The You-Not-I Technique

Here's a small verbal technique I've been using for a few months now. I feel like it's helping elicit some stronger and cleaner reactions from people when it comes to certain tricks.

Think of the trick in Monday’s post, the Hoy Book Test. 

Now, normally in a trick like that—in order to clearly establish the conditions—I might say something like, 

(Version 1) "And there's no way I could have known what book you would choose, yes? And even if I did, there's no way I could know what page you would randomly choose to stop at, correct?"

I now say something like...

(Version 2) "You didn't know what books were going to be here, correct? So you didn't have any clue what book you would take, yes? And you had no idea what page you'd stop me at as I ran through the pages of the book, right? Of course. And if you couldn't know what you would do, then there's no way I could have known.”

So instead of making statements about myself, I’m making statements about them.

Why I Like This

In Version 1 there is tension, because I'm asking them to agree to something that they can't really know. There's less of a "crispness" to the conditions I'm establishing because they're not things of which they can really be certain. So even if they answer yes—that there's no way I could know what page they'd stop on—it's a very "muddy" yes. There's some doubt there. Could he somehow have known what page I'd stop at?

In Version 2, however, there is a certainty to their responses. Because the questions are about them. If I was asking you if you knew which book you'd pick before you showed up or which page you'd stop at, you would feel 100% comfortable in saying "No. I had no idea."

I then cap that off by making a simple logical statement: If you didn't know what you yourself would do, obviously I couldn't have known.

So we're taking something they're 100% certain about, and attaching it to something that seems to logically follow. "You didn't know which card you were going to end up touching, yes? So, of course, nobody else could know."

That is less debatable to me than saying, "I couldn't know what card you'd touch, yes?"

Not all tricks/presentations will allow for this type of linguistic technique, but in the months that I've been using it, I've found it to be sneakily powerful.

Promotion

“I was surprised to see your name associated with the [recently released peek wallet] The Peak. First because I don’t usually see you hyping a product and second because it’s not very good. Is there a story behind that?” —WO

No, there’s no real story behind it. I don’t hype other people’s products. I don’t even hype my own products.

I was sent a video of the wallet in action and my response was:

Damn. I'm impressed. That looks pretty much indistinguishable from the real deal. I can't wait to get my hands on one so I can try it out in the real world.”

I stand by that. The wallet does look exactly like what it’s trying to look like. That is something of primary importance to me. And I worded my response to make it clear that I hadn’t actually used the wallet in real life (in case what I said did end up being used in their advertising).

I was sent one, but I’ve been traveling and haven’t gotten a chance to use it. I asked my friend who monitors the PO Box (and who is also a magician) to open it up and play with it this past weekend. His reaction was what I’ve heard from others: American sized business cards don’t really fit in it, and the peek is hard to see unless you’re in the right light. If that’s the case, I probably won’t end up using it. Primarily because I don’t love this style of wallet stylistically, and so it would have to function perfectly as a peek wallet for me to make it the wallet I carry with me everyday.

I will say, I actually like one of the solutions they suggest for the “size” issue, which involves tearing a business card in half. When I perform, I grab a business card from wherever we are and treat it as if it’s scrap paper. So tearing it in half, and having them write on one half while I write on the other, makes perfect sense. Of course, if you’re using your own business cards, tearing them is probably not a good option.

As far as any types of quotes I may give about a product, you can rest assured I’ll never say anything I don’t genuinely mean. And I’ll certainly never say something positive just because I’m promised a free copy. My momma didn’t raise no whore.

And you’ll have no problem discerning when I like a product. I’m not subtle. I literally write pages every month about my favorite releases in the newsletter. You can get the straight dope there.


I’ve been getting a few more requests than usual from people asking me to mention some release of their on the site. I don’t do that. “Even if I send it to you for free?” Yes, even then.

Now, you still may want to send it to me. And I may like it. And if so there’s a good chance I might write about it in my Love Letters newsletter where I write about stuff I like for the supporters of this site. But if that’s too many “mays” and “mights” for you, then I don’t recommend sending it to me. There are plenty of online magic reviewers who will happily promote any dumb thing they get sent, so long as they get it for free. Seek one of them out.


I am making a change to one of the ways to obtain free advertising at the Jerx.

It used to be that if you have a book or a multi-effect video release, or something like that, I would promote it on the site if you sent along the second best thing in that release to post on this site. I’ve changed that policy. Now if you’d like me to mention your book or multi-trick release on the site, I’d like you to allow me to post the most average effect from that release. This way people will get a sense of your style and what the book/video is like. And they’ll know that you consider 50% of the things in the release to be better than what you’re sharing with them on this site. The new policy goes into effect as of… now.

The Little Free Library Book Test

Here’s an idea that came in from reader Colin R…

I had an idea the other day while on a walk concerning any kind of book test that requires anything prepared and a way to do it casually. But in a very specific situation: taking your friends on a walk around your neighborhood, assuming your neighborhood contains a Little Free Library.

The idea is simple, you would take the largest books in the "library" and pick one. You create a crib sheet in the back of that book containing a list of all the other books in the library and the word that is on the force page(or the crib could also contain page numbers if you wanted to use different pages to have it be repeatable for whatever reason). 

You take the person on a walk to the Little Free Library, stop and mention how cute/interesting you think they are, and go into the Hoy Book Test by letting the spectator pick a book, free selection. You pretend to search for a moment and then take the crib book. If they pick your crib book, you say that you'll take that one and have them pick another one. 

Obviously there are problems with books being taken out of the library over time, including possibly your crib book. You could check it every couple weeks and update your sheet, and if you get there with a friend and the crib is gone you can just go into the impromptu handling. Or you could have a backup crib on your phone and first say you want to take a picture of the little library for instagram or to send it to your sister because she loves them. 

I love ideas like this.

I’m not someone who needs to acquire more tricks, but I’m always looking for new ways to incorporate tricks into my interactions, and this works perfectly with the ultracasual style that I prefer.

Little Free Libraries are more common than you might think. At least, they’re plentiful around me. If there are some around you, you should be able to find them here: Little Free Library Finder.

Colin originally sent me this idea about two and a half months ago, and I set it up in one of the Little Free Libraries near me. (I guess the word “free” isn’t necessary. All libraries are free, pretty much. If you think you’re in a library, but you’re paying for the books, there’s a good chance you’re in Barnes & Noble.)

Here are some tips I have if you’d like to try this yourself.

  1. Get hold of an unfashionable book for your crib book. I picked up the autobiography of Lee Iacocca at a thrift store and used that. It might be a great book, and I know it was a best seller back in 1984. But these days it’s likely going to stick around in one of these libraries for quite some time. You don’t want something too dull/obscure, (e.g., “A Field Guide to Northwest Conifers”) because whoever runs the little library might toss that away as being uninteresting.

  2. If you’re going put a crib in a book, you might as well prep it some more. I trim down the force page (or the page before or after the force page, depending on how you riffle it) a millimeter or so. This means I can flip to that page automatically without holding a break and without doing a miscall.

  3. You might feel like a weirdo if you’re standing in front of one of these libraries and looking into every book and taking notes about what’s on page 225 or whatever. Or, at least, I felt like a weirdo doing that. So instead I just put my phone on video mode and stuck it in the breast pocket of my shirt. Then I just let that record while I removed each book and flipped to page 225. Later, when I was home, I watched the video and transcribed the first “interesting” word on each page into the crib book.

I stop by the library once a week to take note of any new books in there. I ignore children’s books or anything too thin. Generally there around 15 books total to account for.

In my experience, there doesn’t tend to be a ton of turnover with the books in these libraries, unless, perhaps, you’re in a very high-trafficked area. In which case this pre-set version of the Hoy test might not be feasible.

To reiterate, the handling is this: You ask them to grab any book. “Make it a fairly large one, with a lot of words,” cuts out the kid’s books. If they take the force book, take it from them and say, “And now grab one for yourself too.” If they don’t take the force book, just say, “And I’ll take one too,” and get it yourself.

Flip to the short page to force that page number on your spectator. Allow them to verify the page number.

Send the person 20 feet away. Tell them to open their book to the random page and read the first word on that page. “If it’s a short word— ‘and’ or ‘the’ or something—go to the first longer, more interesting word.”

As you tell them to open their book, open your own. Just to the back page where your crib is. And as you tell them to take al look at the word, you get a look in your crib of what they’re looking at.

You can now read their mind. Or have them whisper the word to their dog and then have the dog send the message to you. Or make a game of “figuring out the word” before you get back home. Or whatever you want to do with that information.

This is a situation where an object in the environment justifies the procedure. If I ask you to look at a word in. book so I can read your mind, that might seem contrived. Why do I need a book involved? That needs to be solved presentationally. But if we’re walking around and stumble on this library, then I don’t need to justify the book, really. The justification is that we’re here at this little library, let’s try something interesting using these books.

This is my kind of thing. I like the option of having this trick available along one of my usual walking routes. And I like “tending” to it and keeping it updated every week or so. That sort of thing is more fun than practicing a bottom deal or something like that for me.

Magic for an evening stroll isn’t a very large subset of magic, but it’s one that I’ve always had an interest in and enjoy performing.

Hot, Hotter, Burning Up

This weekend I was at a little end-of-the-summer get-together at my friend’s place with Elizabeth, a girl I’ve been seeing. When someone asked if I had any tricks I’d been working on I told them that Elizabeth and I had been practicing ways of boosting our psychic connection. “We’re actually really quite good at it. You guys probably wouldn’t be able to wrap your heads around it because you don’t have the same spiritual connection we have. The raw sexual energy of true twin flame soulmates can be a powerful thing. Should we try something, sweetheart?”

I had someone get a piece of paper and something to write with. I told them I was going to go into a bedroom where I couldn’t see or hear anything and one of the people at the party would accompany me so I couldn’t cheat.

Elizabeth had them write down the name of any animal on the paper and fold it into quarters and hide the paper somewhere in the room.

She then went to seclude herself in the bathroom and told someone to go get me and the person who was watching me.

When I came back I said, “Okay, so there’s something written on that paper, and it’s hidden somewhere in this room. Did she have you write down an animal?… Okay, perfect. That will make it easier to focus on than just a blank piece of paper, because she can imagine the animal itself.”

I had someone call Elizabeth on her phone and put it on speaker.

“This is crazy, but without being able to see me, Elizabeth will guide me to the hidden paper strictly based on our psychic connection.”

I started meandering around the room and Elizabeth—blindly, from the bathroom—began to direct me by telling me if I was “Hot” or “Cold.”

“Cold. Hot. Hot. Hot! uhm… Hot. Cold.” Etc.

She’s sent me all over the room, with no discernible rhyme or reason.

I said, “Let’s reset,” and went back to the middle of the room.

Again she guided me all over the room. I told her to really focus and moments later she was directing me towards the door leading into the room and the shoes that were gathered near it.

“Hot. Hot. Hotter. Hotter. You’re burning up.” She said.

“Is it in one of the shoes?” I asked.

My friends confirmed it was.

“Wait, let’s go one step further. Sweetheart, I want you to think of the animal they wrote down. Try to send that to me. Let the power of our erotic passion flow through you and out towards me. This is something only you and I can do baby. Because our love is so strong. It’s not like the pathetic bullshit relationships these people are in. They can’t even begin to imagine our sensual connection. I want you to imagine we’re together now, baby.” I close my eyes. “Yes, darling. Imagine us making love. Yes. Yes. I feel it. The power of our carnal rapture. Now… become that animal for me. Yes, me dear.”

After a couple moments of luxuriating in imaginary lovemaking, my eyes pop open.

“Oh… that’s a badger. You wrote down badger?”

They did.

“That definitely felt like fucking a badger,” I say. Leaving them to wonder how I was able to find the paper, how I knew what was written on it, and how I knew what fucking a badger feels like.

Method

Okay, so this is just a party trick for you and another person to pull off. You don't have to take it the direction I did, of course. You can just find the paper and reveal the word. You don’t need to harness the power of the sexual energy between you two to do so.

This uses an old stand-by method for me. Morse code. Morse code can be memorized in under an hour. But the nice thing here is that only you have to memorize it. Your partner is alone in the other room and can reference a paper chart or something on their phone in order to know what to say.

Your partner will simply use Hot and Cold to substitute for Dot and Dash.

To signify the end of a letter they just have to pause and say uhm, or uh, or hmmm. The pacing with which they say the thing doesn’t matter at all. So they can take their time to get it right. They just need to make sure to put in one of those signifiers to show it’s the end of the letter.

Further Details

You could have the people write down any word on the paper. I decided to have them choose an animal because knowing the category means I usually don’t have to have the person spell out the full word. Three or four letters will usually tell you what you need to know. When I performed last weekend my friend spelled out B-A-D-G, and I knew it was badger.

Once you know the animal you stop and reset, like things aren’t working.

Now the other person sends a one word description for where the paper is hidden. This may get you exactly to the paper, or it may just get you in a general area. They might send TV. So you know it’s somewhere around the TV. Or Couch. Or Books if it’s in a bookcase. The general area is fine because this is the first reveal.

Once you know the area the person is sending you, then you ask them to “really focus” or something like that. You want to have a keyword that let’s the person know that you know where to go. That let’s them know they should stop coding the word and to start saying just that you’re getting hotter and hotter because you’re now honing in on where the item is.

The idea of using the guidance of “Hot” and “Cold” to transmit Morse code comes from friend-of-the-site, JFC. I’ve mentioned in the past that what makes Morse code so useful is that it just requires anything that you can put into a binary state in order to code it. The use of Hot and Cold is great because this is something that exists in the real world. People already say Hot and Cold to direct people. So using it for that purpose is completely beyond suspicion.

Thanks to JFC for allowing me to share this with you.

T.I.E.S. vs Loops

Since Penguin recently released their pre-tied T.I.E.S. (The Invisible Elastic System), I thought I would compare them with Yigal (No, autocorrect, not “Yoga”) Mesika’s loops based on four factors.

  • Price

  • Visibility

  • Strength

  • Stretch

Price

TIES - You can get 32 TIES for 20 dollars. For a cost of 63 cents each.

Loops - Come in a pack of 8 for $10. There may be some discounts available somewhere online, but this seems to be the standard price. That means each loop is $1.25, approximately twice the cost of TIES.

Winner: TIES

Visibility

On the left is a Loop, on the the right is a TIE (I realize the singular form of that acronym doesn’t really make a ton of sense, but for the sake of having something to refer to it as, that will have to do.)

The TIE is significantly more visible than the Loop. I don’t really know how to quantify things on such a small scale, but if you told me it was three times thicker, I could believe that.

Winner: Loops

Strength

To test the strength, I stretched both gimmicks between my fingers and started hanging paperclips off of them. Spending 40 minutes threading paperclips on invisible thread really put my life in perspective.

TIES held 92 paperclips, a total of 37 grams.

Loops held 61 paperclips, a total of 25 grams.

I don’t think you can see those numbers as the weight limit for the thread however. That’s going to depend on what you’re lifting and how it stretches the thread. The paperclips were putting all their weight towards one point on the thread.

But I do think this tells us that TIES are about 50% stronger than Loops.

Winner: TIES

Stretch

I simply stretched each gimmick until it broke. Both gimmicks were in new condition before I conducted this test.

Surprisingly, to me, they both broke at the same point. I would have assumed the TIES would stretch further (given that they proved to be stronger) but they both broke when stretched to around 17 inches. I’m guessing the reason they break at the same point has something to do with the strength of the elasticity vs. the strength of the thread itself. I really don’t understand the physics of it, but it’s probably something along those lines.

Winner: Neither (or Both)

Conclusion

Depending on what you’re prioritizing, you can make an arguments for TIES or Loops.

For me, I just don’t want the thing to be seen first and foremost. So I will go with Loops.

If I ever have something slightly heavier that I want to float, I will use TIES.

To save a few bucks, I could see myself practicing with TIES and using Loops when I actually perform. Given that they break when stretched a similar distance, I think they should be comparable enough that I can practice with one and perform with the other. (Although, who knows, I may find that it feels significantly different. But I doubt it.)

Until September...

The posting for August is complete and I will see you all back here on September 1st as we jump into the final 1/3rd of 2022… fall, the holidays, and all that good stuff.

During this coming week I will be working on the next newsletter which will arrive in supporter’s emails on the 1st. If you’re a supporter at the $25/month level and have an ad for the upcoming newsletter, get it to me by the 28th or so.


Here something some of you might be able to help with. I have a number of magic products that I’m thinking of producing. My intention is to produce them as I do the books: in limited quantities, available for supporters, and never re-made.

One of the things that’s holding me up from this is the notion of coming up with packaging for these products. (Not like the shipping packaging. But the packaging the product lives in.)

When I was first getting into magic and buying tricks at a magic store, the packaging was often, literally, a brown paper bag, or a ziploc bag. The answer to the question, “How do we package this magic trick?” was no different than the answer to the question, “How do we package this ham sandwich?”

These days it’s much easier to get custom packaging, but their minimum orders are usually far greater than what I need done. And I don’t want to get 500 little custom boxes when I need 62, you know?

Now, if I was asking myself about this issue—if I was my own customer—then I would say, “Don’t worry about the packaging. I’m just going to throw it out anyway.” Because that’s what I do.

But that’s not a real solution either. When you’re releasing something that’s very limited, the price is going to be at a premium. So it might be $70 for a trick that would otherwise sell for $40, if it was being mass produced somewhere. And if you’re charging a premium, it doesn’t feel right to just put it in a generic box.

Anyway, If you have any thoughts/ideas/or experience with product packaging and have any suggestions for how to do it in a way that is workable for very short-runs of products, let me know. I have some Ideas in mind, but I’d happily take guidance from anyone with experience doing something like that.


Catch you back here on the first. Try to get out and make a couple final summer memories if possible. It’s the best way we have to slow time.

Biggest Takeaway Follow-Up Part 2

We continue on with some of the emails I received after last Friday’s post…

I’ve been doing David Williamson’s Saline Solution trick [where salt vanishes and reappears in a coffee cup] professionally for over a decade now. David suggests that you shouldn’t ask them if the cup is empty. Instead you should give them a napkin and have them clean out the cup. Then they’ll know it’s empty without you having to say it. That always made good sense to me. But it still occasionally happens that people will say the salt was in the cup the whole time. I’ll remind them that they cleaned out the cup and they’ll remember that and then react to the trick but it’s a less intense reaction than the trick normally gets.

During my performances this past weekend I experimented with your idea of over-emphasizing the conditions and instead of just asking them to clean the cup I asked them to confirm that there was nothing in the cup and to make sure it was absolutely empty, I asked had them clean it out as well. Reactions across the board seemed stronger than ever.—JW

I don’t make it a habit of disagreeing with David Williamson. I will say that having them clean out the cup is a way of cleverly convincing them the cup is empty. As opposed to just making the claim straight out. And I think in a trick like this, if you only cleverly make the case, then it’s incumbent on the spectator(s) to do some “math” at the climax of the trick.

“Ah, salt is coming out of the cup! Was that salt in the cup the whole time? No… wait… I cleaned the cup. So there couldn’t have been salt in there.”

This is a little less straightforward than them confirming the cup is empty and then having salt flow from it.

I cleaned the cup, therefore the cup was empty, therefore there couldn’t be salt in the cup.

Is one more extra thought needed than just

We established the cup was empty therefore there couldn’t be salt in the cup.

It may seem a small difference, but generally the less thinking someone has to do at the climax of a trick, the more intense the reaction will be..

I like the idea of using both techniques, as JW suggests. Have them confirm it’s empty and then go the extra step of having them clean it out.


[Regarding clearly establishing the conditions] I fully agree with you. This point was very apparent in several of my performances of Chameleon Sandwich by Doug Conn, a color changing deck routine cloaked in a sandwich trick. Magicians were consistently fooled, but laymen would often miss the point because they had not taken in the implied color of the deck. —GT

It’s so important to understand that magicians and laymen process tricks differently. It’s important because so many magician perform almost exclusively for other people interested in magic. So you think how that group processes tricks is normal. It’s not. Magician’s pay attention in a different way.

You know this if you perform for non-magicians. One of the most frustrating things they do is look in your eyes or look at another person in the group at a moment when you want them focusing on your actions. You have something that’s so clean that you want them to really notice that you don’t do anything sneaky. But instead they look up at their buddy and are like, “This is cool, right?” Magicians don’t do that. They understand that they’re doing you a disservice if they remove their attention when you don’t want them to. The pay attention differently.

When you flash an empty hand, the magicians thinks, “Oh, his hand is empty.” Normal people might think that, or they might just see it as a gesture, or they might not register it as anything. This sort of thing is true with all subtle convincers when it comes to non-magicians.


What you pointed out today [Tuesday’s post] is exactly what Tamariz often does. And it's showcased in its most basic nature in his trick Neither Blind Nor Silly (aka Blown Away when first published in Apocalypse).—GT

I’m going to say something that might get me excommunicated from the art of magic, or at least it will get me denied entry if I ever try and visit Spain: I don’t 100% “get” the appeal of Juan Tamariz.

I know he’s a genius, and I don’t doubt if I were to read his magic theory I’d find a lot of overlap between our ideas. (Which is part of the reason I don’t read too much magic theory. Because I want the experience of coming to these ideas naturally.)

But his performance style is so antithetical to mine that it always surprises me when someone says—as has happened a few times in the past—“Tamariz says something similar….” But it really shouldn’t surprise me because my “theory” comes out of performing as I’m sure his does as well. So even if we have very different styles it makes sense that we would come to some similar “truths.”

That being said, I think clarifying the conditions of an effect is most powerful when it doesn’t come off as part of the overall presentation. A lot of magicians will perform an effect where “fairness” is the presentation. “I couldn’t be more fair than this, could I? Actually yes. I could have you shuffle the cards.” Etc. Etc. And they’ll go through that sort of structure a few times, emphasizing more and more fairness.

While that may seem in line with what I was writing about in regards to “clarifying conditions,” I don’t think it’s the best idea. When “clarity” becomes the focus of the presentation—when it’s scripted—then it becomes a sort of “meta-clarity” that I think people trust less than if it seems like something you’re mentioning as just a point of fact.


Having performed magic since the age of 6 (I am now 73 years young), I can resoundingly confirm, from my own anecdotal experience, how crucial it is to strong magic (whether amateur or pro) to make things unequivocally crystal clear to the spectators in order to build optimal conviction and frame the effect. As you aptly noted, laymen do not perceive performances like magicians do. This is something I learned in decades of performing for both. As one example, years ago I performed Simon Aronson’s Shuffle-Board for a woman, an absolutely killer routine. She did all the shuffling and I was hands-off throughout the presentation. However, after the denouement, as I was expecting her to exclaim that she would be starting a religion around me and have t-shirts made bearing my image, I was flabbergasted to hear her say, “You must have switched the deck - that’s the only possible way that could have happened.” Lesson learned.—AD

Yup, this stuff happens all the time.

I was performing OOTW once while sitting on the floor next to my bed with a girl I was dating at the time. After the reveal she said I must have switched the cards she dealt for other cards after the dealing procedure. There was, of course, no opportunity for me to switch two different piles of cards invisibly. But that’s what her mind went to. She thought I had maybe shoved the piles under the bed and took out other ones. I had her look under the bed and check. Of course by that point it’s too late. The chance for the big, powerful reaction is lost.

“I must have missed something,” is such an insidious thought for a spectator to have after a trick. It can be very difficult to prevent it completely. But the more you strive to make all the conditions as clear as possible, the less you allow that thought to have a foothold. If I had a done a better job at making it clear that I wouldn’t manipulate the cards she dealt in any way, that would have raised her guard to the possibility that I would manipulate or switch the cards. With that possibility in the forefront of her mind, it would have made it much more difficult to think she “just missed it.”


Alright, but what do you do if you’re clarifying the “reality” of a push-through shuffle and your friend says, “Okay, if it’s a real shuffle, then let me shuffle the deck.”—NS

You have no choice at that point other than to let them shuffle the deck and do a different trick. If you fight it in any way you’re just going to confirm to them that it’s a false shuffle and ruin the use of false shuffles for future performances with them.

That being said, this comes up very rarely. I thought it would happen much more often, especially since I encourage antagonism from my spectators. But surprisingly, when I say, “Notice, this is a genuine shuffle. The cards are being thoroughly mixed.” They don’t stop me and ask to shuffle the deck themselves. They certainly get more focused on the shuffle, sometimes, but the notion that if this is a real shuffle they should be able to shuffle the deck doesn’t come up much at all in my experience.


It seems to me that going out of your way to clarify the conditions would go against your style of generally not taking credit for the miracle they’re about to see. Once you start emphasizing the conditions, don’t you cement yourself in the magician role? —MC

No, it’s actually the opposite, I think.

If I’m showing them a game, or a ritual, or an experiment, or at trick someone else is supposedly performing for both of us, or showing them some strange object I picked at a yard sale, or something—I can clarify the conditions as an outsider.

“Wait, double check. Is that box really empty?”

“Do the instructions say we can’t shuffle the cards? Okay… I’m going to shuffle them then.”

“Hold on. Let’s look real close. Are those cards all different? Sometimes they’ll repeat the same group of cards over and over as if you wouldn’t notice.”

“See, I thought there must have been something tricky about this thing. But as far as I can tell it’s really just a normal ring. Can you see anything weird about it?”

So for that reason I think the Audience-Centric style of magic can help you add clarity to an effect.

The only performance style I wouldn’t do it with is the Distracted Artist style. When performing something in that style, the magic is supposed to come off as unpremeditated, so any overt clarification would seem out of place. (This is what makes Distracted Artist such a good style for those tricks where you can’t clarify the conditions satisfactorily for one reason or another.)


I’ve come to the same conclusions as you have when it comes to NOT being subtle with the conditions of a trick. Whenever I find myself thinking “I don’t need to tell someone that. They’ll surely pick up on it themselves.” I think of the video below. It makes your point but from the opposite direction. —AC


Final thoughts on this for now… What I’ve seen cause effects to fail most often is what the audience fails to notice, as opposed to what they do notice. We spend a lot of energy to get them not to notice a move or a gimmick. This is important, but it’s only one aspect of fooling people. Hiding things is just the defensive part of the game. The offensive part is clarifying the conditions in order to forcefully establish the reality that you’re going to soon violate.