The Fatal Attraction Hook

In the next book, there is a section on ways to get into a performance that are more circumspect than saying, “Do you want to see a trick?” But also more surefire than the time-honored advice of sitting around and waiting for your spectators to bring up the topic of ESP. (Good luck with that.)

What follows is something that was cut from the book. Mainly because it was too long, but also because it became too much of a personal anecdote.

So I thought I would throw it up here instead. Remember the context of the chapter this was pulled from is “techniques for indirectly getting into magic tricks.” You might say, “What’s the point? Why bother with this sort of thing? Just show people the trick.” Well, the point is just that I think it’s fun to mix things up a bit. To take a more circuitous route to a trick. I think it gives a different flavor to a performance, and is therefore a useful sort of thing for the social magician who is frequently performing for the same people again and again. But if it’s not your scene, I get that. There are plenty of things in magic that aren’t for me either.

Here we go…

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This one was borne out of a real-life situation that happened to me once where I met this woman, we’ll call her Kelli, at a party one evening. She was super attractive and seemed cool and we were talking on and off throughout the night. At one point, I showed her a simple mind-reading trick which she got a big kick out of. But I could also tell from her reaction that she was really chewing it over in her mind. It wasn’t just a simple “wow” reaction. This moment had captured her mind in a deeper way. 

In the days after, we were texting back and forth and things were fine. But it was right about this time I needed to leave town for a couple months for a project I was working on across the country. So whatever might have been developing between us was sort of put on hold.

While I was away, I realized Kelli was a bit of a “high drama” sort of person. Which could not be more opposite than me. It was clear she was trying to get me to come back across the country to visit her even though I barely knew her. I told her that wasn’t going to happen. “Let’s take a step back and see what happens when I return,” I said (not really having any intention of contacting her when I returned). But she didn’t like that idea. 

And over the course of the weeks I was away, she brought up the trick I showed here a few times. Whenever I would say something along the lines of, “Look, I barely know you. You need to chill out.” She’d say something like, “At the party, didn’t you feel our connection? What about the trick?” And even though she referred to it as a “trick,” she would suggest that the fact that it worked was indicative of something. And I would explain to her that it really wasn’t. I could have done it for anyone capable of writing a word on a business card. She didn’t really seem to believe me.

I soon realized she was bonkers. She started sending me texts as if she had intended to write them to other people and accidentally sent them to me instead. The first time it happened, I could have believed it was an accident. But she did it a dozen times. And all the texts were her pretending to be texting someone else about me. When she wasn’t doing that, she was trying to seduce me with half-naked pics. And when I wouldn’t bite on those, she’d say things like, “I really cared about you. And this is how you treat me?” Reminder, we had just hung out one time at a party. So it was just super weird stuff.

I will pick up that story in a bit, because it does have an ending worth sharing. 

But now for the point of this chapter. While I was in LA at the time, I had this situation happen twice. I would be out to dinner with someone and my phone would be blowing up. I’d look at it. See it was Kelli. Sigh a little. And from my reaction, the person I was with could tell something was off. So I ended up telling the person this story and what was going on, and they both said the same thing: “Oooh… I want to see that trick!” They both wanted to see the trick that had affected this woman so much. I wasn’t intending to use the story as a hook to get their attention, but it ended up being one.

I think people often are really looking for an excuse to ask to see something. And this story was a perfect excuse for them. I realized if I wanted to, I could fake the situation going forward. I could just act like I was getting a text or a call that annoyed me and then “reluctantly” tell the story that included whatever trick I wanted to show the person I was with. “I met this girl at a party and I did this trick with a bill for her, and ever since she won’t leave me alone. She’s convinced herself I have real powers, even though I told her it was just a trick. It’s just a weird situation all around.” 

This is a very seductive hook. There’s almost no one who could hear that story and resist asking about the trick.

Here is how I would recommend using it. First, I probably wouldn’t make the “obsessed fan” a romantic interest. It just complicates the story too much, I think. And invites too many other questions. You should probably just say it was a friend or a guy from work.

Set your phone to ring while you’re out with someone. (There are apps where you can set up fake calls.) Take a look at your phone and just kind of mutter under your breath. Have it ring or send you a text again a few minutes later.

“My god. This guy’s relentless,” you say. “Sorry. Let me silence this thing.” Turn you phone’s volume off. “I made the mistake of showing my boss’ boss a magic trick the other day and he just flipped out. He’s been pestering me ever since. He’s obsessed. He wants me to show him another trick or do something for some clients. It’s just constant. I never should have shown him that trick.”

They’re going to ask about the trick. When they do, you should act like you’re just going to explain it to them verbally. “Okay, so I borrowed a bill from him. Like a dollar bill. And I had him write his name on it. And I folded it, sort of like… actually… it would be easier just to show you.” 

This progression—from conversation, to story, to description of the trick, to trick—has a very natural flow to it. Even though you’re taking the scenic route to get to the trick, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll get there, with the spectator leading the way.

To conclude the story that opened this chapter…

I eventually told Kelli to stop contacting me and then I blocked her number.

She wrote me an email a couple of days later apologizing for “acting crazy.” She asked if we could talk on the phone so she could explain herself. 

We did talk and she told me the story of how her last relationship ended. She was engaged to the guy and six months pregnant with his kid. Something happened one night and he got drunk and there was an argument that got violent and something happened that caused her to lose the baby and spend a couple weeks in the hospital. So, like, holy shit, you know?

That incident had messed her up in the head, and made her distrust men. And she thought maybe she latched onto me so quickly because I was the first male to give her a positive vibe in a long time. 

Obviously, I was sympathetic to her upon hearing that story. I didn’t necessarily want her to think there was anything going to happen between us, but I didn’t want to cut her off completely either, which seemed cruel given the circumstance.

So, we got back to communicating, and our interactions became more normal.

When I went back to New York, we agreed to meet up and get lunch with our mutual friends, Anna and Steve (the couple who had thrown the party at which we first met). 

At one point, while we were at lunch, Kelli excused herself to go to the restroom and Anna and Steve started in on the questions in regards to what was going on between us. Were we friends? Dating? 

I didn’t really know the answer. Things felt somewhat strained because of the weird start to our interaction. But we definitely had some chemistry. On top of that, she was a stone cold fox, and I’m not above being swayed by that.

So I told them that I wasn’t sure where things were going. I said that things had seemed good between us recently, but they had gotten off to sort of an intense start, and it was hard to look past how weird things were early on. But, I also felt bad for her and the situation with the ex-fiance and losing the baby and all that. And I felt like—just as a human dealing with another human—I should at least be kind to her and be a supportive person in her life, whatever might end up happening between us.

Anna replied, “What are you talking about? She was never engaged. She was never pregnant.”

Nodding gently, I took the napkin from my lap, dabbed the corners of my mouth… and got right the fuck out of there before that psychopath even returned from the bathroom. 

Squared Anagram and Fuzzy Oracle Feedback

I took the word list from your original example poem and threw those words into an empty crossword puzzle (a Michael Weber idea). I’ve been performing this all weekend with the Sweep revelation and it has been killing. I’ve done anagram work for decades and these are some of the best reactions I’ve ever received.

With only two “guesses” it’s so easy to play off a miss as a problem with the process.

Do you have any rationale for why I might be carrying around a partially filled out crossword puzzle without the clues in my wallet? —CS

I understand what you’e saying about being able to play off misses when you only have to have two guesses. If you get a complete miss on the first guess you can take a real step backwards and change up the procedure slightly. After that you will (in almost all cases) have nothing but hits going forward. Because of that, the first miss almost becomes invisible.

On the other hand, if your first guess is a hit, and your second is a miss, you can immediately write-off the first hit as “luck” and abandon the process for something else (something that doesn’t have anything to do with the letters themselves). In which case the whole letter guessing portion fades into the background.

The only other situation is that both guesses are misses, in which case you will change up the process and seemingly not know much of anything about the word they selected, when really you already know precisely what it is.

If you’re using the word list I introduced in that poem, you’re getting 32 rather that 16 possible outcomes by asking them, “Is this a physical object you can picture in your mind?” One thing to keep in mind is that that’s a question that can be asked at any point in the procedure. You don’t have to wait until after the guesses. So it may make more sense to you to ask it up top. Or between the guesses (especially) if the first guess is a miss.

As far as why you’re carrying around a partially filled out crossword puzzle without the clues, here is the best I could come up with… I would say it’s part of a skill building exercise by this guy who is teaching me some mind reading techniques. I’m supposed to carry around this crossword puzzle and try to fill it in without the clues, just by focusing in on the mind of the guy who wrote the puzzle (or the collective zeitgeist of the people who completed the puzzle). I’d say it’s a slow process and I only get an insight into a word once every couple of days. Sometimes I’ll stare at the puzzle for a half hour reaching for something that never comes.

This doesn’t quite get you to the reason why you’re having them think of a word from the puzzle and why you’re guessing the letters. But it gets you in the area of psychic powers, mind reading, and this crossword puzzle. So it shouldn’t be too difficult to switch to this effect. I might say something like, “This is very advanced. Trying to discern someone’s thoughts who isn’t in the room, and who had those thoughts weeks ago. There’s no one who can do that easily and consistently. But the hope is by practicing something very difficult that hopefully I’ll get better at the easier stuff. Like swinging two bats when you’re in the on-deck circle. Actually, here’s something a little easier we can try if you want to see this sort of thing in action.”

There you go. It’s not perfect. But it’s not bad either. Have the crossword puzzle in your wallet and you’re always ready to go.

Worried about remembering the possible options? You don’t need to be. Make a crib and take a picture of it on your phone. Then, after the second guess you can pause (before you shift to another process, or just as a break in the current one) and say. “Oh, actually, before we go further. Can I get a picture of you thinking of this word for my records? I like to go back and test myself with the picture at a later date." The idea that you would look at pictures of people thinking of words somewhere down the line in order test yourself to see if you can pick up on the words again is kind of interesting, and almost feasible if mind reading was a legitimate learned skill. Of course when you go to take the picture you would just get a quick look at your crib before or after.

Or maybe you take the picture of them before it all starts. Have them think of the word “dog” and take their picture. And then, later on, once you know the “hit/miss” combination for the word they’re thinking of, you pull up that photo to compare the “baseline picture” of them thinking of the word “dog” to them thinking of their mystery word. And supposedly that gives you some information by studying the differences. Actually you’re getting the information by looking at your crib as you pretend to look at their photo.

I’m just rambling here, so let’s move on.

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I got these scrabble slam cards which you could use for a fuzzy process. They each have 2 letters, one on the front and one on the back. —LH

Ah, interesting. This could actually be really good.

Imagine the spectator is thinking of a word from a 16-option Squared Anagram set of words. You have them draw or write something specific on the back of a business card. Maybe some mysterious symbol. Or maybe the entire alphabet, but with all the letters drawn over each other. Or maybe a Ouija-board style planchette. Whatever it may be, you’re creating this unique business card that is supposedly going to guide you to some of the letters in their word.

You have the two necessary cards on the bottom of the deck. You give the deck a few riffle shuffles, just keeping these two cards in place. Then you double under-cut one to the top. Your spectator places the business card anywhere into the deck. And, using Bill Simon’s Prophecy Move (or something similar), it ends up between the exact two cards you need.

You say the card should be drawn to a letter in the word they’re thinking of. So you remove the business card and the two letter cards that sandwich it. First you ask about the letters touching the card. Then—just to be sure— you ask about the letters on the outside of those cards.

That way, with just one “impulse” (seemingly a location chosen by the spectator) you can narrow down all 16 options to one.

It would need work and the proper justification, but method-wise there’s no reason it couldn’t be usable.

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I've really liked your recent posts on Squared Anagrams and think it's a great, unique idea. Thank you for sharing it.

One small thought that struck me was to get to two letters which are not adjacent in the alphabet, the target letters could be set opposite each other in a circle and a pendulum could swing between the two so that you have to confirm which (or both) the pendulum is indicating. —MC

Yeah, absolutely, that would work. You could either draw the alphabet in a circle, which would allow you to use non-consecutive letters (as long as they were approximately half the alphabet apart). Or, if the letters you needed to use weren’t across from each other in a circle naturally, you could lay out letter cards “randomly” in a circle, and just make sure the cards you need are opposite each other. Good idea.

I have one more anagram post chambered with a couple helpful tools. That’s coming Wednesday or Thursday. For those of you who aren’t into the whole letter-guessing kick I’ve been on for the past couple weeks, that should be the end of regular posting on the subject, for the time being.

Monday Mailbag #35

Two of your dealbreakers were a) tricks involving faro shuffles and b) timing forces.

Basically you were saying that once you knew an effect involved either of those, you eliminated it from consideration.

But I think it's a bad idea to eliminate consideration of a trick just because you don't yet have the skill yet to do the sleights well. Which is essentially what you are saying. Because there are many magicians who can perform both sleights with no suspicion. Yes, of course it takes a lot of practice to get it right. *But more practice should not be a reason to eliminate consideration of a trick*

Look, remember when you first started out in card magic and palming and a good strike double lift seemed unattainable? So quite naturally when a person starts out s/he keeps away from effects with such sleights because the magician doesn't want to screw up.

But why then do people eventually learn those skills? Because they make the calculation that on balance there are certain effects strong enough that it would be worth it to put in the time and practice to learn the skills properly to do the effect. But if such effects were immediately eliminated from consideration, that impetus to learn something new would be squelched. And that's what you are doing to yourself now. You've already said there are some great faro tricks out there. The problem now is to get your faro decent enough to do them so that they overcome your objections. I'm not saying you *have to*, just you might want to, just like attaining anything else hard, like a second or bottom deal. Probably the best motivation for learning a sleight is because there is a freakin cool trick that you can't do because you can't do the sleight yet.

And as a bonus, some sleights/techniques are much easier than one first imagines them to be--like a a timing force and a classic force. It's mainly about confidence and doing it enough times to see how it works in the real world with people. A good technique to practice such things with people is to have an out prepared. There are lots of outs for timing forces--see Dani DaOrtiz's stuff for example. —JS

I was probably unclear about my reasons for making these particular techniques dealbreakers. It’s not because I can’t do them, it’s because I don’t want to do them.

In regards to the faro shuffle, I have never seen a non-magician shuffle cards in this way. And my personal priority is to keep my card handling as close to a non-magician’s as possible, with the exception of situations where I want to draw attention to what I’m doing. So, using the faro shuffle for Paul Gertner’s Unshuffled would be less of an issue for me, because he’s suggesting that what he’s doing isn’t your normal shuffle. But, for me, it just doesn’t work for other routines where you’re supposedly mixing the cards guilelessly. It doesn’t mesh with my standards for what looks innocent.

But I realize a lot of people don’t share this concern/objection, however, and I don’t really expect them to. I’m the guy who spent years recording people turning over the top card of a deck so I could make my double lift as psychologically innocent as possible. So I’m a little extreme about these things.

And sadly, there is no level of skill involved that could overcome that objection. To say that you can get good enough to execute a faro shuffle so that it elicits “no suspicion” is just not accurate. Do you remember the first time you saw a faro shuffle? Did you think it was perfectly normal? Maybe you did, but I didn’t. So I suspect a certain percentage of non-magicians might feel the same way.

As far as timing forces go, I just feel I have other forces that are less restrictive and feel more fair. I also think it’s a force that works better in more formal work, or at least with a larger group of people. When you’re sitting one-on-one with people, they’re not reluctant at all about dealing through half the deck or more. They’re in no hurry.

I’ve had people say, “Yes, but what about Dani DaOrtiz? His style couldn’t be more casual. And he does a ton of timing stuff. So obviously it works in those situations.”

Really? I find Dani’s style to be loose, free-flowing, and fun. But not casual. Maybe it’s theatrically casual, but not normal-human casual.

At 4:15 in this video you can watch how he handles a timing force failure. Ultimately he does get to the card he wants. And it works for him because of his personality and he plays the, “I don’t speak English too well,” card. But without Dani’s personality, I don’t think the technique would go over nearly as well. (To be honest, I’m not sure it goes over that well here either. There’s no chance this woman thought, “Yes, that’s precisely where I wanted to stop.” But the force of Dani’s charm covers for it.)

If he spoke to that woman in a casual situation like he does in this show situation, she’d think he was a goddamn lunatic. It just doesn’t mach normal human casual conversation..

Normal-Human Casual: Where do you want to go for lunch?

vs.

Dani-DaOrtiz Casual: Where should we go for lunch? KFC? Burger King? Subway? McDonalds?

Dani’s Friend: Burger King

Dani: McDonald’s?

Friend: No. Burger King.

Dani: Okay. I don’t care either way. So you want a burger. Where’s the closest place around here for burgers? McDonald’s I guess?

Friend: No. I want to go to Burger King. Do you want to go to McDonald’s?

Dani: Me? No. I don’t care. It’s up to you. Where should we go?

Friend: Burger King.

Dani: Okay. We get in the car and drive in that direction and we stop at the first restaurant we see along the way.

My point is simply that this type of timing force is somewhat personality dependent. And I’d rather change the technique used to match my performance personality, than change my personality to allow for a particular technique.

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I was thinking that a faro shuffle done weaving the long sides of the deck looks similar to a layman’s shuffle. If practiced enough to make sure you can quickly cut the deck in half and do the weaving without looking, you could have a “normal” looking faro. Especially if done in an off-beat moment.

I’ve tried a few times in the mirror and it’s way better than the normal way, and if you finish the shuffle with a messy square up to it looks quite amateurish.

I did some research on conjuring archive and it seems like it’s a very old idea. This is the oldest reference I found on there, but the idea could be even older:

1968 - The Batchelor Side Faro Shuffle - to simulate an amateur card shuffle

I don’t have the book, but it seems like it’s the same idea, and even the reasoning behind it is the same. —AF [Who wrote about this in the 4th issue of his newsletter. I haven’t read it (It’s behind a paywall), but if you’re interested, you might want to track it down.]

I love this idea. And it does take away my issue with the faro shuffle.

Has anyone out there mastered a side faro shuffle? If so, let me know where you learned it and any tips you might have.

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You mentioned in a recent post that you found it harder than expected to come up with groupings of letters to use for the Ascrabbological Sign trick. I love combinatorial puzzles like that! Years ago I worked on software tools that were good at solving those kinds of problems, and I still enjoy dragging out those tools and applying them to fun new problems. So if you ever have need of a solution to this kind of thing, I'd be happy to hear from you.

Anyway, one thing I didn't like about the groupings you came up with was that B and P appeared in both groups. I imagined that somebody who was (say) a Libra, upon seeing the second B, might be unsure as to whether or not they should take it the second time ("There's only one B in Libra, and I already have one, so..."). Of course, one could address this issue in the patter to make sure that they take it both times, but I figured it would be neater to just side-step the issue by not having any repeated letters, and it turns out that there are lots of groupings that can be used that don't have repeated letters (I give a couple of examples below).

Here are a couple of the solutions without duplicates that I found while messing around. The first is one (of two) minimal solutions, i.e. having as few tiles as possible in the groupings. Though it's probably not the best choice in practice, since Libra and Aries might find it suspicious that they get 4/5 of their letters out of just 7, and Taurus gets them all (discounting the second U). It could be padded with D, K, etc., but still...

Group 1: I S U
Group 2: A L R T
0 1 Leo
0 2 Cancer
1 0 Gemini
1 1 Virgo
1 2 Capricorn
1 3 Libra
2 0 Pisces
2 1 Scorpio
2 2 Aries
2 3 Taurus
3 2 Aquarius
3 3 Sagittarius

And just for fun, here's a maximal one (having as many tiles as possible in the groupings - ignoring D, K, etc.).

Group 1: C G N P Q S
Group 2: A B L O T U V
0 2 Leo
0 3 Libra
1 1 Aries
1 2 Virgo
1 3 Taurus
2 0 Gemini
2 1 Cancer
2 2 Aquarius
2 3 Sagittarius
3 0 Pisces
3 1 Scorpio
3 2 Capricorn

—WH

Hey, do I have the smartest readers in magic, or what?

Just kidding. Most of you are just as dumb as I am.

Thanks to WH for using a targeted method at coming up with the letters for the Ascrabbological Sign trick. That definitely gets a better result than my method which consisted of, “Hmm… I wonder if these letters will work.”

I still think it’s a fairly dumb trick. Other than a formal show, I can’t imagine many situations where you’d be sitting with someone whose birthday you don’t know and have a scrabble board handy. But I found it interesting to see how he cut down the needed letters to just three and four.

I’ll continue to think about this trick and other groups of words that might be more useful/interesting presentationally, and I’ll report back if I come up with anything.

O.P.P.

I have a rule of not promoting other people’s magic releases on this site. Even the work of friends and supporters of the site. I mean, I’ll talk about it if I have something I specifically want to say about it. But I just don’t do it as a matter of course. What I don’t want is a situation where people write me and say, “I have this new trick coming out. Can you mention it on the site?” Not that there’s anything wrong with that sort of arrangement necessarily. But the problem is that it makes every mention of something suspect. You would wonder, “Wait… is he saying he likes this because he really likes this? Or because this is his friend’s release? Or because he was given a free copy? Or what?” I think this site would feel different if you had to question my motivation when I mention other people’s stuff. So to eliminate that question, my rule is simply to not do outright promotion of other people’s magic, unless it comes up naturally.

But when it comes to non-magic releases, I’m more than happy to promote the work of people who support this site. It’s my pleasure to do so, in fact. If you think, “Hey, he’s only mentioning this because the person is a supporter of his site.” Yup. You may be right. I don’t care. I’m completely in the tank for the people who support this site. If you’re a supporter with a non-magic release you want me to mention here, just ask. I probably won’t use your full name, just because I generally don’t want to make this site show up in a google search of your name (for your sake). But I’ll happily direct people to your stuff.

Here are a few recent projects from friends of the site. None of these people asked to be mentioned here, I just did so because I’m a sweetheart.

How to Remember Everything: Tips & Tricks to Become a Memory Master!

This is a recent book release by supporter Jacob SW. It’s a book aimed at a younger audience, but I bought a copy and, while I haven’t read it yet, I have flipped through it, and it looks to be right in my intellectual wheelhouse. This looks like the kind of book I would have returned to again and again when I was a kid. And, even as an adult, this is actually the type of book I would prefer to learn new skills from.

For the right kid, this would make a good, inexpensive Christmas gift. And if you want to improve your memory, this feels like a good place to start at any age.

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Half Empty/Half Full

Supporter Andy G’s movie was just released on Amazon Prime in September.

I have to say, I was wary about this one. It’s a movie that takes place in one room in real time and it’s about two couples having dinner together. I thought it might be a bit too arty for my unsophisticated tastes. But while it never veered into the territory of a proper horror or thriller, there was enough tension to make it compelling. And I was interested the whole way through in seeing how things would unfold. I definitely think it’s worth the watch.

It’s currently available for free on Amazon Prime.

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Ted Lasso

Another friend of the site is working on this show which can be found on Apple TV. I’m five episodes into the first season and this is easily my favorite show on TV at the moment. It’s just funny and good-hearted and Jason Sudeikis plays my favorite type of person—the unflappably optimistic kind. (As I said, I’m five episodes in. If his character turns into a serial-rapist later on in the show, that’s not what I was referring to when I said he played “my favorite type of person.”)

There are only 10 episodes at the moment, but it’s already been picked up for a 2nd and 3rd season, which I’m pretty psyched about.

The Juxe: Opening Lines

If you search for “best opening lines in songs” online, you’ll get things like, Across the Universe, by The Beatles. “Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup.” Uhm, okay. That’s fine and all. But if you like that, then the opening lyrics to these songs are really going to knock you on your fat ass.

Here are three songs where I heard the opening line and thought, “Okay… let’s see where this goes.”

Potwash by Canshaker Pi (The Netherlands)

Radio by Alkaline Trio (Chicago, Illinois)

Best Shape of My Life by Kleenex Girl Wonder (Brooklyn, New York)

Squared Anagrams and Fuzzy Processes

Last Friday I wrote about Squared Anagrams and how you can build your anagrams in such a way that you get more information with seemingly less guesses.

In that post I used a Ouija board as the divining instrument, but that’s not the only way to use it (it was just the easiest to illustrate).

Before I get to some alternative ideas, I want to emphasize why this works so well.

Let’s say you have a 16-item traditional anagram.

That means you need to have four letter guesses to sort out which one they picked (either four guesses on average, or four guesses exactly depending on how you build the anagram).

So you might have

Yes, No, Yes, No
Yes, No, No, No
No, Yes, Yes, No

And 13 other potential

With the squared anagram, and just two “volleys” you only have four potential outcomes:

Yes, Yes
Yes, No
No, Yes
No, No

Each of these outcomes has a simple “story” that goes along with it:

Yes, Yes = “This is working!”
No, No = “Ok, this isn’t working. Let’s try something else.”
Yes, No = “I thought it was working, but that must have been luck. Let’s try something else.”
No, Yes = “Something wasn’t right the first time. But now it’s working!”

Coming up with a “story” for four guesses can be a little wonky, depending on how they fall out.

Yes, No, Yes, No = “It’s working! No, it’s not. It’s working! Nope, it’s not”
No, No, No, Yes = “It’s not working. It’s not working. Seriously, this isn’t working at all but I’m still going to ask one more letter. As if getting a Yes on this last letter could possibly be meaningful in any way at all that would be discernible from dumb luck.”

It’s because of the potential for these up and down types of responses that I always felt it was better to use some kind of oracle or process (other than straight mind reading) to “receive” the letters. This way, if a letter is wrong, it can be the oracle/process that is wrong. Or the oracle/process that you misinterpreted. That makes a little more sense than, “I can read your mind, but for some reason I thought there was a B and an M in the word ‘little.’”

With “Squared Anagrams,” the idea is just to use an oracle/process that is fuzzy in some way in order to cut down your guesses dramatically. (A six-guess standard anagram would cover 64 outcomes. A six-guess squared anagram would cover 4096 outcomes.)

The Ouija board is a fuzzy oracle because you can’t always be certain which letter is being indicated.

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Here is a more useful “fuzzy” process.

The Sweep

This is the method my friend uses for his Squared Anagram routine and it goes over very well. The spectator is thinking of a word. My friend takes his right hand so it’s across his body, palm out, at his left shoulder. “I’m going to go through the alphabet, from A-Z. When I say a letter that’s in your word, I want you to think ‘Yes.’ Just think it. Try not to move your mouth or anything else.” He now starts reciting the alphabet and sweeping his arm from left to right as if he’s spreading out the alphabet in the air in front of him.

“A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M- ooh… something around here,” he says, stopping his sweeping motion and going back just a bit, moving his hand in a circular motion in the air around where he stopped.

“An L?” he asks.

If he gets a Yes: “And an M?”

If he gets a No: “It must be an M then.”

Now he knows if it’s an L, M, Both, or Neither. Four options with just one “impulse” from the spectator. And it makes complete sense that this “impulse” might not be exact. The person isn’t mentally sending him a letter. She’s sending him the thought, “Yes.” But she’s sending out that thought as the alphabet is passing by. It would be like throwing a tennis ball at cars in a line of moving traffic. Did you intend to hit the one that just passed or the one that was coming?

If he gets a “Neither,” then he pauses here, and he repeats the process with a known word. The spectator’s name. “Okay, something’s not right here. I’m not picking up on the right thing. Let’s try this. I’m going to go through the alphabet again—forget the word you’re thinking, for now—instead, when I get to the letters in your name, Dana, I want you to think Yes. That should help calibrate things, if this is going to work at all.”

So he goes through the alphabet again, with them thinking Yes on the letters of their name.

Now that they’re properly “calibrated” he resets and goes through the process again. This time getting a hit somewhere between R and S.

Now, if we call a “hit” getting one or the other letter correct (or both), that means:

After two guesses, you’ll know the word and…

9/16ths of the time you’ll get two hits- “This is working!”
3/16ths of the time you’ll get a hit followed by a miss - “I thought it was working, but that must have been luck. Let’s try something else.”
3/16ths of the time you’ll get a miss followed by a hit - “Something wasn’t right at first. But now it’s working!”
1/16th of the time you’ll get two misses - “Ok, this isn’t working. Let’s try something else.”

To build this anagram, you just need two sets of adjacent letters anywhere in the alphabet, and then fill it out with words (or names) using that criteria.

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What other types of fuzzy guesses could work?

Fuzzy Alphabet

Lowercase letters offer a number of 2-for-1 guesses like m and w.

Do these letters says buph? Or something much, much more wonderful?

If you had some homemade alphabet flash-cards—maybe something your kid drew, or you drew as a kid—you could have two “randomly” selected letters and from them you could unpack 16 potential possibilities.

Fuzzy Sounds

“Sound the letters out for me in your head, one-by-one. Let’s see… I’m getting a…hmm a muh or a nuh, I think. Are you thinking of an M or a N? Both?”

You can also use B and P, S and Z, and C and K.

Fuzzy Visuals

“Picture the letters in your head for me. Cycle through them for me one-by-one. Hmmm. Okay, I’m going to really need you to concentrate for me, if you can. I think I’m getting something but it’s out of focus. I think I’m getting a C or maybe an O? I can’t tell if it’s a closed circle or not. Were you thinking of one of those? Both?”

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And, of course, you could (perhaps should) combine these ideas. Maybe at first you have them think of the way the letters look. But since that wasn’t very clear, you then go on to how the letters sound.

If you think guessing letters is boring, you’re right. But I still think this is a tool that can be used for some non-boring effects. I’ve watched my friend really fry people with his own routine (which he tells me he’ll let me share here next year at some point). And I’ve recently come up with my own routine that I’ve only performed a couple of times, but if the reactions continue to hold up, it’s going to be a “book worthy” effect, so supporters of the site will see it some day in the future.

Dustings of Woofle #27

Did you guys see this unsettling image put out by the World Health Organization to demonstrate the horrifying effects of disuse-induced muscular atrophy over time?

To see the sad progression—from a robust healthy specimen; to someone who has lost so much muscle mass in his chest that he can no longer fill out the shirt collar that droops flaccidly around his neck; to, finally, a hunched crone whose limbs you could crack like kindling—is devastating.

Drink your milk, folks. And hit the gym.

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Here’s some more bad equivoque for you. This is what happens when you get caught up in the idea that equivoque is inherently fooling. It’s not. And when you take 90 seconds to force one side of an invisible die in a meandering nonsensical way, you’re not going to be able to convince anyone it’s anything other than verbal ambiguity.

No one would experience that and say, “You’ll never believe what happened! I freely chose which two sides of an invisible die to cover up. Then I freely chose which two of the remaining numbers to give to the magician. Then we hung the remaining numbers invisibly in the air, and again I freely chose which one to hand to the magician. And he knew I’d keep the three!”

To be fair, any type of equivoque used to force a number on a die is probably not going to go over well. Any manner of choosing the number on a die (visible or invisible) that doesn’t involve simply rolling it is going to feel needlessly complicated.

This video also reminds me of a conclusion I came to a little while ago that equivoque doesn’t work well with 3-6 items. It works well with a lot of items. And it works well with 2 (and it’s really effective with 1). But with just a handful of options, it makes less sense to break up the selection process into steps (which is usually what equivoque requires).

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If you have a little time to burn, check out this video that Calen Morelli put out late last year. I found it to be a really worthwhile watch and it hasn’t gotten nearly enough views.

I mentioned in this post an idea I had to float someone’s hair with a loop, and how I gave up on the idea. But Calen actually does it in this video and gets a good reaction, so maybe I was too quick to abandon the idea. [Update: Calen tells me he published the idea in 2014, which makes sense. Looking back now, I think I got the idea to float someone’s hair with loops after doing Calen’s floating hoodie string from his Penguin lecture. So I was circling the same thought process he was playing around with a few years earlier.]

There is a lovely coins through sheet of glass effect around 6:40 into the video. I was really blown away by it when I saw it initially. When I showed it to some non-magician friends, they liked it, but not nearly as much as I did. That experience was the impetus for me writing The Bubble series of posts from back in February. Magicians will have the understanding to appreciate how pretty this version is, even more so than laypeople. That’s not to say it’s a trick “for” magicians, just that there are elements of it that magicians might be more amazed at than non-magicians.

The whole thing is a good watch, with a bunch of nice magic moments throughout. And it’s really well shot and produced. (Although the audio drops out at one point (due to a copyright claim) so be prepared to do some a cappella singing on your own at that point to keep the groove going. Might I recommend this hot beat? skee-dop-doo doo doo doo skee-dop-doo dee!)