Dead of Night Pool

Imagine

It’s late in the evening Friday night. Coming on around 4am. I’m in the finished basement of the rental property that I’m staying at with friends. Most everyone is asleep, or at least in their bedroom, because they are normal people who live normal lives and 4am is the middle of the night for them.

I, on the other hand, stay up this late a couple times a week watching some bullshit on youtube, so it’s not that big a deal for me.

I’m hanging out with my friend Josh, shooting the shit.

“Can I try something strange with you?” I ask.

For other people at 4am, this would be the introduction to some weird sexual thing, but Josh knows me well enough to know that’s not where this is going. (Perhaps I’ll surprise him some time by taking it in that direction.)

Pause

So this is a description of a trick I did this weekend. It’s based on a profoundly average trick that friend-of-the-site, Joe M. had informed me about when I asked for pool table tricks.

I didn’t really have a cohesive presentation for it. I’d only really known about the trick for a couple days, and it can take months for a good presentation to develop.

So instead I just reverted to the presentation: “this is something odd.” Because what I was about to show him was so hands off, I could get away with that presentation, even though it’s not ideal. When you’re the one doing all the manipulating of the objects, it’s hard to get away with a presentation that is just like, “I don’t understand this strange phenomenon.” But if it seems like you’re not involved too much, then you can use that type of presentation and let their imagination fill in the blanks.

Unpause

I had Josh line the pool balls up on the table in numerical order against one of the rails.

I had him place a pool stick on the other side of the balls, creating a sort of channel along the side of the table that kept the balls in line.

“Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to think of any number between 1 and 15. Then you are going to move that many balls from the left side of the row to the right side. With each ball, pick it up, hold it to your chest, and think of someone who has passed on. This could be someone you know or a dead celebrity or historical person.

“So if I was thinking of the number four, I’d pick up one ball, hold it to my chest, and think of my grandma, and set it down here at the other end, counting #1. Then I’d pick up the next and think of, whoever… Elvis, hold it to my chest, and put it down at the other end. Two.”

I demonstrate two more times what he is to do. Then I demonstrate how when he’s done (or as he goes) he should slide the row of balls back so it ends up in the same relative position on the table.

So because I demonstrated with four balls, it now looks like this.

I tell him I’m going to go upstairs while he does this because it’s something you’re supposed to do alone.

To be clear:

• Think of any number

• Move that number of balls from one end of the row to the other, one at a time

• Think of someone who has passed for each ball you move

• Make sure the line of balls is in the same general area when you’re done.

I tell him to text me when he’s done and then to shut off the lights, so I can’t see anything when I come back down.

I go upstairs. A minute or so later he texts me to return.

It’s essentially pitch black in the basement.

I carefully make my way over to him.

“Okay… so we have the balls lined up here and is the stick still on the table?” I ask, as I feel for the table in the dark.

I tell him I’m going to step to the other side of the room and I want him to push all the balls into the middle of the table and mix them around. He does this.

From the other side of the room I tell him to start pocketing the balls in different pockets around the table. I tell him to count the balls as he goes to make sure he gets all 15. When he’s done, I inch my way back over into the dark and make sure there’s nothing on the table.

We walk together to the other side of the room.

“Okay,” I say, “here’s where it gets weird. There’s only one person—at least only one person alive—who knows for certain what number you’re thinking of. That’s you. And there’s nobody—not even you—who knows where the ball is with that number on it. Because you mixed up the balls in the dark, and you pocketed them randomly. So only you know the number, but there’s not a living soul who knows where that number ball is. Now listen…,” I say, “I want to see if we can hear something.”

We sit there quietly. Maybe 15 feet from the pool table. It’s dead silent. We wait there for a minute or so.

“Hmmm…,” I say, “I thought we would hear something. So maybe this didn’t work.”

I pull a lighter from my pocket and light it.

“You remember the number you were thinking of? Don’t tell me what it was.”

By the light of the small flame we walk back to the pool table. Gradually it’s revealed there is one ball sitting in the middle of the table. The 6 ball. The number Josh was thinking of.

Method

Okay, the method is fairly simple. Whatever number the spectator is thinking, the corresponding pool ball will be in the 5th position from the right end of the row of balls after they go through the ritual.

So, after I demonstrate what to do, the row looks like this.

Now if, for example, your friend is thinking of the number 6, they will move 6 balls and this will be the end result.

The 6 ball, as you see, is the 5th ball in from the right side.

No matter what number they’re thinking of, if they follow the instructions correctly, the 5th ball will match their number.

In the original description of the effect, as described by Brick Tilley in the book Little Cheats, that’s essentially what you do. You close your eyes while the participant moves the balls, then you go to the table with your eyes closed and knock out the 5th ball and say, “That’s how many balls you moved.” There’s not much to the trick. And it’s fairly awkward to do. He had the people moving the balls in one chunk. It’s not very easy to move nine pool balls from one side of a row to another without things getting messed up. I added the idea of using a pool cue to create a channel for the balls to pass down, and the idea of moving one ball at a time, in order to keep things more manageable.

And then I added all the other elements of the trick after that point.

So what I did was I grabbed the cue ball and had it in my pocket before I went upstairs. When I came downstairs again, the room was pitch black. In the dark I counted five balls from the right end and swapped that ball for the cue ball in my pocket. I did this as I was verifying everything was as it should be. It’s okay if the spectator hears something at this point. I’m just (apparently) reaching out in the dark to feel if everything is where I expect it to be.

Now he moves all the balls to the center of the table, mixes them around, and places them one by one into the pockets. He counts them (silently or aloud) to make sure he gets all the balls. As he does this I’m a fair bit away.

When he’s done I walk over to the pool table and as I act as if I’m checking to make sure all the balls are gone, I silently leave the ball I took out in the center of the table.

Now, at this point, I still don’t know what that ball is, or what number the person was thinking of, but it doesn’t matter. From their perspective there is a number in their head that only they could know (True). And the corresponding ball is somewhere nobody knows (Not true. But hard for them to imagine given the last statement was true.)

I verify this with them while across the room. Then I act like I’m listening for something (something messing with the pool balls). Then I light the lighter and as we slowly move back to the table, the number they’re thinking of is gradually revealed as the ball on the table becomes illuminated.

It’s a fun trick to perform. The primary negative is that you need to be in a room with a pool table and you have to be able to turn off all the lights. Pool tables on the east coast of the U.S. are frequently in basements. So that set-up isn’t completely uncommon for me. If you’re ever in a similar situation, I definitely recommend trying it out. It has a feeling that isn’t quite like any other trick I’ve performed.

Mailbag - Pool Tricks

What pool table tricks (if any) did you end up doing this weekend? —BP

Yeah, I mentioned last week that I was going to be staying somewhere with a pool table and I asked if anyone had any particularly good tricks/stunts/bets that they wanted to share.

I got a lot of good responses, although most people were sharing similar ideas. (Which is fine, as much as I’m looking for cool, obscure ideas when I put out a general call for help, I’m also interested in some sort of consensus if there is one.)

One of the most recommended effects was Hustler by Looch, which is explained on his first Penguin Live lecture. Essentially you predict the final three balls on the table during a game of imaginary 8-ball.

The other frequent suggestion was where you have the spectator spread a deck of (marked) playing cards across the table, then you have them ricochet the cue ball around the table and whatever card it lands on is the card you have reversed in the deck. This is just a somewhat elaborate presentation for the Invisible Deck. I like this idea, and had the decks with me to perform it, but I didn’t feel the right opening for it, so I didn’t end up doing this one.

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I did this variation on Paul Harris’ Flap Jacks trick.

What I learned from this is something I remember feeling about Flap Jacks when I first performed it decades ago. The interesting manner in which the cards flip and flop over at the end seems to completely take away from the change that happens. What I mean is, a more direct change of four cards for four other cards is much stronger than something like this, even if something like this is more interesting and “fun” to do.

So while this makes for a visually interesting card revelation, the “stunt” nature of it sort of takes away from generating a real “magical” feeling. Which, now that I think about it, is probably something I should have realized before trying it.

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I did do a couple of bar bets. I like these because they have the feeling of exposing a magic trick, without actually exposing any useful magic concepts.

The bet people seemed to like the most was the one where you lay a pool cue so it rests across the table like this.

Since it’s resting on the side rail, there is a gap between the stick and the table. You bet that you can roll the cue ball under the cue stick without hitting the stick at all. There’s clearly no way the ball can really roll under the stick without hitting it. But that’s what your bet is.

Once I had people in on the bet for $60, I took the ball and rolled it under the pool table (from end to end). Of course, it went under the stick as well.

Do I take my friend’s money in this situation? Yes. I absolutely do. (Obviously, I don’t take money from friends who can’t really afford to lose it.)

I think it’s a better experience for them if they actually lose the money. Having real stakes makes it more interesting and memorable.

When doing these types of bets, I express the sentiment that I first heard from Bob Farmer (although it may be standard) where you say, essentially, “Yes, you’re going to lose this bet. But you will get an education and if you put up $20 now, you can take this knowledge and make $100s with it the rest of your life.” I think that’s really the only way to present these types of things without coming off like a corny douchebag.

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I did do Looch’s Hustler, and that went over well very well for everyone except one of my friends, Ashley (a guy), who was watching.

The trick relies primarily on the PATEO force.

The PATEO force can be done in one of two ways.

1. The options are indistinguishable from each other. Face-down cards, paper balls with words written on the inside, sealed envelopes. In this case, your force object is secretly marked.

2. The options are distinctly different. Face-up cards, different coins, or—in this case—pool balls. There’s no question where the force object is because it’s plainly visible.

I find #1 to be an incredibly fooling technique. I can’t remember ever getting busted when the objects all seem identical. It’s a method I like quite a bit actually. Slowly winnowing down to one option with multiple free choices along the way is an incredibly strong technique. Magicians sometimes scoff at the PATEO force, but in this form, I think it’s actually kind of genius.

Surprisingly, #2 also fools people. This feels like it should be kind of transparent, but I’ve had success with it for the most part. The only issue I’ve had with it in this way is when there are other people watching along. In my experience, the person taking part in it has enough choices to make to keep their mind occupied, but people looking on will sometimes notice the pattern.

So I usually only try and do PATEO-based effects with openly different objects in one-on-one situations.

In this case, I was doing it for a small group of people and later that night Ashley said to me, “I know how you did that trick.” And he explained the general idea behind the PATEO force. He didn’t have the process 100% nailed, because Looch switches it up at the end, but he had the general idea.

In this case, I did what I usually do when someone nails the method: I play stupid. I have them explain it to me a number of times. I get excited, “Oh, that’s clever!” I make some notes on my phone. “I’m definitely going to try this.” I make them explain it so much that they regret bringing it up.

Then when that interaction is over, I begin thinking to myself, “Okay, how can I do this another way?”

The next night, Ashley was playing a game of pool with another friend of ours and I was watching along. When the game was over, I clarified what the score was and who won. “Yup, okay, that’s what I thought.” I mentioned having another pool dream last night (my presentation for Hustler the previous day had been a fairly standard, “I had a dream and this is what happened in it and when I woke up I wrote something down,” etc. etc.) “But you were right, Ashley, by not actually playing the game for real, I could have maybe rigged it in some way. Which, of course, I’d never do. So, anyways I had this dream last night about you two playing pool, and I wrote something down on a slip of paper when I woke up and attached it to the light cord.” A small folded piece of paper was attached by a paper clip to the thin chain that turned the light on and off over the pool table. I got off the couch, retrieved the note and handed it to Ashley to unfold and read. The note indicated who would win and what the final score would be. “Are you shitting me?” Ashley said, and started toying with the end of the light cord, as if that might somehow give up the secret of what just happened.

I just used Sankey’s Paperclipped switch here. The folded note was clearly visible throughout the whole game and I was prepared to comment on it if they had seen it first, but they didn’t. Hanging it above the table said (without saying) “this couldn’t have been tampered with during the game.” I also folded the note with the text on the outside which is something I often do when using the Paperclipped switch. I think it makes a switch seem less likely.

So I have two predictions, the dummy one in the paperclip and the one I secretly fill in with a couple pieces of information at the end of the game (the rest of the prediction—a couple sentences—is pre-written). Writing in the name of the winner and the score wasn’t even “secret writing” per se, because the people playing weren’t paying attention to me at that point.

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I have another pool-based trick that I’ll share with you tomorrow. It’s kind of an interesting one.

Dustings #77

Reader K.O. knows what’s up. He got the cover of book #4 tattooed on his arm.

For you pussies who won’t embed it in your skin, you can still get it as a t-shirt here.

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Here is the most interesting and terrifying thing I’ve ever read related to AI art. It feels like an urban legend. Or like viral marketing for a Blumhouse horror film. But I’m not going to probe it too much to find out.

Read the story here.

Thanks to FB for the link.

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Earlier this week I asked for any advice people might have for a new father trying to stay on top of his magic practice while also tending to an infant. The primary advice I’ve received so far is, “Just wait, it gets better.” So, sorry dad, you’re probably screwed for the time being.

Reader H.G., took it upon himself to pose this question to an AI chat bot to see what it suggested. H.G., was somewhat impressed with the answer. I am… less so. Look, it’s interesting that these AI can come up with a response that sounds like a human wrote it. But the ideas and advice AI comes up with—at this point—are pretty stupid.

So there you have it, new fathers. If you want more time to work on your magic, hire a babysitter, you dope. Why didn’t you think of that? Also—of course!—go to a support group for parents who are also interested in practicing magic (Look for the PWAAIIPM chapter in your area.)

Interesting and Unbelievable

An email from ZG asks…

I have vague memories of an article you did on the site, with a thesis statement was something to the effect of “ by making my premises so outlandish, if anyone tries to point out the premise is impossible, they look like the idiot“

Specifically I’m looking to send this article to a friend because we had a conversation to this effect:

Him: when you perform in the jerx style does anyone ever stop you in the middle and just say isn’t this a magic trick?

Me: well no because what I’m doing doesn’t look like what they think magic tricks look like it has more of an immersive theater vibe

Him: well don’t they ever just stop in the middle and ask is this a piece of immersive theater then?

Me: they might internally, but they recognize that would break the spirit of the game.  Now sometimes they ask questions about the world we have created together, which is them playing along and gently poking the experience, which to me means they are in the right headspace for having a fun experience. I will have to dig and see if I can find the article where he explains the exact question you’re asking.

Basically anyone stopping to point out “hey I don’t think you really do have a leprechaun live in your house” isn’t  really saying something that anyone in the room doesn’t already recognize. So there’s no point in saying it and they don’t”

And after that I looked at the article and couldn’t find it so I’m reaching out to you. —ZG

Yeah, I’m not sure which post you’re referring to, but it’s something I’ve addressed a few different times over the years.

Does anyone ever say, “Isn’t this just a magic trick?”

No. Because essentially everyone who sees me perform knows it’s a trick. They know of my interest in magic and they’ve been gradually acclimated to weirder and more immersive presentations.

I’m not meeting someone for the first time and telling them I have a leprechaun in my house.

Initially, they’re seeing stuff that’s much more low-key and traditional. Then I start to ramp it up over time.

I’ll tell you why I’m drawn to the stranger premises.

Imagine we judge a presentation on two criteria. 1 - Is it interesting or not. 2- Is it unbelievable or not.

In my opinion, the best intersection of these possibilities is in the green square here:

When your presentations are too believable, I think it can put your spectators in an awkward position. If they don’t believe your believable presentation, they may assume you want them to believe it. Which is uncomfortable for them.

If they do believe your believable presentation, then you have a weird situation where your friends/family are walking around thinking you can really psychologically influence them. Or that you can really memorize a deck of cards in a manner of moments. This should put you in an uncomfortable position. You shouldn’t want people thinking you can actually do things you can’t really do.

So when a premise is too believable, I think it’s often uncomfortable for the performer or the participant or both. Especially, if you’re performing for friends or family. (It’s a different dynamic if you’re performing professionally.) And there are ethical questions tied up in it.

For that reason, the “believable” column is not something I pursue.

That leaves us with “Unbelievable-Interesting” and “Unbelievable-Uninteresting.”

You would think people would want to avoid anything uninteresting. But many of the presentations in magic are uninteresting. They wouldn’t be a story you’d tell without a magic trick attached to them.

“The Ace of Spades is the leader ace and the other aces follow him.”

“This big rope is the daddy bear, this medium rope is the mommy bear, and this little rope is the baby bear.”

“This ace is going to do a somersault in this little packet and turn face up.”

These are all uninteresting stories. I think everyone—even the people who use these types of presentations—would agree to that.

I think their argument would be, “Yes, the presentations aren’t interesting. But it doesn’t matter. I’m doing the impossible. That’s the interesting thing. The presentation is just there to give it a little storyline.”

For them, the “impossible” is interesting enough. If someone sees cards changing into other cards, it doesn’t matter what the premise is.

To a certain extent, I agree.

But with social magic, where you’re often performing for the same people with some frequency, the “impossible” becomes less interesting over time.

For most people, seeing something impossible loses its impact the more they’re exposed to it. Depending on how often you perform for someone, you can’t rely on demonstrating something impossible to carry their interest.

But if you put the trick in an unbelievable, interesting context then you are essentially using the trick as a tool to tell a fun or bizarre or compelling story. And an interesting story never gets old.

Now, getting back to the original question, let’s say I’m telling someone about something weird that’s been occurring recently with someone who I thought was an invisible friend I made up in my childhood. Does anyone ever stop me and say, “Hey, wait. Isn’t this just a magic trick?”

No. For the same reason when a magician says, “The Ace of Spades is the leader ace,” no one stops that person and says, “Hey, wait. Is that true? Isn’t this just a magic trick? Or is the Ace of Spades really the leader ace?”

People understand there’s a layer of fiction on top of magic tricks. The goal, I believe, is to make that layer as interesting as possible.

Building a Social Magic EDC

Here’s my philosophy about building an EDC for the purpose of performing social magic in casual environments.

Generally, I think you want to focus on things that fall into these three categories:

• Invisible

• Imperceptible (as a magic prop)

• Intangible

Invisible - These would be things like Loops, thumbtips, nailwriters, etc. These are gimmicks that the audience never sees.

Imperceptible - These are things that would not be immediately perceived as some special magic prop. Think of things like gimmicked keys, gimmicked coins (standard pocket change type coins), gimmicked wallets, etc. These items mimic things that everyone carries every day.

Intangible - A subset of tricks and knowledge that don’t require you to carry anything extra with you to perform. I’m not talking about propless effects. I’m talking about, for example, the knowledge of how to do Quinta with anything around you. Apps on your phone. A repertoire of effects with borrowed objects like rings, normal coins, or business cards.

As a minimalist, my preference is for effects that fall into the “intangible” category. I like knowing that I can go into a trick whenever the opportunity presents itself, and yet if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, my family doesn’t have the extra heartache of finding my pockets stuffed with a bunch of weird objects.

Here are the types of thing I avoid:

• Jumbo coins

• ESP Cards

• Little Tenyo tricks

• Safety Pins

• Packet Tricks

• A little clear stick with gems on both sides

Among 1000 other things.

Why do I avoid these things for a social magic EDC?

For a few reasons.

First, if you’re carrying around a very specific prop, you’re going to be tempted to use that prop even in situations where it might not be the best option for what you should perform at that point in time.

Second, I think it looks a little goofy to pull out things you’re obviously carrying solely for the purpose of showing people tricks. I know there are people who feel differently. Their position is, “We’re magicians! We use weird objects and do fun things with them. That’s what we do.” But for me, it feels kind of corny and try-hard.

Imagine you meet a psychologist and the two of you are having a conversation and you talk about some different psychological experiments and she demonstrates some psychological concepts or you play a quick verbal game that illustrates some quirk of the mind. That might come off as a fun and fascinating interaction.

But if she starts pulling out little props and objects from her pocket that were only there so she could demonstrate these things, would that not feel a little different to you? Wouldn’t you think, “Oh…she really wanted to do this thing. She was prepared.” Would that strike you as mildly desperate?

Which brings me to the third reason I avoid any props that are clearly “props.”

When we talk about Every-Day Carry in social magic, we’re talking about being prepared to perform at the spur of the moment. When you pull out your jumbo coin, or your special Mystery Box, then you’re losing one of the most powerful aspects of that sort of performance: the sense of spontaneity. The sense that this is something special, that could only happen between this group of people who are here at this moment in time.

The strongest reactions I ever get come when I can make it feel like we’re stumbling over something weird and fun together in the moment. That’s hard to establish when you’re pulling out a chop cup and a little crocheted ball.

That’s why I stick to an EDC of invisible, imperceptible, or intangible items. These tools allow me to always be ready to perform, but in a manner that feels less planned and more personal.

Prepping for my EDC Post

The question I’ve been getting most in my email the past year or so is in regards to my EDC (Every-Day Carry).

To get inspired to answer this question, I decided to visit the EDC Magic page on facebook. It took me some time to visit there because I don’t have a facebook account.

(I don’t mean that to sound like, “I’m so much better than you… I don’t even have a facebook account.” The reason I don’t have social media is that I find it so easy to spend hours on it at a time, and yet it’s not something that brings me any fulfillment. So, because I lack the discipline to spend just a short amount of time a day on social media, I just cut myself off from it completely. If you’re in a similar situation, I can’t recommend enough just ditching it altogether. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. Yes, to be fair, sometimes I find out things much later than other people in my social circle. “Oh… that guy died? I hadn’t heard. Two years ago? Really?” But for me, that’s been a small price to pay. Of course, if you have a healthier relationship with social media than I do, there’s no need to make that sacrifice.)

So I waited until a friend was visiting—a friend who is on facebook and a member of that page—and went scrolling through.

At first I was very confused.

One of the first posts I came across was this person’s picture of his EDC.

Really? Multiple wallets? Rope? Brass cups? Old coins? A lemon? ANOTHER LEMON???

You carry this stuff every day??

As I continued to scroll, I saw many more photos with ten or fifteen items pictured in people’s EDC.

What kind of pants are these people wearing to hold all this stuff? I wondered.

I soon realized where the disconnect was.

I was assuming people were using the term Every-Day Carry in the usual sense of the word. “This is the stuff I carry with me every day.”

But it turns out a lot of the people were posting pics of what they carried with them to gigs.

While that’s kind of interesting, that’s not quite the idea behind EDC. Some would say it’s the opposite of EDC, which wikipedia defines as, “a collection of useful items that are consistently carried on person every day.” Generally, to fall into the category EDC, you’ll want something that’s relatively small and multifunctional and that you can see yourself using in a myriad of situations. One lemon wouldn’t really fall into that designation, much less two.

Of course, a facebook group is going to become what the members decide it is. So if people are posting what they bring with themselves to gigs, then it might be because that’s what people are more interested in posting/talking about.

Ultimately it’s just another example of the vast difference between performing professionally and performing socially. That picture above represents a perfectly reasonable set of props for a professional. But if an amateur was carrying that stuff around with them, they should be institutionalized.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss my “EDC philosophy” specifically for casual/social performers. It’s not a list of tricks, but rather a way of thinking about the type of things I want to have on me that has served me very well the past 5-10 years.

Mailbag #76

How about this idea?

You have the spectator write down the name of a dead guy.

And 4 living people.

They each go in a different envelope.

You then place a deck of cards on top of each envelope.

5 envelopes/5 decks of cards.

And then one of the decks cuts to a card.

And that is the deck that is on top of the envelope that contains the name of the dead guy.

In this case the idea of a Haunted Deck is implied rather than said out loud, which I think makes it spookier. —JM

It’s a good idea, but maybe too much stuff required, for my taste.

I’d get rid of the envelopes and get rid of all of the decks but one. Have your friend write down the name of one dead person and four living. (The dead one is marked in some manner.) They’re mixed up and laid out on the table name-side down. The deck is placed near one of the names, you turn your back to the set-up for a few moments and then turn back around… nothing has happened.

Then it’s moved to the next name. You turn around. Again, nothing happens.

This is building up anticipation. What is it, exactly, that you’re expecting to happen?

Of course, on the third or fourth try, when you turn back around, the deck is now cut to the spectator’s selected card. And when you turn over the name, it’s revealed to be the dead person.

This would use one of the remote controlled haunted decks. The nice thing about this is that it would get the spectator touching the deck and moving it from name to name. So they’d be handling the deck a fair number of times, but not doing anything that would be likely to expose the gimmick. They’d just be picking up the deck and moving it to the next person’s name.

You might want to ask if they have a relative who has passed who was a regular card player. That would make the idea that we’re manifesting their presence through a deck of cards make a little more sense because it’s something they used regularly when they were alive..

Of course, you’d want to be careful who you perform this for and in what situation. If your friend’s mom died last week you don’t want to be like, “Hey, she played cards a lot, right?”

But I don’t think most people would be bothered if you invoke a card-playing great-uncle they once had for the purposes of some mildly spooky entertainment. But if you think the person you’re with might be bothered by that, you could always ask them to look up the name of a famous dead gambler or magician or whatever. That could be the name that’s written down.

And I wouldn’t frame it like a challenge, e.g., “I’m going to determine which one is the dead person!” Or even, “The deck of cards will determine which name is the dead person.” I would just suggest the other names are a way of making this ritual or this test/experiment extra fair. It lets us know we’re really making a spirit connection with the person we’re hoping to. Or something like that.

The original idea would work well in a more formal show. But for hanging out with a few friends, the multiple decks and envelopes might be too much.

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I really enjoyed your blog on Iteration Testing Peek Wallets. Your observation that wallets are not something people tend to consider as gimmicked is validating of something I've long believed. 

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I'm curious, have you found books to elicit suspicion of gimmicking? In a context where they belong my guess is, like wallets, they are less likely to raise suspicion than the other items that you mentioned. —BC

Unfortunately, a good number of people do intuitively guess the idea of a specially printed book. We’ve only tested book tests a couple of times, that I remember. And only once since we really nailed down our testing protocols. And while, “gimmicked book” was not the sort of thing that was suggested as frequently as “trick cards” for a card trick, it was something that was suggested with some regularity. (Of course they didn’t say, “gimmicked book.” They would just suggest there was maybe something unusual about the book.)

Obviously which book you’re using in your effect is going to make a difference with how suspect it is. Harry Potter will garner less suspicion, but it’s not completely above doubt. People “get” the idea of a specially printed book in a way they don’t get the concept of a specially constructed wallet. So you can’t just rely on them saying, “Oh, Harry Potter, I’ve heard of that. I’m sure it’s just a normal book.”

But at the same time you’re definitely better off using a book they’ve heard of rather than something like this goofball stuff.

As I once wrote about these books from the Flashback book test…

"Now I'm sure this trick is very clever and I'm sure a lot of thought went into it. Unfortunately though, you're expected to convince people you have psychic power by using the most totally bogus looking book I've ever seen. Check out the cover for "Band of Brokers," have you ever seen anything so completely shady in your life? That picture looks like it belongs on the cover of the "3M Corporation's Guide to Team Building and Diversity Training," or in an ad for an insurance company, "Our agents are waiting to handle your claim." The one thing it doesn't look like is the cover of any legitimate book published in the history of book publishing. "Stained Justice" is pretty shoddy as well. But "Band of Brokers" is so obviously phony it's amazing. That thing couldn't look more suspect if it had a bright pink cover and was titled ‘Gimmicked Magic Book’ by Fakey Authorton."

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Help A Father Out

I received an email from supporter and new father, PG who asks:

So now in my new house I have space to practice magic, but with my new baby I have no time! I used to sit in front of the TV and practice getting into lateral palm or perpendicular control, or semi-relatedly on your advice the Giraffe switch. Now there's always a baby in at least one hand. Did I buy a used Rene Lavand book on Ebay? Yes! Do I have any time to read it? Definitely not.

What advice do you or your readers have for continuing to practice magic while juggling a tiny human?

Personally I have no advice, because I’ve successfully navigated through life without leaving any “little humans” in my wake. (As far as I know.)

So I’m asking any of the parents out there if they have any advice for this situation. It’s too late for my advice (pull out) but maybe some of you have some words of wisdom for a new dad on how to devote some time to his hobbies while not ignoring the kid. If so, send it to me and I’ll pass it along.

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Help a Brother Out

This weekend I’ll be staying with some friends at a place that has a pool table. Do you have any pool table-based stunts, tricks, or bets that you’d recommend? If so, send me an email and let me know. Thanks!