The Bubble: Part 1

In the history of mankind, no one has been involved with asking more people to rate magic tricks on a scale of 1-10 than myself. “Who are you trying to impress with that?” you might ask. No one. It’s not a boast, just a sad fact.

The focus group testing I helped start in NYC has been going on for almost 15 years now. In the early years it was super informal and sporadic. These days it’s just mostly informal and somewhat less sporadic since this site has been around to fund it more regularly.

One of the tricks we used to include somewhat frequently in a set of magic tricks when testing was an ace assembly. We’d use it as kind of a “palate cleanser.” It’s a solid trick. It’s fairly simple to follow. It’s generally more impressive than the type of card trick your uncle might do between bridge hands. But it’s also not so flashy or spectacular that it’s just inherently going to WOW people by its nature. We would perform the trick “unembellished,” meaning, without any sort presentational touches or patter besides the most basic sort of thing. “I’m going to put these four aces in the in four separate locations and put three cards on top of each,” yadda, yadda, yadda.

In the early years of testing, the ace assembly was often performed by my friend, Eric. The assembly he used was a fairly standard, beginner friendly version that involved an ATFUS style switch of the aces and no display of the aces after the initial lay-down sequence (since they were already in the lead packet at that point.)

In 2013, Eric left NYC and moved to LA for work. The testing went on and continued to evolve over the next six years. Then in 2019, Eric returned to NY and started helping out with the testing again. We again had him performing an unembellished ace assembly as a sort of “baseline” standard magic trick occasionally in our testing.

But this version of the trick was totally different. It used the McDonald’s Aces gimmicks and some handling which allowed for incredible visual disappearances (well, technically transformations) of aces that were just there, only to be found in the leader packet moments later. It was so much more impressive than the basic handling he used to do.

Last year we decided to test the “simple” version of the ace assembly against the more complex gimmicked version of the same trick. I was wondering… what if the audiences just ended up rating them the same? Wouldn’t that be interesting or funny or sad, if we spend our time and energy working on more impressive sleights and cleverer gimmicks, and—in the end—it has no real effect on how people rate a trick?

Or, even more interesting, what if the simplified version scored better? The counterintuitive results we occasionally get in testing are the ones that I’m most interested in because it means there is some detective work to do. We need to go back and determine where the disconnect is between what we expected and what we got.

However, in this case, the expected result is what we got. The more visual, difficult, and seemingly more “impossible” version did, in fact, score significantly higher when we asked people to rate the tricks on a scale of 1-10, where a 5 would be considered a fine, average trick and a ten would be as good as any magic trick they’d ever seen.

On that scale, the “simple” version of the ace assemble averaged a 5.8, and the more complex version averaged an 8.5. (Different groups rated each trick. It wasn’t the same group viewing both.)

That seems pretty straightforward. We also looked at two other tricks, again, presented with only the most basic presentation. We did a two card transposition effect and a Twisting the Aces effect. For both we had a simpler “easy-to-master” version up against a version that required more advanced card handling and offered stronger, more convincing visuals. And each time the more advanced version scored significantly higher (around 40% higher) than the simple version.

“So… you’re saying more deceptive effects that require gimmicks or more expert handling will be rated higher as tricks than simpler versions? Ok. Pretty sure we could have figured that out on our own. I think you’re running out of stuff to test.”

Ah! But this is where it gets interesting. Or should I say, tomorrow is where it gets interesting. Because that simple graph above doesn’t tell the whole story. Tomorrow we’ll look at it from a different perspective and it will become clear why this testing was the impetus for the material in the next book.

Coming This Week

Those who have signed up for the 2020 support package know that the next book, HTBB, coming out in January 2021 (it’s sold out), is a book that’s going to collect and expand on all the supplementary presentational ideas I’ve written about on this site. Things that aren’t necessarily trick-specific, but concepts you can apply to many different tricks in order to increase the impact they have on spectators.

As I wrote in the email to supporters:

“Some of the most common feedback I get is from people who have implemented what feels like a small presentational idea and have found it to have a significant impact on the strength of the trick. That has been my experience as well, and to have a book of these types of ideas in one place is the sort of thing I wish I would have had earlier on.”

Through some recent testing, I think I’ve come to understand why these types of techniques can have such an inordinate impact on the tricks we do. It’s something I had sort of intuited for the past few years, but didn’t have my head fully wrapped around. The story starts out with testing a couple different ace assemblies, but the insight that provided may affect how you practice and perform every trick you do. Come back tomorrow for the start of that series of posts.

As a Man Inketh

Site supporter, JAJ, got a GLOMM inspired tattoo recently.

This, as far as I know, is the second GLOMM tattoo in existence.

It’s both flattering and a little unsettling when someone you don’t know gets a tattoo based on something you’re responsible for. Part of me thinks, “Shouldn’t you put your son’s face there or something?” But mostly it’s just nice to see. I mean, look, no one is inspired to get an Ellusionist tattoo. Or to get branded with a Vanishing Inc logo.

So it’s kind of an honor, but I also like that it’s rare. If it becomes too common, you’re in for a surprise. I will change the GLOMM from the largest magic organization in the world—and the only one that won’t allow sexual predators in it—to an organization that only allows magicians who are convicted pedos. “The blindfolded rabbit represent the blind eye we turn to our victims,” the website will say.

Then people are going to see that tattoo, wonder what it means, do a little research, and come back to you with clear concern in their voice: “Can you tell me why you have a tattoo on your arm for the Grabby Legion of Molesting Magicians?”

“No, wait,” you sputter, as your girlfriend is packing up her belongings. “It actually used to be a group that was the opposite of that. And then he changed it to screw us people with the tattoos!” You sound like a raving lunatic. Your life falls apart while I’m here giggling like a maniac.

If you’re willing to deal with that potentiality, then this version of the logo which was on the GLOMM postcards in the “elite” membership package would make a dope tattoo.

The Poking Machine

Here’s a heads-up on a non-magic product you might be able to find a use for in your magic performances. It would be especially good for any type of seance effect. Although I could see it having many other potential uses.

Imagine you’re around a table with a couple friends, asking for the spirit to show you a sign he (or she, these days women can be ghosts too) is present in the room. Moments later a framed pictures falls off a bookshelf or a glass topples off the counter in another room.

That could definitely be a pants-shitting sort of moment in the right scenario.

The product is called Fingerbot.

It’s essentially an automated finger press so you can control non “smart” devices with your phone or voice.

It’s meant to turn on your lights or your coffee maker or whatever. But it seems like the sort of thing you could easily rig up to push something or drop something. And depending how cleverly you set it up, they wouldn’t be able to trace the fallen object back to this little plastic box nearby.

I’m also thinking of having it set up on top of a (non-moving) ceiling fan blade, ready to knock a coin or some other object off of it. That way I could take a coin, do some sort of complete vanish with it, then have it “rematerialize” and fall from the sky into my hand.

It’s about $35 on Indiegogo. I’m going to pick one up. I’ll let you know if I end up coming up with anything particularly interesting to do with it. And if you have any ideas, send them my way.

Dumb Tricks: Two Fish, One Fish

I said in a previous post that the site (as opposed to the newsletters and books) would be a a place for “dumb” tricks. This trick is one of those. I don’t think it’s a bad trick. In fact, if I compared it to a list of “new releases” in magic, I’d probably prefer this trick to at least 50% of those tricks.

I call it a dumb trick because it’s just meaningless impossibility. It’s fun to perform, uses interesting objects, and gets a good reaction, but it doesn’t really fit my style. It will fool people, but because it’s inherently kind of frivolous, it’s not the sort of thing that’s really going to capture their minds long term.

For that reason, I think the best way to perform it is to undersell it.

“Oh, check this out. This is kind of funny….” That sort of attitude.

You need a box of Swedish Fish candy. The ones that are different colors. Not just all red.

You take a fish and bite it in half, leaving just the head or the tail.

You have your friend do the same with a different colored fish. Leaving the opposite of what you left (so if you ate the head and left the tail, they would eat the tail and leave the head). For the purposes of this description, you ate the tail.

So you hold your fish head in one hand and take their tail in the other. You concentrate for a moment and then bring the two pieces together where they form a new whole fish.

Method

Swedish Fish now makes a product called Heads and Tails that has fish with different colored heads and tails. Most normal humans don’t keep up on all the hot Swedish fish news, so most people will be unaware of this. You have one of these fish in your lap. Let’s say it’s a red/yellow one.

You wait for your friend to grab a red or yellow fish from the normal Swedish Fish. You stop them from eating it. “Oh, check this out. This is kind of funny,” you say, or words to that effect.

You grab a red or yellow fish (the opposite of what they have) and bite off and swallow the piece that’s not on the bi-color fish. (For the sake of this explanation, you have the red fish and they have the yellow fish.)

So you have a red head in your hand. You tell your friend to bite off and chew the head of their fish, leaving just the yellow tail.

Lean in a little to monitor their work. “Just nibble off a little more right there,” you say. As the focus is on their yellow fish, your hand with the fish head goes out of view and drops the head in your lap and exchanges it for the bi-color fish which you hold in your left-hand in a way that hides the other color.

You take their tail from them.

What you’re going to do is vanish the tail while revealing the other half of the whole fish in your hand. To make the tail disappear, you’re going to do that old bit where you vanish something stuck to the back of your fingernail (a match, or a piece of paper, or whatever). But here you don’t have to use anything to stick the item to the nail. You just press the freshly bitten area to the back of your thumb as you hold it. It will stick automatically. Then—as I said—you’ll vanish their piece while revealing the whole fish.

You can sort of push the pieces together as in the gif above. Or toss one piece at the other, like this.

As you hand the “restored” fish to them, your dirty hand falls to your lap or your side.

It’s fun. It’s eye candy. (hahahah, oh Andy, you devil.) But it’s not much more than that.

Could it be?

Theoretically, yes. There is a way it could be a life-long memory type of effect. If you could find a real fish that matches the fish you create together and transform the Swedish fish into a real fish at the end, that would be pretty amazing.

The closest thing I’ve found is a bicolor dottyback fish. They seem to be more purplish-pink than red, but it’s pretty close.

2020 Season Support Slots — Closed

The 2020 Supporter Slots are all filled. Thanks to everyone who signed up.

Lowering the Bar

Criss Angle

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There we go.

The dawn of The New Jerx is here.