putt)
• Scan the hard copies back into your computer
• Insert the scanned pages back into the original PDF document.

Simple.

---

Here's a good magic trick of which I was on the receiving end. Well, maybe not a "magic trick" maybe it's just a "trick," but it felt supernatural when it was happening.

I had a friend visiting me recently. He has always struggled with his weight. And so, to be a bit of a dick, I was bragging about how I had recently gone down another belt size. Because that's the type of supportive friend I am. 

The next day we were walking around the mall together and he said THINNER like the gypsy guy in that Stephen King story turned shitty movie.

I didn't really understand what he meant at first. If he had rubbed the back of his hand against my cheek I would have caught on sooner, but I just thought he was commenting on something he saw or saying something under his breath that wasn't really meant for me.

But then, a minute or so later, I felt the need to tighten my belt. And then, a minute after that, I had to tighten it another notch And then again not long after that. What the hell was going on? Had I really lost three inches off my waist in a matter of minutes? Had he put a gypsy curse on me that would cause me to whither away to nothing?

No. No he hadn't.

What he had done was cut a slit in my belt with a razor blade from the hole I was currently using to the hole I had been using. See the red line in the pic below (I would have taken a picture of the actual belt, but I tossed it before I thought to write this up.)

He didn't remove any of the leather of the belt, he just cut a slit. So what happened was I would tighten the belt like normal and as long as I wasn't moving around too much it would stay in place. But when I was walking, like we were in the mall, the "stick" part of the buckle would slowly travel back from the hole where my pants felt comfortable to the older (looser) hole. So I wasn't tightening my belt inch by inch, I was just moving back an forth between the two holes. I'd tighten my belt, it would eventually shift back, and then I'd tighten it again.

The first time I tightened my belt I did it pretty absentmindedly without any thought (as you might if you've been between belt holes for a while). When he noticed me do that, that's when he said "Thinner" to me. 

I asked him where he got this idea and he said it was just something he thought of that night. He had no clue if it would work, but it actually worked really well. For a couple minutes I had no idea what was going on.

You might think, "Andy, what kind of sociopath friends do you have that would just take a razor blade to your belt. Are you friends that indifferent about damaging your property?" No. That's not the case. It's more an issue that he knows me well enough to know I wouldn't get hung up on him ruining a $10 belt. Certainly not when it led to a good story. 

---

This is from an old post...

I used to do a trick where I wore a blue t-shirt and across the front it said, "This Shirt is Red." When someone would say, "No it's not." I'd turn my back to them and say, "Not even on the back?" They'd say no, and when I turned back around my shirt would be red and it would say, "Yes It Is" across the front.

This was how I would do Dresscode by Calen Morelli.

Reader, R.E.D wrote in to show me his version of the shirts he made for this trick. Nice.

---

Reader, Sean Maciel wrote in to say this about The Red Pinetree Gift Lottery from The JAMM #11. 

"Like everyone else, I performed the red pinetree gift lottery to what might be the best possible reaction I've ever received on either a christmas gift or a magic trick - people still talking about it weeks later, even though it's just a bit of quick and dirty papercraft."

Below is his climax for the trick/game/experience. I love seeing these...

S.O.W.

Here are some of the other words suggested by people as possible alternatives to "social" magic.

Spontaneous, Casual, Conversational, Communal, Integrated, Sub Rosa, Interactive, Non-Performance, Organic, Interpersonal, Relational, Informal, Congenial, Immersive

These are all good suggestions and for the most part they hit on aspects of the type of performance I'm talking about, but I don't think I'm likely to start using any of them in place of Social. 

I actual like that "social" is sort of generic sounding because there are different ways you can perform social magic. It doesn't have to be one particular thing. 

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter what it's called. I just think we need to give the idea a little more sunlight so it can grow, and to do so, it helps to have something to call it.

Imagine if our concept of "comedy" was people on stage doing stand-up or sketch comedy, and then your "funny" friends were people who would do old vaudeville routines and short-form improv games and we had no concept of people who were just funny in social situations.

Of course we do have that distinction. There are people who perform comedy routines, and then there are the people we know who are just funny. They don't go around reciting "Who's On First." They just have a good sense of humor.

Social magic is about coming off not as someone performing a bunch of pre-planned routines, but just as someone with a good sense of wonder.   

---

If you're someone who wants to support Season 3 and get the new book, the Jerx Deck #2 and the X-Comm newsletter and you want to do so with monthly payments, then now is probably a good time to sign up. There's no pressure and no rush to do so, I just say now would be good because that would mean your 12 payments would be ending at about the same time everything was ready to ship (rather than having to wait for your payments to finish up past the point things are ready to ship in order to receive everything). You can sign up here.

Stray the Daisy

Imagine

"I want to try something with you," you say, pulling a deck of cards and a small envelope from your pocket. "Oh, I have a valentine for you too. Don't let me forget to give it to you."

"When I was in fifth grade there was this little game that swept through the school. Well... not a game, but like a little fortune-telling match-making love-ritual type thing. I hadn't thought of in, like, 30 years and for some reason it popped in my mind out of the blue the other day. And it's one of those things where you wonder if it was just this weird thing that was localized to your school, or your part of the state, or if little kids all over the country were doing it. And if so, how did these things get passed around pre-internet?" 

"I want to play it with you and you tell me if you remember this, of if you're school had a version of it." 

You take the cards out of the box and hand the deck to your friend.

"Here's how it starts. Think of someone from your youth who you had a big crush on. But maybe someone you never told anyone else about. Then spell their name and deal a card for each letter into a pile as quietly as you can." You demonstrate by spelling B-O-B, with three cards into a pile on the table, then you put the cards back on the deck.

"I'm going to turn away, because I'm not supposed to have any clue about who the person you're thinking of might be. When you're done. Take the pile of cards you dealt and put it in your pocket or purse or under your butt or somewhere I can't see them."

You turn away while they do this and turn back when they're done and give them the rest of the instructions. 

"Now pick up the rest of the deck and hold it in your hands. Think of a trait that your ideal mate would have. Like maybe he's kind, or good with kids, or—knowing you and what you value—he's got a colossal swinging dangler between his legs. Just think of an important trait he would possess and then cut off some cards and put them on the table. Not too few, but not too many because we still need some more cards to work with."

"Now do the same thing again. Think of another trait your ideal mate would possess and cut off another group of cards and place it here."

Here's where things stand now. Your spectator has a group of cards that you haven't seen in her pocket. There are two cut off portions of cards on the table, and you genuinely don't know how many cards are in each. And there is a sealed envelope on the table with a valentine inside. You won't go near the envelope for the rest of the effect.

"Here's how the process works," you tell your friend. "We're going to create a card for you. How we do that is we take one of the packets and turn it into a flower. Then we pluck the petals off the 'flower' while saying, 'He loves me Red, He loves me Black,' until we get down to one petal which will tell us the color of your card."

You clarify what you mean here by twirling one of the piles she cut off into a little "flower."

Then you pick it up and hold it between your thumb and two fingers and have her take cards singly and toss them to the table or the ground. First card/petal, "He loves me red." Second card/petal, "He loves me black." And then back and forth like that. She eventually gets down to the final "petal" which coincides with "He loves me red."  (To be 100% clear, the actual values of the cards don't matter. The cards are just being used as the petals.)

"Okay, so we ended on red. So for this next pile you'll say, "He love me diamonds. He loves me hearts." Twirl the second pile and hold it up and let her pluck out the cards until she gets to the final one. We'll say it ends on "He loves me hearts."

"So we have a red card, and it's a heart card. Now for the final stage you need to pull out the secret packet of cards you made at the beginning based on your crush's first name. For this one we're going to determine a number. So you'll say, 'He loves me one, he loves me two, he loves me three," you say, and mime plucking away cards. 

For this one I let the other person make the flower herself and remove the cards. Let's say she ends on "He loves me six."

"Okay, so you got Red, Hearts, and Six. So the six of hearts is your personal love card. And the way it worked back in school is that all the girls performed this little ceremony, so they all had their own love cards and they would sort of coerce the boys into doing it. And the idea was that people who ended up with the same color would be good friends, if they had the same suit they might make a good relationship, and obviously if they had the same exact card then it was like they were your #1 perfect match, true love, blah blah blah. But that rarely happened. It was like a pre-pubescent matchmaking service based on total bullshit."

"I never had anyone with a matching card," you say. "Well... not until a few moments ago."

You gesture towards the envelope that has been on the table the whole time. Your friend opens it and removes what's inside. It's a playing card (of course). On the back is a little valentine's message. She turns it over and sees it's the six of hearts. Everything can be examined, including your colossal dangler.

Method

I like this trick a lot. The ideas of secret crushes, valentines, "he loves me... he loves me not," and little matchmaking rituals are all very evocative of a very particular time. My late 30s. No, I'm kidding. I mean like 8-12 years old when young love was still pretty wholesome and not the nasty thoughts and endless boners of my teens.

The basic method is that the color and suit are forced. The value is limited naturally. And then you ring in the correct "valentine" that matches the card they end up on. But you're able to do that almost at the very beginning of the routine. And the ringing in of the correct card is done when there is no heat on the envelope. You'll see.

The set-up is fairly extensive. But this is a once in a while trick. It's a perfect Valentine's Day trick.

Let's start backwards. You need 8 outs, the 3 thru 10 of hearts. You could use less. You could probably use the 3-8 and still be pretty safe. But if I'm going to have 6 outs, I might as well have 8. Each card should be in a small, card-sized envelope. You could create some sort of index for it. I just do the following. I put two envelopes in each of four pockets. (Some combination of my pants pocket, jacket/hoodie pocket, breast pocket, back pocket.) Most often it's the 3/4 in my left pants pocket, the 5/6 in my right pant's pocket, the 6/7 in my left hoodie pocket, the 7/8 in my right hoodie pocket. The larger numbered card is closer to my body.

Originally I was using a Bicycle deck that had the tiny middle circle filled in on the red cards. But that required me to handle the deck at one point in order to peek the value of the top card. So instead I use a marked deck which makes it very hands off at the times in the effect when it makes sense to be hands off. 

So, it's a marked deck. In addition to this, the top 11 cards in the face down deck are the Ace thru Jack (suits don't matter). Well... that's not entirely true. Suits do matter, because the entire deck is stacked so the cards alternate red and black. But after the first 11 cards the values don't matter. So your deck might look something like this.

Okay. So that's the set-up. 

To perform, I pull out the deck of cards and the envelope with the four of hearts in it (four being the most common number of letters (I think) for a guy's name, at least in its short form, so there's a good chance you won't have to switch it).

I set the deck on the table but keep the envelope in my hands (usually...see the notes at the end for an alternative). I refer to the envelope as a valentine (if it's near valentine's day, if it's not, then I'll say, "I have a card for you.")

The person spells out their childhood crush's name, one card per letter and hides that packet away. They do this with my back turned away. When I turn back I note the top card of the deck (remember, they're marked). And since the top 11 cards were A-J, then I know that whatever number of cards they have is one less than the card I see. Now, already, I know what envelope I need at this early stage in the effect. Before there's seemingly any information I could have. Before, in fact, they're even 100% sure this is a trick.

I now have them think of positive attributes they want in a mate and they cut off two groups of cards. I turn away from the action (as I did before) and during that time I pocket the envelope I have and pull out the right one.

Let's see where we are. Packet #1 is in their pocket. Packet #2 is on the table. Packet #3 is on the table. And the rest of the deck (packet #4) is in their hands. 

Have packet 4 set aside. We'll now use packet two to force the color and packet 3 to force the suit. You apparently can't know how many cards are in each packet, and you don't (other than in packet 1), but you can know if packets 2 and 3 contain an odd or even number of cards.

Look at the markings on the back of 2 and 3. If the top card of each packet is the same color (not suit, just color) then packet 2 has an even number of cards. If they're different, then there are an odd number of cards in packet 2.

If packet 2 has an odd number of cards, you say: "I'm going to make this packet into a little flower and we'll pluck the cards out like petals. And you'll say, 'He loves me red, he loves me black.'"

If packet 2 has an even number of cards, you say: "I'm going to make this packet into a little flower and we'll pluck the cards out like petals. And you'll say, 'He loves me black, he loves me red.'"

This will always make the final card your force color.

You do the same thing to force the suit. Except now you look at the top of packets 3 and 4. Same color even, different color odd. If odd you start the back and forth with the force color/suit. If even you start the back and forth with the opposite color/suit.

It's easier just to understand why this is than to memorize the rules. Let's say they cut off a pile that consisted of one card. One is an odd number, and obviously you'd want them to start with the force color/suit. If they cut off two cards you'd want them to start with the opposite, so they'd end on the force color. And that pattern holds true for any odd or even number.

Important thing: You tell them how the little chant is going to go before you spread the cards into a flower. You don't want to make it seem like you're changing your wording depending on how many cards are there (although you are). You want it to seem like this is just the wording that's used and you have no idea how many cards are there. Whatever chant you establish—"he loves me black, he loves me red" or "he loves me red, he loves me black"—is exactly how the spectator will take over once they start saying it. And it will sound right to them because there is no established precedent for this. It's not like you're asking them to start saying, "He loves me not, he loves me," which would be backwards to how that phrase is usual done.

With the final flower, they count and pluck the numbers themselves, and, of course, the card they've created will match what's been in the envelope on the table from the start. 

Notes:

1. I'm putting this trick up now not just because it's a great Valentine's Day trick, but also because it's a good example of some of the differences between a social magic performance and a theatrical one (don't worry, I won't be harping on this forever). Social magic allows you to use different techniques. If you were presenting the same effect in a magic "show" you'd need a much more clever switch of the envelope. In a formal presentation when you bring out a sealed envelope there's a different expectation and it becomes a bigger object of scrutiny.

You might say, "Oh, Andy. Certainly if you bring out a deck of cards and a little envelope they're going to know there's a prediction in there." But they don't. And the reason they don't is they don't see everything I do as part of a magic trick. This is a luxury you have when doing social magic. Because what you're doing is enmeshed with a real social interaction, the boundaries get blurred. Pulling out a deck of cards and an envelope doesn't immediately suggest what the climax is. I say, "I want to show you something," put my hand in my pocket, pull out the deck and the envelope. "Oh, yeah. I have a valentine for you. Don't let me forget to give it to you." Then I move on from it. If I was doing this table-hopping, that action would be seen as me introducing the props for a trick to come. But ingrained in a genuine conversation, it just becomes me emptying my pockets. Maybe they think the envelope has something to do with what's about to happen, maybe they don't. Either way they're not certain of it and that's what makes it extra satisfying when it comes back around to it at the end.

2. You might think, "If you use a double envelope and double faced cards, then you could have four outs in one envelope and you'd only have to do a switch for the other envelope on the rare occasions when the name wasn't 4, 5, 6, or 7 letters long. True. But again, that's a consideration for a presentational magic piece where the envelope is suspect from the start. In this setting, performing for a friend or loved one, you want them to have the experience of taking the envelope off the table that has been there all along (apparently), opening it themselves, taking out the card and keeping it as a souvenir. That's the "magic." You wouldn't want to sacrifice that just so you don't have to do a switch.

3. Speaking of the switch, here's how I've been doing it most recently. I have all the other envelopes in one jacket or hoodie pocket in numerical order. Once I know the number of letters in the name I (with my hands casually in my pockets) flick through the envelopes and put the correct one at the front of the stack. Then, with them holding the deck, I say "Close your eyes and imagine a trait your ideal mate would have." Then, when they have their eyes closed, I just take the envelope off the table, put it in my pocket, and toss the other one out in it's place. That may seem bold, and yes, you couldn't get away with a switch like that in many circumstance, but in this scenario it works perfectly well (so long as you're not performing for multiple people).

4. For a long time I wanted to do a trick where card "flowers" were plucked petal by petal like real flowers. But all the ones I came across were done with a down/under deal and the Matsuyama Force. I really like the Matsuyama force, but when I tried it in the context of a "she loves me/she loves me not" type of presentation I was consistently busted. I think there were two reasons for this. The first is that the routines I was trying required me to do that force multiple times, which made it slightly more transparent. But more importantly, by trying to map this force procedure onto a concept they are aware of ("he loves me... he loves me not") I ended up emphasizing the discrepancy that makes the force work. The down under deal isn't really like plucking petals at all, because when you pluck petals you don't reattach every other one back to the flower. 

So that's where this version evolved from. It feels the same as actually taking petals from a flower, in a way the down-under deal doesn't. (Nobody deals flower petals.) It's very satisfying to toss the cards one by one and let them flutter to the ground. Pluck, pluck, pluck... down to one option.

5. "He loves me... he loves me not" is a game of French origin, where it's called, "Effeuiller la Marguerite," ("pluck the daisy"). But google translates it as "Stray the Daisy" which is a more appealing name just based on the way it sounds. It would be a good band name.

6. I've put up Valentine's day ideas each year so far. Here's the first. And here's the second.