An Improved Beginner Forcing Technique

Last week I mentioned the old force where you ask a spectator to name things in some category—for example: vegetables—then you write down the words they suggest on separate pieces of paper. These slips are mixed and the spectator chooses one, and it’s something you’ve predicted. The secret is just that you write the same thing down on each slip of paper. So if the category is vegetables, you might write broccoli down on every slip, and just keep asking for different vegetables, at least until they name broccoli.

I don’t know if this force has a name. It’s in a bunch of kids books that I read growing up, as well as Magic for Dummies.

It works well for any grouping where the options are relatively limited: house pets, football teams, common musical instruments. That sort of thing.

Although this is a beginner level force, it’s still a force I like using when possible for a couple reasons. First, it doesn’t require any sleights—so it’s very hands off. Second, it’s completely impromptu. And third, it feels very spectator-directed. Like you’re just facilitating their wishes. They name the options, and they freely select one of them (blindly). These benefits make it the sort of thing I like to have in my impromptu toolkit.

Here’s one addition to the force procedure that i think significantly adds to the deceptiveness of this technique.

The Outlier Slip

Let’s say the force word is Broccoli.

I ask them to name some vegetables.

They say: Carrots, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Lettuce, Peas, Squash

I write down: Broccoli, Broccoli, Broccoli, Broccoli, Peas, Broccoli

When I fold the slip that has “peas” on it, I do it in such a way where it stands out (to me) from the other slips.

Now the person mixes up the slips on the table.

I note where the Peas slip lands.

“We’re not going to use all of these vegetables. We’re going to eliminate five of them and narrow down your choice to one.”

I ask them to slide out one of the pieces. Most of the time they will take a Broccoli slip. In that case, that’s their “choice” and the other five are eliminated.

On the off chance they slide out the Peas slip, I say, “And start a discard pile with that over here.” And I point to another place on the table.

They now slide out four more slips to be eliminated and added to the discard pile. This all feels free and fair because it’s the same thing happening every time.

Either way, there is now one “chosen” slip separated from the five other slips.

Now I say something like this:

“You chose which vegetables to use. You mixed up the slips. And you chose which one to keep. You could have had any of these.”

I gesture to the discarded slips. I pick up the one I know has Peas on it. I open it.

“You could have had Peas.”

I let the slip drop to the table so it lands writing-side up. I pick up any other slip and open it.

“You could have had Lettuce.”

I let that slip drop to the table so it lands writing-side down [because it doesn’t actually say Lettuce on it].

“Or any of these,” I say, and push around the remaining slips in the discard pile.

“Or if you had said beans or corn or something, you could have had ended up with that. But you ended up with whatever you have there. Now… before you came over here today I accidentally got a vegetable stuck in my rectum…”

Or whatever your climax is.

The miscall, along with the one outlier slip, makes this very difficult to backtrack. The fact that they get to mix up all the slips, then they have a free choice of any of them, and you follow that up by seemingly plucking out a random one and showing something different on it—that goes a long way towards demonstrating all the slips are different.

Dustings #74

Vanishing Inc. sent out an email this week for a product on their site called the CMY Cube.

This isn’t a magic trick. It’s just kind of an attractive novelty that you might keep on your desk or something like that.

One of the lines in the ad caught my attention. It stated these CMY cubes can…

“keep kids and adults entertained for hours.”

Hours?

That seems like a stretch. There’s no doubt these cubes are eye-catching but I have to question the notion that they would keep someone entertained for hours.

On the low-end, that’s got to be at least 120 minutes in order to get the plural “hours.”

Keep in mind, Citizen Kane is only 119 minutes. So they’re saying, at the very least, these cubes can entertain you slightly longer than Citizen Kane.

I asked a behavioral scientist to calculate how long someone who is entertained by a colorful cube for “hours” might be entertained by some other objects.

Here are the results…

Paperclip: 8 minutes

Red Paperclip: 14 minutes

Wooly Willy: 3 days

Four Legos: 1 hour 42 minutes

Cheeto That Looks Like A Guy Masturbating: Two hours and 10 minutes

Joshua Jay’s Magic Atlas: 22 minutes.

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Thomas H. writes:

I was thinking about a potential presentation for Alive that you featured on the blog.

Short and sweet, but I feel like it would be interesting to bring up the concept of the Mirror Gaze Test, and the phenomenon of looking at your own face in the mirror in low light. This effect can cause observers to see distortions of their own face, or hallucinations of relatives, deceased or monsters.

Perhaps the two of you, standing in the bathroom with a mirror in low light after some sort of automatic writing ritual could be a really fascinating presentation, allowing you to both actually perceive the actual effects of the mirror gaze test, while also perhaps being able to "capture" a vision from the the other side of the mirror. (The scribbles changing to a word.)

I like where you’re going, but there might be a few too many ideas fighting here: automatic writing, “capturing a vision,” the mirror gaze test. And I think the trick might be better if done backwards.

Here’s what I’m thinking (and this is going to plagiarize a bit on some of my other work). Imagine you describe the mirror gaze experiment to your friend and you decide to try it out with them. You tell them it helps to have an auditory mantra with a visual cue in order to focus the mind. You write down a simple word on the pad to use as the “mantra.”

You stand looking in the mirror with your friend. You hold up the notebook behind them and over their shoulder so it’s reflected as well. You instruct them to look into their eyes in their reflection, look at the word, repeat the word, look back at their eyes, look at the word, repeat the word, and back into their eyes again. You hold this for as long as is comfortable. “Oh shit, it’s working on me. My face is going crazy. Wait… look at the notepad.” When they do they see the word they were repeating earlier disassembling in its reflection. So the word is now distorting just as their facial feature theoretically would in the mirror gaze experiment.

The kicker is that when they turn to look at the notepad itself, the word is normal.

Okay, this would require that the Alive trick could work backwards, going from word to random lines (which I don’t know if it can) and that it can change rapidly (again, I don’t know if that’s the case). But if so, that would be a cool presentation.

If your mantra word was live, when you look at it in the mirror it would be ɘvil. Which would be a nice touch.

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Here’s a brief October Horror Movie update

When last I wrote, I was bemoaning the list I was working off of because I didn’t like most of the suggestions.

I have since changed where I’m getting my movie recommendations. I’m now using the site Letterboxd to find horror movies from 2021 that were popular and relatively highly rated.

The movies I watched this week were much more entertaining. The only issue is that none of them were particularly scary.

Here are some quick thoughts for anyone following along.

The worst one I watched was Candyman. The 2021 version. It was okay, but I don’t think the story really came together like the filmmakers intended.

Titane is a well-made but legitimately insane body horror movie. Not scary, but really fucked up.

Last Night in Soho is a beautiful dark-fantasy thriller by Edgar Wright. Enjoyable (but not scary).

All My Friends Hate Me is a black-comedy, psychological thriller. I enjoyed it. I didn’t think it was scary. Apparently, however, if you have social anxiety, it may be one of the scariest movies you ever see.

The Beta Test is another thriller with strong comedic elements. Fun to watch. Not at all scary.

Censor is set in 1985 and revolves around a woman who works for the British Board of Film Classification during the era of Video Nasties (something I had never heard of). It’s a very interesting concept for a film, but it goes off the rails a little at the end. Although still a good watch.

The best film I saw this past week was The Black Phone. Again, not overly scary, but really well made and a cleverly constructed story. It’s based on a book by Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son, and it will likely appeal to people who like King’s style of horror and nostalgia

Evolution

David Blaine was on the season premiere of Hot Ones (an interview show where they eat progressively hotter wings). As you might expect of someone with his pedigree, he handled it like a champ.

You can see so much love for him in the comments on that video. Who had Blaine being one of the most charming, relatable and likable magicians in 2022?

25 years ago a bunch of dildo magicians were like, “Where’s his patter!?!?!” “All he does is stare at people!!!” “I can do those tricks myself!!!”

Yes, he played up the “mysterious stranger” persona at a time where he could cast himself in that role, and at a time where secrets were still somewhat hard to come by. But he wisely changed with the times. If he had a special in 2022 where he did the Invisible Deck and stared into a woman’s soul afterwards, the clip would be on YouTube 20 minutes later with a link to where to get the trick on Penguin. There would be no traction for that sort of persona in today’s world. So he became more himself in his tv specials and appearances.

And, of course, he mixed in endurance feats and stunts with his magic. Some things he does are very real, some are like half-real, and some are pure fiction. In a previous post I talked about manipulating “belief” as the medium in magic. And that’s something he has definitely done in his evolution.

I think magicians sort of understand why he has evolved the way he has over time. I think they see why what he was doing 25 years ago wouldn’t really play today. But here’s the thing: the factors that played into Blaine’s evolution also affect the casual performance of magic as well. And yet the vast majority of magicians assume they can perform magic socially the same way Harry Lorayne did in 1962. That sort of thing doesn’t work anymore. I mean, it “works,” but that type of interaction just doesn’t carry the same amount of weight.

Secrets aren’t hard to find. And anyone who wants to see a magic performance can watch one any time of day while they take a shit. These days, social magic has to emphasize connection, immersion, and conversation if you want to give people something they can’t just get on their phones.

Witchstarter

Throughout October, Kickstarter is doing a curated section of occult magic and divination items. A lot of it is geared towards lonely wiccan teens, but there are a number of things you might be interested in as part of a presentational conceit for a magic trick.

You might think, “I don’t wan to do a presentation where I’m acting like I’m into some goofy witchcraft bullshit.” I get that. But I do stuff like this all the time and I never act like I really buy into it. My attitude is just like, “Here’s something weird.” It’s never like, “And of course tarot works.” It’s quite the opposite. I say, “Of course tarot cards don’t work… but here’s something strange I noticed.”

Because I present magic as immersive fiction no one has to believe or think that I believe anything along these lines to enjoy the trick. Just like you don’t have to believe in vampires to enjoy a vampire movie.

Here is their Witchstarter section. And here are a few items of potential interest I found during my first look through some of the offerings.

The Luminary Pendulum

This is cool, it’s a light-up pendulum that reacts with photo-sensitive paper to record its swing path.

From the Kickstarter page:

“Depending on the question asked, different charts may be used to indicate numerical, directional, elemental, and yes-or-no responses.Customizable charts are also included that have a write-on/wipe-off surface.”

I haven’t delved deep enough into pendulum effects (although I’m interested if you have recommendations) but I can see how this would be a cool addition to the traditional pendulum set-up.

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Palmistry Playing Cards

I dig the design. And it’s a good way to thematically transition into “Fortune Telling” with cards.

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Tarot Coins

This is interesting. The idea of using coin magic techniques in a different context seems to have some potential.

Unfortunately the coins are only the size of nickels, but thicker. So you will be somewhat limited in the type of coin moves/effects you will be capable of doing.

Although with 78 coins of the same size, but different imagery, I think that opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities.

Thanks to Alexander D. for tipping me off to the Witchstarter section on Kickstarter.

Salvage Yard: Alive

[This is a continuation on what I was talking about in yesterday’s post. Yesterday’s post was published later in the day because I forgot to schedule it. So you may need to go back and read yesterday’s post to put this in context.]

I mentioned yesterday about a new trick that uses a shitty force with a (potentially) strong reveal.

The trick is called Alive. It’s a trick where lines written on a notepad transform into a “random word” thought of by the spectator.

You can see the full demo here.

How do we get to this, “random word”?

Well, by asking them to look at the cover of the notebook and to pick out any “random word you see here, like wizard or key.”

Well, once you take “wizard” and “key” out of the equation, what exactly are your other options? Pretty much just LOVE staring you straight in the face.

This “force” of a word is not going to fool people. It won’t fool your smart friends. It won’t fool your dumb friends. If you’re sent back to the 1960s, and President Kennedy himself asked you to do table-hopping at a banquet dinner for this organization, it wouldn’t fool anyone there either. It’s just not deceptive.

The moving ink portion of the effect might be good, but not when attached to this method of forcing the word.

Oh, and another thing. The ad states:

“You show your prediction (a few lines in a random order) to the spectator and tell him this is his word written in the Japanese.”

Is this what you think Japanese writing looks like?

Just random lines strewn across a page? It doesn’t even work as a joke.

How would I fix this trick?

Let’s play around with some ideas.

Apparently you don’t have to force the word “Love.” It says you can set up the pad for “any” word, but there’s no way that’s true. So for the sake of exploring some ideas let’s just assume the word is “Love.”

You could fix the force to something not so fucking dopey.

You know that old force that’s in kids books where you ask someone to name vegetables (or something similar) and you write down the vegetables they say on different slips of paper? And then they freely choose one and you predicted it would be “carrot”? The method, as I’m sure you know, is simply to write down carrot on every slip, and make sure they name it at some point when they’re naming off vegetables. (There are ways to up the deceptiveness of that force, which I’ll get into in a future post.) By asking one member of a couple to name some feelings they have for the other person in the couple, you’re bound to hit on Love eventually

Or you could use a clear force bag, or the DFB app, or forcing the word “love” from a book, or from a list of words using Clippo. All of these are stronger than the force currently used in the trick. But I think a force might be the wrong option here.

I think it’s the wrong option because what is the reveal of the force? The reveal is random lines forming the word. The question becomes… why did you draw random lines? Just to move them so you could do the reveal? It doesn’t make sense. It’s using magic to make something more complicated than it would be otherwise. That’s not what magic should feel like.

If you’re going to use a force, don’t then write your prediction down after they think of the word. Instead, force the word, then show them the prediction that was already on the pad. “This is my generic prediction. It works for any word. Humans are built to see patterns in things. So if you concentrate on your word and look into these lines I can convince you it says anything.”

But I probably wouldn’t go with a force. I’d do something like this…

I’d pull out a piece of paper from the notebook and say I was going to write down a word. I’d write something down and fold the paper.

“I wrote a word on that paper. It’s a simple word. One syllable. And it’s a powerful word. I’m going to try and send you the thought of that word and you’re going to write it on this pad in a kind of ‘automatic writing.’” [I would explain the term if they weren’t familiar with that.]

I’d have them hold a sharpie (a dry one that doesn’t write) in their fist under the table. “Without looking you’re going to draw some random lines all over the page. Some short. Some long. Don’t think about it. Just let your subconscious take over.”

I would hold the pad under the table for them. You may not actually want them “drawing” on the gimmicked side of the pad, even with a dry marker. So I might turn the whole pad over under the table.

They would do their marks. I would know when to stop them because I have a general idea how many marks are on the prepped side of the pad.

I pull out the pad and hold it towards myself without looking at it.

“Do you have any idea what word I wrote down? As I said, it’s a short but powerful word.”

They may hit on “love.” It’s probably the most obvious answer. If they do, congratulate them and move forward.

Let’s say they don’t though. Let’s say they say, “Cock.”

“Short and powerful, yes. But no. That’s what your conscious mind suggested. I was trying to send a message to your unconscious mind. I believe you wrote ‘love’ on this pad without even thinking about.”

I take a peek at the pad.

I pause.

“Uhm… yup. You did.”

I pause, still looking at the paper.

“And more amazingly… you did it in Japanese,” I say, turning the pad towards them at the same time.

Now, the “Japanese writing” remark is you humorously scrambling to obviously spin something into a “win” for you. It’s much funnier that way.

“I know it looks like I screwed up. Or you screwed up. Or we both screwed. But actually, I do see the elements of love written here.”

Shake the pad and cause the word to form from the markings.

No shitty force. No force at all. Just magic.

Non-Cumulative Deception

Here’s something to keep in mind when creating a routine. It may sound like common sense, but it’s not necessarily so. I only really “got it” through testing and discussing effects with laymen in a very mechanical way, e.g. “Why did you only rank this trick as a 6 as far as ‘impossibility’ goes? What doesn’t strike you as impossible about this?” Getting this granular with feedback is the sort of thing that is uncomfortable to do, but it’s also the most productive sort of testing there is. Often the extent of “testing” a magician will do is to perform a trick and then just trust his own judgment on how it went. This is nearly impossible. People react to stuff so differently. Some people will shriek at the climax of a trick, but immediately forget it and move on. Some people will silently and stoically take in a trick and it will affect them for weeks. Only by interviewing people and really beating down on what they liked/didn’t like, what seemed amazing or impossible or magical, etc, can you really know if you’re achieving what you’re going for.

I’m not saying you do that for every performance. But when you’re breaking in an effect, it’s necessary. And certainly if you’re creating the effect yourself.

Imagine these two situations:

Experience #1

We’re outside. “Do you have a lucky number. Like a single digit number? Eight? Mine is four. I don’t know that I’d even call it a ‘lucky’ number exactly. But it’s this number that has always followed me around. I’m one of four kids. I was born on the 4th day of the 4th month. I was 4th in my graduating class. Even, like, when rolling dice. It doesn’t always come up four, of course. But way more often then it should. It’s actually really weird. Like… look at that cloud for instance.”

I point to a cloud in the distance. I extend my hand towards it and focus on it. The cloud begins to move and shift.

Experience #2

We’re outside. “Do you have a lucky number. Like a single digit number? Okay, just think of that number. Multiply it by nine. Now add the digits of the number you’re now thinking of together. Now subtract five. Okay. Now you have a number in your head that nobody could know, yes. Take a look at that cloud.”

And the cloud changes to your number.

Which is the stronger trick?

Experience #2 should be, because there is more deception in it. In Experience #1, I choose the number. So there’s no deception there. So the cloud turning into the #4 is the same amount of impossibility in each experience. But in the second experience, how we got to the number 4 is itself somewhat deceptive. So we have the impossibility of the cloud turning into the 4. And on top of that we have whatever deception we gain from the way we got to the number 4 in the first place. It might not be super deceptive, but it is something. So we could assume that would be overall a stronger experience.

But that’s not how it works.

In a magic trick with multiple deceptive elements, the deception is not cumulative. There is some sort of weighted average going on with the deceptive elements.

So if I point to a cloud and say, “I’m going to make that into the #4,” and I do so, that’s maybe a 99 out of 100 in impossibility.

If I do the same thing, make a cloud change (a 99/100 in impossibility) into a number that “I couldn’t know” (a mathematical force that is maybe a 15/100 impossibility), the overall experience becomes something like a 85/100. It’s not a straight average, but it certainly doesn’t automatically increase the overall impossibility.

This goes back to the subject of “Easy Answers.” If the spectator has an “easy answer” to one part of the effect, it brings down the whole effect. Make sure when you’re adding deception to a trick, you’re not also adding a weakness to the trick.

This is something that often happens with “magical reveals.” If your reveal is magical and strong, then the way you get to the thing you’re revealing has to be strong as well.

Let’s say you had a deck that vanished except for one card.

The best option would be a strong force of that card, combined with the vanish of the deck.

The second best option is no force. You just say something like, “It looks like a full deck, yes? That’s just an illusion. I don’t carry a full deck with me. I just keep my lucky card with me, the 9 of Spades.” (That’s not great, but it’s better than the following option.)

The worst option is to use a bad force combined with the vanish of the deck. Because now the overall experience is sullied by the bad force.

I think magicians often think, “Well, the reveal is so strong and magical that it doesn’t really matter how we got there.” But it does.

Tomorrow we’ll look at a recent release that suffers greatly from not understanding this concept.

Dustings #73

I need to start this post off with an apology. Look, I know I like to have fun on this site, but for once just let me be serious.

In the most recent issue of the Love Letters monthly, I wrote about Matt Baker’s Vanishing Inc. Masterclass.

Matt is a mathematics professor and he frequently combines his two loves, as he did in the Masterclass which featured magic with math-based methods.

In that issue of Love Letters I wrote the following:

I’m going to be honest with you, Matt. You know who I feel bad for? Your parents.

Can you imagine, you have a kid and he starts going to school and you find out he has a real love of math? So you’re desperately trying to get him into football or racing BMX bikes or something at least somewhat cool. And then one day he comes home and he’s like, “I’ve got a new hobby?” And you’re praying it’s not something dorky. And then he’s like, “Now I like math and magic!” And you’re just like, “Aw shit. Well...I guess we can put off that sex talk for another couple decades.”

That was wrong of me to say. It was wrong of me to suggest the combination of these two hobbies would necessarily cause Matt to be a social pariah who had a “girlfriend in Canada” for the bulk of his high school career and had to see a specialist for prescription cream to heal the rash he received from all the wedgies inflicted on him.

That just seemed to be the most likely scenario when you’re into math and magic. To put it into terms Matt would understand, I thought there was something of a square-cube law situation going on. So that as the number of geeky hobbies you were involved in doubled the time before you touched a booby would increase by a factor of 8.

This was just a theory of mine. And now I know I was way off.

You see, someone reached out to me with photographic evidence that I could not have been more wrong about how cool Matt was in school.

Behold…

Mmmmmmm…

Look, I’m not gay, but your boy ain’t blind either.

The hair? The outfit? The subject matter of his presentation?

Some of Matt’s former classmates wrote to inform me that—as that picture suggests—this guy slayed more beaver than the North American fur trade.

Here I was assuming that his interest in math and magic probably meant that his mom had to convince his cousin to accompany him to prom. As I’ve learned, I couldn’t have been further from the truth. I don’t want to get into all the stories I’ve been told about Matt’s younger days (I don’t want this site to get busted for peddling such raw smut). But let’s just say the “nomial-geometric series” wasn’t the only thing that was “poly” in this picture. One relationship was simply not enough to satisfy Matt’s burning passions and oozing machismo.

So, again, I’m so, so, so sorry for jumping to conclusions. And I will try not to make that mistake again.

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When the new version of Color Match came out recently, I asked people if they had any particularly strong use cases for it.

I had completely forgotten that I had pitched an idea for such a trick a couple years ago.

It would take some doing to pull that off, but now that a much less expensive (although still fairly expensive) version of that effect is available, I figure I’d re-mention it because it would be a good spooky effect for this month.

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As I’ve done in the past, I’m watching a different horror movie every day in October. I was using this list of the best horror movies of 2021 to help me pick what to watch, but that was a mistake. It’s not a good list. Look, when I first got into horror movies in the 80s and 90s they were generally the most fun, exciting, sexy, and (obviously) scary movies you could see. That’s why I loved horror movies. Perhaps my taste in movies should have evolved since I was 14. But, sorry, it hasn’t. And I don’t really connect with this new style of horror that is slow-moving, humorless, and not particularly scary.

Not every horror movie is like that, of course, but the list I was working off certainly tilted in that direction at the top.

At this point in the month, I don’t have a ton to recommend. But for those horror fans who have communicated with me in the past, I figured I’d keep you abreast of what I’ve seen so far. Five days in (as of this writing).

The best one so far: Saint Maud. This was well made and well acted, and gradually ramped up the scare factor as it went on. I just thought it was okay for most of it. Then, in literally the last half-second of the film, it jumped up in my esteem from “okay” to “pretty good.” That it could do that in just a few frames of film was a pretty cool trick.

These movies were fine, but not at all scary: Antlers, Bloodthirsty, Werewolves Within

The first two of those were slow and not scare-less. Werewolves Within is a horror-comedy. And as much as I like horror and comedy, the two rarely mix well for me.

The worst one so far: Dementer. This one looks like it was made for about $45, which I have no issue with. Budget doesn’t matter that much with horror movies. And there was a legitimately creepy vibe throughout it. But the story was just too vague to interest me. I don’t need everything spelled out for me, but when everything is sort of ambiguous (what happens before the story, during the story, and at the end of the story) that’s a sign of bad writing. It’s very easy to “make people think” by not giving them any answers. The real achievement is being able to give them the answers and still have their mind racing.

I abandoned the list I was working off of originally for one of my own creation which will include more commercial horror films. I’ll let you know if I stumble on anything particularly good.