Alphablocks Text and Ideomotor by Proxy

Whaddup?

Okay, so today’s post is a further exploration of the Alphablocks concept made famous (?) by me in this post.

Now, I try not to pimp my own ideas too much, but if you’ve been sleeping on this concept because you think it’s just a progressive anagram variation, I would encourage you to give it a second look. While there are similarities with a PA, I find this feels much fairer. And that’s because you’re never getting any definitive information from the spectator. In a PA, if the spectator says there’s a B in the word, then it’s clear there’s a B in the word. With Alphablocks you never get that clear-cut information. But you can still narrow down from a large group of words relatively quickly.

I’m posting about this again today because a couple weeks ago I had an idea to make the process much more usable and I sent the idea along to Warwick Harvey who worked on the original version of the Alphablocks tool and within hours he had figured out a way to bring that idea to fruition.

Go back and read the first Alphablocks post if you haven’t yet because it will help to have the understanding of how the basic idea works.

In that version of the tool, you were working off a list of words. Either a list of words you came up with, or a list of words the spectator came up with (as in the Mind Reading Dice trick).

In this version of Alphablocks (known on Warwick’s site as Alphablocks Text) you can do the same basic effect with any (relatively small) chunk of text. So you can do it with song lyrics or a poem or a recipe or the first couple paragraphs of a news article, novel, or speech. Essentially whatever you want as long as it’s not too lengthy.

Here’s an example of what it looks like in action

Ideomotor by Proxy

Recently I called up a friend and suggested we try something out over the phone. I asked her if there was a poem or a soliloquy she had memorized in school or something else she remembered memorizing when she was a kid. The best thing she could come up with (hardly a poem or soliloquy) was the lyrics to the Golden Girls Theme Song.

“Have you ever heard of ideomotor actions? Okay, so they’re like these unconscious, imperceptible movements that people make based on their own expectations. And then those movements get magnified by something you’re touching or holding. So, like, with a ouija board. That thingy moves because you’re expecting it to move and thus you make it move. Or a dowsing rod. You don’t think you’re moving it yourself, but you are. The classic example is with a pendulum.”

I had her grab a necklace with a pendant on the end of it and I showed her how if she held it like a pendulum and just thought “circle” or “line” she could get the necklace to move in a certain manner.

“But what I’m looking into is something way crazier than that. It’s called Ideomotor By Proxy. And what that is, is the idea that you can control a pendulum with your mind when held by somebody else. I know it sounds bananas but I’ve seen it work.

“So here’s what we’re going to try. I want you to think of any word in the Golden Girl’s theme song. Nothing too short. Nothing with just two or three letters. But you don’t have to pick out a word that stands out in any way either. It can be anything. We’ll just use a word from that song because it seems to work best with something you ingrained in your memory as a child. That tends to leave an imprint on the part of your brain that controls this ideomotor function. So do you have a word from the song in mind?”

I had her go onto facetime with me so she could see what I was doing on my end.

I showed her a piece of paper with the letters of the alphabet written in a circle.

I explained that I would hold my pendulum in the middle of that circle and she would think of the letters in her word on her end, and I would see what letters the pendulum was drawn to on my end.

“It might take a few minutes for it to get calibrated, but do your best to stay focused. I’ll try using different hands and holding the pendulum at different spots and we’ll see what gets the best results.”

I placed the phone in the middle of the circle of letters and held the pendulum above it and commenced the “first round.” From her perspective she just saw the pendulum moving in above the phone.

“Okay… the letters I’m getting are… E… N… V… and… maybe W too. Yeah, it’s bouncing around from E, N, V and W. Uhm… don’t tell me which letters, because I don’t want to know—I have to be totally out of the loop for this to work or else my own ideomotor effect will move the pendulum instead of yours—but were any of those letters in your word?”

No, she said.

“Hmm… okay. Let me try my other hand.”

In this round the letters were B, C, D, and G. “Are any of those in your word? A few or just one? Just one? Okay. Well, that might be luck or it might not. Let me try shortening up the pendulum.”

On the third round the letters were A, F, K, and T. Once again there was only one right letter.

“Okay, okay,” I said, cautiously optimistic. “That might not seem like it’s working. But if when I held the pendulum here we were just picking up on one letter, and when I held it at this point we were also picking up on one letter. So that means—if this is working—those would be the two far ends of a bell curve, which would mean the sweet spot should be directly between those two points. on the pendulum” Obviously I’m just making shit up here, but as long as it seems like there’s some process I’m following, then it doesn’t really matter the specifics of what I say.

I switched my positioning on the pendulum a final time. This time I’m held the phone with my right hand, pointed at me, while I concentrated on what was going on with my left hand and the pendulum. So she’s just seeing my reaction. “Oh shit,” I said. “I think this is really working. It’s moving totally differently now. Uhm… hold on. What is it… A… D…R…O…A… Adroa-something? Wait… R-O—Road?! Are you thinking of the word ‘road’?”

Her mouth dropped open and she ran her hand through her hair. “What?!” she said.

“Seriously?” I asked. “It worked? Wait… ‘road’ is in the Golden Girls theme song?”

“‘Traveled down a road and back again,” she said.

“Oh right! Holy shit.”

Method

When I had her on the phone originally and she mentioned the Golden Girls theme, I just kept talking to her while I did a google search for the lyrics.

I copy and pasted those lyrics into the text version of the Alphablocks tool here.

I like to set the parameters so it looks like this:

But that’s just my personal preference.

After a few seconds of processing, the tool gave me a few options:

When it says “rounds” it’s talking about how many rounds of letter guesses will be required.

So I could have said, “Think of any long word in the song… at least 8 letters.” And then I could have done the guessing in just one round. But because there are only three options for words that long in the song, it wouldn’t have been very impressive.

Looking back now, I probably would take the second option if I gave it a little more thought. I could have said, “Think of any word there. Nothing too short. Make it at least five letters long.” And then I could have got the word in just two rounds.

But in the moment I took the third option, which allowed me to do the trick with essentially any word in the song. (Well, any word over three letters.)

So I click that button and it gives me the chart which tells me how to proceed. It might look complicated, but once you familiarize yourself with how these charts work, you’ll see it’s very simple.

The results from three rounds I did with my friend were 0 letters, 1 letter, 1 letter. So if you start in that first column you’ll see 7 words will have 0 letters in that first round. Of those words, only Road and Gift will have one letter in the second round. And of those two, Road is the one that has one letter in the third round.

The pendulum works nicely with three rounds of letters. In the first round I hold the pendulum near the middle of the string. In the second round I move towards the end. If the results of the second round are better than the first, I move further in that direction. If they’re the same or worse, I move the other direction. Then, based on the results from the three rounds and apparently “triangulate” the perfect position.

As in the Mind Reading Dice effect, I want them to believe this might take many, many rounds to complete. So when it only takes two or three before it works, that should feel extra surprising.

I keep my laptop with the chart visible on it on the same table I’m doing the pendulum work on. I just never turn the camera in that direction once we go to facetime. That’s why I like having the phone in the middle of the circle for most of the rounds. It keeps the camera pointed at the ceiling rather than anywhere near the computer (not that they would know what they’re seeing if they did get a glimpes of the computer screen.) And it’s kind of an interesting angle, I think, for the spectator. Just seeing the pendulum dangling above as I call out the letters.

Keep in mind, this is just an example of one way to use the tool. You don’t have to use a pendulum. Does a pendulum work really well in this context? Yes. Is the concept of the ideomotor effect happening by proxy a great presentation? Yes. It takes something real that the spectator can research and verify is legit, and pushes it into the realm of the fantastical. It’s typical Jerx brilliance, what can I say?

But that’s just one way to utilize this tool.

How else might you use this, Andy?

However you want. Get off your ass and figure something out. Can’t you do anything for yourself? You need me to come over there and hold your little weenie for you while you take a piss and shake it off when you’re finished too? Warwick and I have done all the work here so far. Now you rattle a few of your own brain cells together and see what you can come up with, you lazy bitch.

Okay, byeeeeee!!!!!

Dear Jerxy: On Switching

Dear Jerxy: Now that I've started doing your type of magic, I find that many outstanding experiences require the simplest thing -- often, just a switch. But it gets harder with these bespoke tricks because now I'm switching rocks, notes, video games, artwork or boxes. Are there any switches you always come back to? I know you're going to say I'm overthinking it -- just lap it or use an offbeat or move a pillow around... I think about those too! But I wonder if you have gimmicks or specific switches that give you a lot of mileage because I need to expand my switching repertoire. Z-wallets, Quiver, Angel Case, thumbtips, etc...

Signed,
Looking for a Switch Bitch Session in Los Angeles

Dear Looking: This is a good question for which you have accurately predicted I will have an unsatisfying answer. Other than a thumbtip, I don’t use any switching props/gimmicks that regularly. Although I do have a z-wallet, Quiver, Angel Case, and so on, and they all work great for what they do. The issue, for the amateur performer, is if you place something in a little leather pouch and it changes to something else, you may have performed a good trick. But the next time that spectator sees you place something in a little leather pouch and it changes to something else, they’re going to think, “Oh, I guess that little leather pouch changes stuff.” That’s also true for an unusual wallet, or a black envelope, or a hinged box. Used once they might not draw much attention to themselves. But if a spectator notes that every time you place something in this particular container, it changes to something else, the container becomes suspect.

So I do tend towards prop-less switching (or invisible gimmicks like a thumbtip). And the prop-less methods for switching do tend to be situation-dependent, audience-dependent, timing-dependent, and object-dependent. So it’s hard to give specific advice on what switch to use.

Instead I will give you two general switching tips that I’ve found to significantly cut down on the “you must have switched it” answer from people.

Motivate Your Movement - If the object of the spectator’s interest goes out of view for a moment, it’s quite easy for them to think that maybe it was switched. But if it happens in the process of a recognizable human action then, in my experience, it becomes much more psychologically invisible.

If you’re watching me perform and I have you shuffle a deck and I take it back and then at some point the deck dips under the table’s edge for a moment, that might raise some suspicion on your part. Even if it happens on an “off beat.”

But if you shuffle a deck and I take it back and at some point adjust my chair, I find the suspicion to be much less. Even though “adjusting my chair” involved the same action of the deck of cards going under the table for a bit. The normal human motivation of grabbing my seat and pulling it in a little is so recognizable that it drowns out the “questionable” moment of my hands going out of site. Not completely, and not 100% of the time. But as a general principle, it seems to work very well.

So try to give the movement required by your switches a recognizable motivation and that will go a long way to hiding the switch.

(And no, putting your hands in your pockets as a sign of “relaxation” doesn’t count. Magicians think this looks casual, but most of the time they’re wrong. Showing someone a magic trick is an act of inviting them to see something exciting or interesting. And that’s incongruous with the pose of just leaning back with your hands in your pockets. So even if they don’t think, “I bet he’s getting something from his pocket” or, “I bet he’s ditching something in his pocket,” I do think it’s a pose that doesn’t quite feel right. )

Maintain a Constant - I use this a lot, and I think it’s really deceptive. The idea is this: If you have something that’s being switched, try to have some element of that thing that is never switched.

For example:

• If you want to switch a pen that works for one that doesn’t, then it’s particularly fooling if the cap is on the table or in the spectator’s hand before and after the switch. The cap is the constant. The pen came out of that cap and it goes back into that cap, so I think that helps it feel like the same pen.

• It’s better to switch the drawer of a matchbox, and place it into the sleeve that never left their sight, than to switch the entire matchbox.

• Overwhelmingly, I’ve found the most fooling deck switch to be one where some cards are already in play, and you switch out all the other cards. Then the cards that are in play are added back to the switched in deck (which is missing those cards, of course).

Obviously, I can’t always work a switch in this manner, but I do so whenever I can.

Off of This Couch

For a long time this was one of the main ways I performed Out of This World. It uses both of the elements described above.

My friend and I would be sitting on the couch. I’d have her shift down so there was some space between us. I’d give her a deck to shuffle. A matching deck, separated into red cards and black cards (and missing the Ace of Spades and the Ace of Hearts) would be behind a throw pillow, between my leg and the couch, in the crack where the cushion meets the couch, or under my leg.

When she got done shuffling the deck I’d tell her to pull out the Ace of Hearts and Ace of Spades and set them face up on the cushion between us.

I’d hold the deck in my hand and have her direct me on where to put each card; on the heart if it was red, on the spade if it was black.

After a few cards had been dealt on each ace, I would notice the cards sliding due to the cushion not being completely flat. I’d look around to decide a better place to do this, gather up the cards that had been dealt already, and suggest we move this over to the kitchen table.

In the process of getting up, my hand that was holding the deck would be blocked from her view by my body. And in standing up, I’d drop the shuffled deck behind the pillow and pick up the prepared deck.

I’d have her grab the aces and we’d move over to the table. I’d deal a few cards at her direction, but eventually I would just hand her the deck to deal through and complete the OOTW effect in a standard manner.

Each step here feels either very clean or very logical.

They shuffle the deck - Clean
They remove the aces - Clean
I take the deck and immediately take the cards one by one from the top of the deck for them to mentally assess - Clean
The fact that we’re doing this on the couch, causes the packets to slide around, making it a bit disorganized. - Logical
I suggest moving this process to the kitchen table - Logical

The only moment that might need some justification is why I take the deck back after she shuffles it. Why don’t I just have her deal the cards? The logic I use is that I’m going to mentally send her the color of each card. So obviously I need to see each one, so it makes sense that I would hold the deck. It’s only once we relocate to the table and we’ve started over and I’ve dealt a few cards again that I say, “You’re doing really good, actually. I think you could do this without me.” And hand the deck to them to deal the cards.

This makes sense, and it escalates the effect in a nice way.

Now, objectively speaking, there is obviously plenty of time for me to switch the deck using this handling. But I don’t remember that idea ever coming out of a spectator when I used this method. And that’s saying something, because switches are a pretty common conclusion that spectators come to for all types of tricks. I’ve had them think a switch was involved with OOTW when I used methods that didn’t use any switch. So a version of OOTW that uses a genuinely spectator-shuffled deck and doesn’t scream switch, indicates to me that the fundamental techniques used must be fairly strong.

Dustings #37

I had an interest in magic from a very young age. In the early days that interest was fed with trips to the magic section of the public library and commercially available magic kits. At some point in the late 80s, I finally found my way to a “real” magic store. So I’ve seen over three decades of evolution in the magic industry.

What’s changed the most in that time? Well, certainly desktop publishing was a significant change. And the internet has, of course, changed the way magic is taught and greatly increased the speed with which magic ideas are iterated. And all the water we drink out of plastic bottles has dropped our testosterone to the point that thumbtips are now 15% smaller than they were in the 80s.

But the biggest change has been in magic packaging.

My friend was showing me his Anaverdi Mental Die when I stopped by his place last week. It comes in a custom made box with an LED light that turns on when you open the box and a little drawer that slides out on the bottom of the box. It’s an impressive piece of packaging which by itself probably added a few dollars to the cost of the product.

Back in my day, that would be an obscene amount to pay for magic packaging. Back in the 90s, “a few dollars” would actually buy you enough material to package 100 tricks for retail sale in the finest packaging we had.

And that was if you were lucky. Your trick also might just come in a brown paper lunch bag.

And yes, I suppose it’s a good thing that modern magic packaging is nicer, but I can’t help but think of the unintended consequences. Much like the legalization of abortion took a bite out of the profits in the coat hanger industry, I worry what our obsession with these nice packages has done to the poor folks at the Ziploc company.

Here is what the Anaverdi Die would look like, ready to sell, in 1992.

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Question

There are certain questions you’re not supposed to ask in polite society. Questions like, “How much money do you make?” So today I’m asking the question…, “How much money do you make?”

I’m specifically asking this question to people who earn a living or a part of their living from magic. I think this will be helpful for people who are considering getting into magic professionally and don’t have any idea what the financials of it might be. If you told me a magician doing schools shows in Indiana made $20,000 a year, I’d believe you. If you told me he made $120,000 a year, I’d also believe you. I haven’t a clue.

For the purposes of the question below, we can assume we’re talking about a typical non-Covid year. Although feel free to annotate your answer to clarify exactly what you’re talking about.

The fields below are:

Location: You can be as specific as you like. You can give information down to the city-level, state-level, or just the country level.

How much you make in an average year from magic: For the sake of allowing us to compare across locations, put your figures in US dollars. Here’s a currency converter if you need it.

Is magic a full-time or part-time career for you

What you do: Here you can provide as much or as little information about what you do in relation to magic as you want to give. “I’m a kid’s show magician, averaging around 2 shows per week.” “I released a video download through Penguin and sold 80 copies.” “I work weddings and special events and do approximately 200 performances a year.” “I perform 40 shows a year. I run an online magic shop. I do 50 lectures a year for magicians. And I release a couple new products annually.” You can also mention about what you earn per show or per-whatever, to paint a more detailed picture.

Example:

Location: Milwaukee, WI USA
How much do you make in an average year from magic: $60,000
Full-Time or Part-Time: Full-Time
What do you do: I have a line of shirts for the discerning gentleman conjuror that says, “Magicians Do It With Sponge Balls.”

I realize this is all wildly personal information, but I’m hoping people are comfortable divulging knowing that it’s completely anonymous, and that this is a site that values anonymity. No personal information is collected when you fill out the form other than what you actually put in the form. I don’t know if I have enough professional or semi-pro readers to get a ton of responses but if enough people respond and the answers are interesting or useful in some way, then I’ll release the data in a later post. Perhaps there will be enough data points to give some hint of the financial realities of someone working in magic in the early 2020s and how that varies depending on what you’re doing and where you’re doing it.

Don’t bother trying to impress me with your comedy chops and answering with joke answers. They’ll get filtered out before I see them.

Anything you write here may be published on the site, so don’t write anything you feel is too identifying.

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Our friend, and frequent collaborator, Stasia has a new deck of cards out. The Space Girl deck.

No. Space Girl playing cards. I think they're great. I'm always looking for playing cards with imagery that real humans are drawn to. And this deck meets that criteria in my opinion.

And there are a few bonuses to the deck for magicians.

First, it's a real deck made for normal people. So if someone likes it you can send them to Stasia's Etsy store and not, like, Ellusionist or something.

Second, it's also an "oracle" deck. That just means each card has a meaning beyond the suit and value of the card itself. The deck comes with a little fold-out pamphlet explaining the meaning of each card. This is valuable because you can have someone look through the pamphlet and decide on something they're interested in or concerned about, and then have them remove that card. By using any standard technique to figure out the card they’ve taken, you now have something to work with if you're the sort of person who gives readings or anything along those lines.

You can also force particular cards and then look up the meaning with the spectator and let that meaning direct you into some other seemingly random experience.

Third, it's one of best one-way decks I've ever seen.

• Yes, it's clearly a one-way deck when you look at the backs. But while it's obvious, it also feels more subtle than a deck of cards with Garfield on the back, where Garfield is clearly right-side up, or upside-down. Because the imagery is of space, you don't get a feeling of "upside-down" regardless of how you see the card going into the deck.

• The faces are also all one-way designs.

• You don't need to see much of the back at all to spot the reversed card. Depending on how the deck is held, it will either be the one sliver of red, in a sea of blue. Or vice versa.

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Are you a Gentleman Conjuror? Do you want others to know that you’re a magician of fine taste? Do you make sure to let everyone know that you like whiskey, but you’re still not sure if they’ll recognize you’re a performer of class and distinction?

Have I got the shirt for you. Up in the Dumb Houdini shop you can now find a shirt that lets people know the eternal truth about the most refined magicians: the fact that they do it with sponge balls.

Be the envy of men and the object of adoration from women (or vice versa) with this shirt that lets everyone know two things:

1. You have a keen fashion sense.

2. Magicians do it with sponge balls.

Available in regular and extra soft, in white on sponge red or sponge red on white.

100 Trick Repertoire Redux: Part Two

I ended the previous post in this series with the statement that my next post would contain, “my current way of maintaining my 100 Trick Repertoire in a manner that keeps the tricks fresh in my mind while minimizing the time I need to spend practicing.”

That’s going to be the focus of today’s post.

I’m not someone who likes practicing. One of the first things that made me feel like I didn’t fit in when I was spending time with other magicians happened at a small magic convention I attended as a teenager. There was a group of magicians that I didn’t know having a conversation that I had somehow wormed my way into. At some point they mentioned a magician—likely someone well known in magic circles, but not anyone I knew of at the time—and one of the guys was saying how this magician practiced the bottom deal or the pass or something for hours a day for years. And I looked around and I was like, “Heh… what a dork.” All their eyes turned to me. I soon realized that wasn’t the point they were making when they were like, “Well, now his pass [or maybe his bottom deal] is invisible. That’s what you have to do.” And I was shamed into agreeing with them and quickly backpedaled like a total pussy. “Oh yeah, definitely,” I said. “You have to.”

But now I feel no shame about thinking that practice sucks. I mean, if you find working on sleights and moves to be meditative or fun, then that’s great, knock yourself out. But if you don’t, then you just need to practice enough to keep your working repertoire fresh and at the top of your mind.

Of course, this might not be true for you if your goals are different than mine. If you want to be a world-class card cheat, then you’ll need to put in a lot of work. If you want to have a premier manipulation act, then you’ll need a lot of practice. If you want to be a master coin magician, that’s going to require you to devote a ton of time rehearsing in front of a mirror.

But I don’t think of those things as goals of the amateur. Those are professional ambitions, or at least magician-centric magic achievements. Myself, and most of the amateurs that are drawn to this site, are just looking to use magic in a way that keeps themselves and the people they perform for interested and entertained. And that doesn’t require a ton of traditional “practice.” Yes, you need to master the moves required for the tricks you want to perform. But you can come up with a full 100 Trick Repertoire of strong magic that requires no moves, if you’re so inclined. So the minimum amount of time needed to master sleights is really up to you.

Similarly, a magician performing in social situations is usually not going to want to have a full script memorized by heart. She may have some beats she knows she wants to hit during her performance. But memorizing a few beats is much less of a time commitment than memorizing pages of scripting and trying to keep that in your long-term memory.

The nice thing about being an amateur magician performing in social situations is that it doesn’t require a huge time investment to do it well. Rigidly sticking to a script you memorized word-for-word is not valued in social situations. And, in my experience, the type of magic that requires the most amount of practice, is often the type of magic that goes over most poorly in casual environments. I’m pretty well convinced that I could take a mildly-charismatic non-magician and teach him three tricks/presentations over the course of an evening and put him up against any FISM winner doing his card manipulation act that he spent 12 years perfecting, and have them each perform for 15 minutes at a house party and 95+% of the audience would prefer my guy.

Spending 100s of hours on a center-deal will provide you few rewards when performing casually.

What is rewarded in social performing is having a large repertoire and being able to nimbly present a wide variety of interesting moments to people depending on the situation

Building up that repertoire does require a lot of time spent researching tricks and learning the methods and coming up with some presentational angles for them. But there’s no hurry to do that.

Once established, I believe you can maintain a large repertoire—even one with 100 tricks—in just a few minutes a day on average.

The way to do this is to not have a set frequency for how much you practice your repertoire. Instead you want to focus your time on the tricks that are giving you issues, and not waste too much time on those that are second nature to you.

In order to handle this automatically, I use the concept of “spaced repetition.” This is a way of learning and remembering things that automatically focuses on things that are new and/or difficult for you.

I use a program called “Anki” to manage my repertoire practice. It’s a flash-card program that uses spaced repetition. I’m not going to walk you through how to use the program, because that sounds boring to me and you can figure that out in other places. But I’ll tell you how I use it for this particular purpose.

On the “front” of the “flash-card,” (I’m using quotes because these aren’t really cards and there isn’t really a “front,” there’s just a particular field you fill in with information) I put the name of the trick.

On the “back” of the card, I input the following things:

1. The set-up for the trick (if there is one)

2. The most basic steps to the trick.

3. Any presentational ideas or patter lines I want to make sure to include when performing.

So, I’d input the information in the program like this:

And I would create a different card for each trick in my repertoire. Those individual cards form a deck. And I practice my repertoire by opening the app on my iphone, going to that “deck” and practicing whichever card(s) it gives me for that day.

It will provide me with the front of the card by itself at first. So it will just give me this:

So that tells me to practice the Ambitious Card. I’ll run through the routine quickly, making sure I have all the beats down.

When I’m done (or if I get stuck), I’ll tap the screen to see the back of the card.

You’ll notice there are four buttons at the bottom of the screen.

If I screw the trick up or I can’t remember the set-up or whatever the case may be, I’d hit the red button and the card would go back into today’s stack to be done again.

If I got through the trick but it required more thought or effort than I would want it to in a real performance, I’d hit the orange button that says “Hard” and this card would come back into the stack in three days.

If I got through the trick fine I’d hit the green button and the trick would come back into the stack in four days.

For the purposes of practicing my repertoire, I don’t use the blue button.

The thing to understand is that the time periods associated with the buttons aren’t static. They change based on how well you’ve done with that card over time. So pressing the green button in this instance would bring back the card again four days later. The next time it comes around the green button would push the card like 7 days later, then 10, then 14, then 20, and so on. Similarly if you keep barely getting through the trick then it’s going to wait less and less time to bring that card forward each time. And if you screw up the trick or forget how to do it, then it’s going to start you back at the very beginning of the cycle where you’ll do the card today, again tomorrow, then a couple days after that, and so on.

If you’re really on top of a trick, then theoretically the interval between it showing up in your cards to practice on a given day could be pushed to months or years. You probably don’t want that to happen. Even if you know a trick perfectly, it’s good to be reminded of it and run through it once every couple months or so. So you’ll probably want to set the “max interval” for cards in your Repertoire Deck to two or three months at the most. That way you’re touching every trick at least 4-6 times per year (and much more frequently if you haven’t already mastered them).

One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want to dump all your tricks into this program at once. If you do that, then all the cards in your practice database will be on identical intervals and tomorrow you’ll have 100 tricks you have to practice. Instead what you want to do is add one trick a day (if your repertoire is already established) or if you’re currently building your repertoire, then just add new tricks to this as you identify them. (I still wouldn’t add more than one per day.)

Once a day I fire up the app and run through the flash cards it has for me to process that day. It’s only a few cards at most. I’ll go through each trick and then hit the button to designate if I need to do the trick again, if it was hard, or if it went good. And that’s pretty much all there is to it, I think.

To be clear, I only use this program to help me practice. While I keep a barebones outline of the effect on the flash card, that’s just to be used as a quick reminder. The full catalog of my repertoire with all the details and information for each trick is in my Notion database, which I described in a couple of posts last year.

Dear Jerxy: Audience Response

Dear Jerxy: Something occurred to me after your newest post [Wednesday’s post]...it's about what your friends think of all this crazy magic stuff. I don't remember if you've written about it in detail. I remember a few stories about specific tricks you've done, but not the overall strategy.

Have you ever talked to your friends about what they thought as they went through the process of a trick? Can they tell you when they realized your latest crazy story was actually a trick? Do they enjoy going along with you on your flights of fantasy? Do you end up having them bring a friend along because they think it'll be fun, and the friend later said, "That guy was interesting...is he like that all the time?!"

And do you spin ridiculous or incredible BS when you're not doing a trick? Just to make them laugh? (And blur the lines of when you are actually in a trick?)

Stumped in San Mateo

Dear Stumped: Okay, I’ll take this piece by piece (and not completely in order)…

“Have you ever talked to your friends about what they thought as they went through the process of a trick?”

There are a number of people in my life that I will perform for and "break down the game film" with, so to speak. But those are people who are usually seeing a trick in a much more stripped down, basic presentational style. With them I'm trying to get their thoughts on the fundamentals of the trick and to see if they were fooled and to see if there are any potential "easy answers" I can address in future performances.

But I don’t really discuss what's happening presentationally too much. I will ask people direct questions about the science of a trick, but the feedback I collect on the artistry of a trick is done more indirectly, just through observation.

There are a few reasons I don't break down presentations with people:

1. I have a pretty good understanding of what concepts and ideas are generally interesting. And I have a pretty good understanding of what concepts are specifically interesting to my friends. I have friends who are into more mystical stuff, friends who are into psychology, friends who appreciate absurdity, friends who are into the supernatural, and so on. And I make sure to pay attention and note these things so I can tailor routines to them without having to ask if this is something they’d be interested in.

2. The people I perform for don’t know about this site. So while it might be natural for me to ask them if they have any idea how a trick was done or if they were fooled by a particular element of the trick, it wouldn’t make a ton of sense for me to ask them, “And did you like the way the experience slowly morphed from the real conversation we were having into the trick? Or would you like more of a demarcation?” They don’t expect me to be analyzing the effect more so than “were you fooled?” So while we’ll sometimes look at presentational things in the focus-group testing, I don’t do so with my friends. I’ll just make my own notes on their reactions.

3. Their enjoyment (or lack thereof) should be evident. When you see a movie with a person, it makes sense that afterwards, as you’re leaving the theater, you’ll turn to them and ask, “What did you think?” Because for the past 2 hours you’ve been looking at a screen, not at them, and you haven’t been talking to each other. But if—after having sex with someone—you turn to them and ask, “Was it good for you?” you are the cliche of an idiot, because that’s not something you should have to ask. It’s the same thing with this type of magic.

Now, I understand that if you’re doing a 2 minute ace assembly routine, it’s not always 100% clear if they enjoyed it. But with an effect/routine that’s longer, more interactive, more conversational, and more immersive for the spectator, you should be able to pick up on their level of enjoyment as the effect goes on.

4. It sort of breaks the spell. I prefer to let people keep the experience for themselves and file it away in their memory as they see fit. If I start asking too many questions about presentational techniques, then I can’t use those same techniques later. And if I ask them how they enjoyed the effect, then it becomes this thing to be evaluated and assessed. And likely they will think of it as something I’m going to do for other people. That’s not how I want them framing the experience.

“Can they tell you when they realized your latest crazy story was actually a trick?”

Maybe. But it’s never really been something I asked about or was concerned about. As long as they know it’s a trick at some point, then I’m fine with it. My preference is that they gradually become certain it’s a trick and aren’t 100% sure until the climax, but that will all depend on how crazy the premise is.

“Do you end up having them bring a friend along because they think it'll be fun, and the friend later said, ‘That guy was interesting...is he like that all the time?!’”

No. I don’t do anything too strange for people who aren’t on board. And magic is such a small part of my interactions with people. I wouldn’t just pop in with a stranger, show them something really bizarre, and then pop out of their lives.

“And do you spin ridiculous or incredible BS when you're not doing a trick? Just to make them laugh? (And blur the lines of when you are actually in a trick?)”

Not really. Not unless I’m with friends who are into bullshit for the sake of bullshit. Some of my actor and comedian friends are that way. They’re into “bits” and random nonsense. But that’s not really my personality.

Part of the reason people buy into the immersive style of presentation is that they’ve learned from past performances that there’s going to be a payoff. The magical payoff is what makes it worth investing in the story. But the story also strengthens the magical payoff.

The two are intensely more powerful together than the some of their parts.

Here’s an example:

All payoff, little story: “I’m going to knock that book over with the power of my mind.” Book falls over.

All story, no payoff: “What time is it? 9:59? Every night at 10pm, the ghost of my grandma visits me. This is the time when she used to tuck me in to bed when I was a kid. There she is! Hi Grandma!” And you just pretend like you’re seeing a woman who’s not there.

Story and payoff together: “What time is it? 9:59? Every night at 10pm, the ghost of my grandma visits me. This is the time when she used to tuck me in to bed when I was a kid. There she is! What is she doing? Oh… she’s going for the book she used to read me as a kid. What are you doing, Grandma? You can’t touch the book. You’re dead, grandma. You can’t move a b—.” The book falls over. You jump back. “What the fuck just happened!”

The story gives the payoff some meaning. And knowing their will be a payoff gets people invested in the story in a way they wouldn’t be if they just thought it was random BS or nonsense. This—they will have learned from your previous performances—is BS or nonsense that’s going to go somewhere. It’s going to manifest itself in some amazing or cool or interesting way.

Which loops me back to an earlier question:

“Do they enjoy going along with you on your flights of fantasy?”

Yes. I wrote in a post years ago about how I track reactions to effects. I track both the intensity of their initial reaction, and then how long after the effect they bring it up to me. And what got me really tuned into the immersive style of performance was noticing how much stronger and longer lasting the reactions were when the trick served as a climax to some kind of interesting or fantastical story. I didn’t choose this style of magic because I had some innate desire to perform this way. It was solely dictated by the response from the spectators.

The thing is, all magic tricks are “flights of fantasy.” The only question is whether the fantasy is going to be about you and your powers, or about something potentially more interesting (or at least more varied).

I wrote about this a bit in the last book, so I’ll end today’s post with an excerpt from that.

From the “Your Audience” chapter in HBB

Sometimes, when I talk to people in magic about focusing less on individual tricks and more on [this style] of performing, I will get feedback like this:

“Sure, it would be nice to perform like that. But you hang around artists and creative types who are more willing to go along with that sort of thing. I work in the corporate world [or “I work with blue-collar guys”]. I don’t think they’d be as accepting of that type of performance.”

Sorry, I don’t buy that. I think it’s just an excuse to not try something different. 

It’s kind of like saying, “What am I doing for my wife’s birthday? Oh, she doesn’t like romantic gestures. I got her a new mop and we’re going to watch a movie on Netflix.” You’ve convinced yourself your wife doesn’t like to be romanced (and maybe she has helped convince you of that) because, in the past, you haven’t done a good job of delivering that type of experience to her. Now, you may be married to someone who doesn’t like the typical romantic gestures. But almost everyone likes to be romanced, in the sense that they like gestures that makes them feel loved, valued and special, and that show you were thinking of them. If you’re with someone who doesn’t like when you make them feel that way, then you are with someone who doesn’t like you. Get out of that relationship.

Similarly, if you think the people in your life don’t want to see something more engaging or interesting than a traditional magic trick, you’re just telling yourself something to justify your laziness. 

Nobody turns down the opportunity to see something fascinating unless they think you have some weird alternative motive for showing it to them. If they sense this is just meant to be a fun interaction, they’ll certainly be interested in seeing it. Who wouldn’t? 

Now, there are certainly some people who aren’t into anything magic-related. And those people wouldn’t make a good audience. But if you think they’re at least willing to see a card trick, then they will definitely be even more willing to see something more immersive. 

I’ll prove it to you. Find the person you think is least receptive to this sort of thing and say to them, “I’d like to show you something. Well, actually, I have two things I want to show you. Which would you like to see: A card trick? Or [now you look over your left then right shoulder to make sure no one is listening] this weird wish-granting stone a leprechaun gave me?”

If he thinks you’re trying to convince him of the reality of a wish-granting-stone-giving leprechaun, he’ll probably think you’re a lunatic or a dork. But if he takes it in the spirit in which you intend it, then he’ll want to see what the hell you’re going to do with this crazy stone.

Everyone who sees magic wants to be amazed by the more charming, more incredible presentation. They want to get lost in a world that is stranger and more mysterious than they know the real world to be. Only a magician would think, “No. No. The only fantasy they want to indulge in is that I’m super special.”

The Jerx False Shuffle

Follow along with me. Take a deck in overhand shuffle position. Run five cards singly. Shuffle off. Run three cards. Toss half the deck in one chop and hold a break between the packets. Shuffle off. Cut at the break then shuffle, running the last three cards singly. You will find that the deck is back in its original order. If it didn’t work out, you screwed something up. Keep trying. Don’t read on until you get it to work.

Okay, I’m kidding. Actually, don’t do any of that.

Instead, shuffle the cards any way you like and set the cards on the table.

Talk to your friend(s) for a little bit.

Accidentally knock the deck off the table.

Have your friend help you pick up the cards. In the process of gathering the cards and settling back into your seat, switch the deck for a stacked deck.

After working on a lot of different false shuffles over a few decades now, I’ve come to the conclusion that, for me, the best false shuffle is a deck switch.

Obviously that’s not going to be the best option for every situation. It’s not a great option for when you need a false shuffle in the middle of a trick. But in the cases where I would normally start a trick with a false shuffle, I now almost always use a deck switch instead.

Here is my reasoning:

If you do a false shuffle poorly it will be spotted by the spectators.

If you do a false shuffle too casually it may be forgotten by the spectators.

And even if you do an excellent false shuffle and bring your audience’s attention to the fact that the cards are mixing, they will still not be convinced of that fact once the climax hits.

Think of it this way. Imagine you’re watching a magician. He has a deck of cards. In which scenario would you be most convinced that he didn’t know the exact order of the cards:

After one year of him shuffling the deck

or

After three seconds of you shuffling the deck

The answer is obvious. And it’s obvious to laypeople. They may not necessarily conceptualize it in these words but I think there is almost an instinctual understanding that if we’re creating a situation where the order of the cards being unknown to the magician is important, then there’s no reason why the magician should be the one to shuffle the cards.

This is normal human logic for anyone who is aware of the concept of a “false shuffle” (which most laypeople are).

This is why I’m now a deck switch man. Let the cards be mixed outside of my control, then switch in the stacked deck. I will still use some false shuffles after that point, and in the middle of the routine, but I need the audience to know we’re at least starting with a genuinely mixed deck.

I came to the “deck switch > false shuffle“ conclusion a few years ago, but it took me a couple more years to really understand the key to making that switch as imperceptible as possible.

The truth is, if I give someone a deck to shuffle and they do so, and I take it back and switch it and then I do something that can easily be explained by me knowing the order of the cards (a story-deck trick, for example), then a good portion of the audience will be suspicious that the cards were switched.

But I’ve found I can greatly reduce people thinking a deck was switched if the cards are shuffled (or mixed or otherwise disorganized) in some way before the notion of me showing them a trick comes into play. You see, if I say I’m going to show you a trick, and start by having you mix up the deck, then it suggests I have some way of dealing with the fact that you just mixed up the deck. So I think that brings to mind a switch between the mixing and the magic.

Instead, I want the spectator to have the understanding that this is a fully mixed deck, And then, at some point later, I want to start a trick with it. The shuffling isn’t part of the trick. But still the deck is known to be in no particular order.

So the deck of cards might fall to the floor. Or we might have just used the deck for a card-game. Or maybe I gave the spectator the deck and asked her to show me a card trick. And then after one of those situations I switch the deck. Wait a few more moments and only then do I start the trick.

When I choreograph the moment like that, I find the people I perform for to be the most fooled and the idea of a switch of the deck almost never comes up.

(And to save me some emails, I don’t have a set deck switch. I just casually handle the deck while talking (before the trick has started) and at an opportune moment I drop it into my lap while coming up with the other one. Or I switch it while adjusting my chair. Or something like that. I don’t need something that holds up to scrutiny because it happens before they know to scrutinize. If you need a burnable deck switch, this download from Ben Earl looks pretty good.)

Spectator Belief and The WYW Book Club

Today’s post is going to hit on a few different ideas, but the inspiration for the post were a couple emails I received a little while ago.

[First e-mail]

So I finally tried out DFB [Digital Force Bag] in a very non magician-centric way. I placed a book in a sealed envelope, then got home, told my mom I'd gotten a package in the mail that had no return address, and left it on the table. Then I told her I'd made a list of books to read and I needed her help choosing one, I forced the book, then we talked some more, I opened up the envelope to see what it was and.....it was the book. She couldn't believe it, best reaction I've ever had to a trick, and she's seen it all! I played it straight and didn't tell her it was just a trick, and she tends to believe in connections and coincidences, she made me swear it wasn't something I'd organized. Anyway, now I'm not sure whether to admit to anything or let her believe there was some sort of crazy coincidence/connection thing. I guess I feel a bit guilty, but also it's not anything really bad to be believing in.

[Second e-mail]

A follow up: I think there has to be more of a premise than "hey I got a random package", to make it clear that it's all meant to be taken as fiction, something more unbelievable maybe...but then I'm not sure if the lines between the trick and reality would be blurred enough so the spectator can engage enough with it. This is definitely stuff you've written about before, it's just the first time I experience it firsthand. —ML

Yeah, I think you figured it out. What you were missing was a story. You essentially just gave her the coincidence. So, of course, she’ll react to this as if it’s just a crazy coincidence. As you saw, this generated a really strong reaction. If the only metric that mattered to you was getting strong reactions, then orchestrating moments that seemed incredible AND real AND weren’t focused on you and your power would be the way to go.

But there are two main issues with this strategy.

The first issue is: Depending on what types of experiences you’re creating, it’s a least a little ethically questionable, and potentially massively ethically questionable. Personally I don’t have an issue with faking a crazy coincidence for someone. That doesn’t feel “harmful” to me. Because you’re faking something that is real. Coincidences do happen. So as long as you don’t pin that coincidence on something else (e.g., “God sent us this coincidence as a sign!” or, “The power of our connection created this coincidence!”) I’m okay with it.

But that’s one of the few premises I’d be comfortable having a spectator really invest their belief in. The only other audience-centric premises that I’m okay with the spectator believing are the ones that make the spectator feel smarter or more capable than they really are. I know there are purists who would argue against that—and I used to be one of them. But fuck it, I don’t care about that sort of thing anymore. If I can do a trick for someone that’s going to make them feel a little more optimistic or more positive and they want to choose to believe it’s real? I’m okay with that.

I won’t lie to someone about the state of the world just to make them feel better. I won’t use deception to make them think their dead mother is safe in heaven and watching over them, or that they have genuine psychic powers or something like that. But I don’t mind a trick that plays on their sense of belief in themselves in a positive way.

The second issue with trying to create moments the spectator believes are “real” is this: It’s not sustainable. Even if you wanted to always do “audience-centric” material that the audience believed was real, you couldn’t. There just aren’t enough premises that would both feel possible and amazing. And once you’re around when, like, three of these amazing moments happen, it soon becomes clear that you’re orchestrating them. So unless you’re moving town to town like The Incredible Hulk or The Littlest Hobo, it’s going to be obvious that you’re pulling the strings. And when the audience knows what you’re claiming is real isn’t real—whether it’s you saying, “I’m a psychic” or you saying, “The universe is full of crazy coincidences,”—you will seem like a delusional weirdo if you keep pushing the idea that what’s happening is genuine.

That’s where the story of the effect comes into play. Story-centric magic tells the audience that what they’re experiencing is not necessarily intended to be believed and it gives them a reason for why you’re showing it to them other than your own glorification. (I’m not saying the reason magicians necessarily perform is for their own glorification, I’m just saying that’s frequently how it comes off to the spectators if there’s nothing for them to take from the performance other than how clever you are.)

---

So here’s an example of how you could give the same basic effect mentioned above a story (or context).

You have two padded envelopes, each with a book inside, and each addressed to you. You could physically mail them to yourself or you could just have your name on them as if they had been dropped off at your place, or you could print a couple phony mailing labels. However you want to handle it is fine. The return addressee is something like “WYW Book Club.” You place these on your porch so there they’re when you’re coming into your house with someone else. Or just on your kitchen table as if you brought them in earlier.

Either way, when someone else is around, you act like you just received these packages or you just remembered that you got them earlier.

You pick one up, notice the return address. “Oh sweet.” You think to yourself for a moment. “Oh, I hope it’s the new Stephen King book.” You open it up and it is. “Nice!”

The other person may or may not make a comment on the book or your reaction to the book/package. Either way you take the conversation in this direction…

“I love this service. Have you heard of this?” You point to the return address. “The What You Want Book Club? i found it on facebook a few months ago, although I think their page got shut down or they moved it or something.

“It’s kind of cool. I’ve been wanting to read more books but whenever it comes time to pick a new book I can never decide. Do I want to read something dumb and fun? Or do I want to read something smart? And do I really want to read something smart? Or am I just forcing myself to? Or whatever. Even if I know I want to read something for pure entertainment, I get overwhelmed with all the options.

“That’s where this book club comes in. You send them a list of 100 books you want to read. And every month they send you one or two books. And they claim these are the books that you really want to read at that moment. Whether you know it or not.

“It’s nice because you get to make the broad decision of all the books you’re interested in, so you’re not reading anything you don’t like. But then they send you the books based on their own algorithm, so you never have to do the actual choosing yourself.

“And it really does work. Like they really do somehow know what it is you most want to read. I can’t explain it. The first few months I thought I was just kind of retroactively justifying their selection as being something I was particularly in the mood to read. But that’s not the case. I don’t know how they do it, but it’s like spookily accurate.

“Last month my friend called me and he mentioned a book he read recently and loved. It was a book that was on my list, but it wasn’t one I had been thinking about at all. I wouldn’t even have been certain that it was on my list without checking. But after he talked it up I was really excited to read it. And when I opened that month’s package… that was the exact book they sent me. And the thing is, that package was sitting on my table unopened when I had that conversation with my friend. A book I hadn’t thought of in months just happened to be the one they sent me. As if they knew I would have this conversation with my friend. It’s crazy.

“I’ll show you. Look. Here. Hold this.” You give your friend the unopened package to hold.

You turn on your phone. “Let me get my list… Actually, let’s make it completely random. Give me a number between 1 and 100.”

Your friend says 44. You have her open your notes app and go the note that says “Book Club List.”

“What’s at number 44?” you ask.

She scrolls down and tells you, “The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James.”

“Okay,” you say, and nod your head. You pause, then say theatrically, looking to the heavens, “Oh man, I really, really, want to read The Sun Down Motel next!”

You pull your hands back and give a shrug. Could it possibly be that easy?

“Open it,” you say.

They open the package and find the randomly chosen book you just said you wanted. They flip out.

---

So it’s the same trick, the same moment of magic, and the same level of impossibility as the trick that was mentioned in the original email. But because it’s embedded in a somewhat fantastical concept, you’re much less likely to run into someone who will truly believe it.

Of course, if this was the very first thing someone saw from me, then maybe they would believe it was real. Or, worse yet, they might think that I wanted them to believe it was real.

But this wouldn’t be the sort of thing I’d perform for people who didn’t know what to expect. This is the type of trick that would fall around Step 8, in this progression of how I get people accustomed to the immersive style of presentation.

What I’m shooting for with this type of presentation is that it starts off relatively normal, but then it slowly gets progressively stranger.

From their perspective:

1. I got a book in the mail.

2. I belong to a book club.

3. It’s a book club where I choose the books I’m interested in, but they make the decision of what book to send next.

4. The book club not only knows “what you want” because you provide them the list of books. But also because they have some “process” or “algorithm” they use that will supposedly pull the exact book you (consciously or subconsciously) want to read next.

5. This somehow seems to work even if you decide on what you want after you’ve received the package in the mail.

6. I can demonstrate this right now.

Now, I’m guessing if I performed this for someone who knows me, then somewhere between 3 and 4, it would dawn on them that there is a decent chance that we are now “in” a trick. Then at 5-6 they would be almost certain of that fact.

My hope is that when the climax of the trick happens and they know for sure it must have been a trick, that they still find themselves being pulled back to the story despite themselves.

So the idea is to take “belief” off the table. Instead, success is measured by the strength of their engagement with the story and the experience of the trick. This isn’t something you can really “measure” but when you get it right you can definitely feel it.