Spectator Belief and Dicebot 5000

After Monday’s post, I got a handful of emails expressing a concern that I seem to get in one form or another after most tricks I post. The concern is that the spectator is going to believe the idea of these dice being controlled by this app. Or that you’re going to be in an awkward situation where the spectator doesn’t really believe this app exists, but they might think you want them to believe this is a real thing.

This seems to be a common concern. Especially with people who are new to this site, or new to the style of tricks I write up.

Here is my thinking regarding this particular trick. And some thoughts on putting this issue to bed for all tricks.

Spectator Belief and DB5k

In Phase 1, the trick is on the verge of believability. It’s too close to believable, in my opinion.

But then phase 2 takes it past the point of believability. At least for most people. It would be one thing if an app could control the roll of five dice. But how would it know which three they were going to select and in which order they’d stack them?

I trust that people who have seen me perform before will know we’ve crossed over into fiction at some point. They won’t know it immediately at the start of the trick, but that’s fine.

By the end, when I’m telling them they have $2500 worth of electronic dice, they’ll get that it’s a bit.

If I picked the wrong sort of person to perform this for, maybe they’d challenge me thinking that I wanted them to believe it. But I rarely have that sort of issue. If someone did try to challenge me, I would just dig deeper and make it even goofier that they were taking it seriously.

If they said, “No, those aren’t programmable dice. That was just a trick.”

Me: “A trick? Ha. I wish. I wish there was some sort of trick where you could predict how real random dice would roll and how someone would stack them.”

Them: “Okay, then how does it work then? How did it know how I’d stack them?”

Me: “Beats me. I don’t know electronics very well.”

Them: “What’s the name of the app?”

Me: “The app that allows you to control the dice? DiceBot 5000.”

[Don’t actually tell them DiceBot 5000. That will lead them here.]

Them: [After searching for it.] “I didn’t find any DiceBot 5000 in the app store.”

Me: “Wait…, really? Let me look.” [I look at their phone.] “Oh, what are you doing? No, of course it’s not in the regular app store. These dice are totally illegal. You need to be in the Dark Web App Store.”

I hardly ever have to play with people in this way anymore. They get what’s going on at some point when things become just a little too unbelievable.

If you’re doing this type of trick with someone who needs to be reassured at the end that it’s “just a trick,” then they’re not a good audience for this style of performing. They’re still thinking that you’re genuinely trying to convince them that this stuff is real. They should be out of that mode of thinking.

If you’re worried someone is going to believe (or think you want them to believe) that something you’re showing them is real, then you haven’t done a good enough job in previous tricks making it clear that obviously these things aren’t supposed to be taken seriously.

You don’t need to tell them not to take things seriously. They should know you’re interested in magic (we’re not trying to keep that secret—we’re doing tricks, not practical jokes). So everything you do should be seen in that context.

If you’re concerned, use sillier premises at first, but still with a storytelling angle. “When I was a child, I fell through the ice while skating alone on a pond. I was trapped under the ice and couldn’t find the hole to get out. The water could have killed me. Instead, I blacked out and woke up laying on the ice and ever since then I’ve had the power to control sponges. (Sponges being waters natural enemy.) Whether this was a gift or a curse, I may never know. But check out these red sponge balls and witness my awesome power.”

That sets a precedent. In the future, when you then go into more immersive stories, or less outrageous stories, they’ll get that it’s fiction and not intended to be believed.

Almost everyone gets it quickly. People aren’t dumb. Once you’re going a little deeper with people presentationally, they should have such a clear understanding what type of stuff you do that they don’t need you to disclaim it. For the same reason they shouldn’t need someone to come on screen at the end of a film and say, “Hey, just so you know, we tried really hard to make everything look real in this movie. But it was just a movie. This stuff didn’t really happen. I’m Chris Evans. I'm an actor. I don’t teach at a school in the inner city.”

AI As a Stand-In for Your Dumb Friends

Pete McCabe, wrote in to say:

I was wondering how the new ChatGPT might impact how a spectator might google a magic trick’s secret. I tried these two and it nailed Copperfield’s Flying, but no mention of a folding coin for the coin in bottle trick.

Question: How does David Copperfield fly?

ChatGPT: 🤖 David Copperfield is a famous magician and illusionist known for his elaborate stage shows, which often include illusions involving seemingly impossible feats, such as making objects disappear, levitating, and even flying. Copperfield does not actually fly in the way that birds or planes do, but rather uses a variety of techniques and tricks to create the illusion of flight for his audience. These techniques may include the use of wires, harnesses, and other specialized equipment that is not visible to the audience, as well as careful choreography and misdirection to distract the viewer from the mechanics of the illusion. Copperfield's flying act is just one example of the many elaborate illusions that he has created and performed over the course of his career. 🤖

Question: How does the coin in bottle trick work?

🤖 The coin in bottle trick is a classic magic illusion in which a magician appears to magically cause a coin to pass through the solid glass or plastic of a bottle. The secret to this trick is that the coin never actually passes through the bottle at all. Instead, the magician uses a combination of misdirection and sleight of hand to create the illusion that the coin has passed through the bottle.

One way to perform this trick is to use a small coin and a bottle with a narrow neck. The magician begins by holding the coin in one hand and the bottle in the other. The bottle is tilted at an angle, with the neck pointing upwards and the opening slightly wider than the coin. The magician then pretends to push the coin through the opening of the bottle and into the interior of the bottle. In reality, the coin is simply held against the side of the bottle and hidden from view by the magician's hand. As the coin is "pushed" through the bottle, the magician simply drops the coin into the bottle and allows it to fall to the bottom. The illusion is completed when the magician reaches into the bottle and seemingly "pulls" the coin out of the other side.

There are many variations on this trick, and different magicians may use different methods to achieve the same basic effect. The key to any coin in bottle trick is to create a believable illusion of the coin passing through the solid material of the bottle, while secretly using misdirection and sleight of hand to conceal the true method of the trick. 🤖

✿✿✿

ChatGPT is kind of interesting when it comes to discussing magic methods. Sometimes it seems to be filtering through genuine resources to provide an answer. But there are other times where it’s just making shit up on the fly. Like the other day when I wanted to remind myself what the “13 Steps to Mentalism” were, so I asked ChatGPT and here’s what it gave me:

🤖 The 13 steps to mentalism is a series of principles that outline the fundamental skills and techniques used by mentalists, who are performers who use psychological principles, misdirection, and showmanship to appear to read minds, predict events, and influence people's thoughts and behavior. The 13 steps are as follows:

1. The Mentalist's Creed

2. The Principle of Mentalism

3. The Principle of Suggestion

4. The Principle of Association

5. The Principle of Attention

6. The Principle of Imagination

7. The Principle of Expectancy

8. The Principle of Attention

9. The Principle of Confidence

10. The Principle of Relaxation

11. The Principle of Practice

12. The Principle of Enthusiasm

13. The Principle of Persistence 🤖

So this is stuff it was just pulling from its robot ass (probably made of a tin can, I’d guess.) It’s not even good made-up shit. One of the steps to mentalism is, “The Principle of Mentalism"? That seems a little circular. And The Principle of Attention is there twice. C’mon, robot. You can do better than that.

Look what happened when I asked this question where I tried to get it to suggest a peek wallet:

“The other day a magician asked me to write a word down on a piece of paper. Without looking at the word he put it in his wallet and set it aside. Then he had me concentrate and he was able to tell me the word I wrote down. How did he do this?”

🤖This is likely a trick called "mentalism," which is a type of illusion that makes it appear as though the performer has supernatural mental powers. The magician may have used a variety of techniques to accomplish this trick, such as using a hidden camera or accomplice, or using a code or secret marking system to communicate the word to the magician. Another technique that could be used is cold reading, in which the magician uses subtle cues, such as body language, to gain information about the person and make educated guesses about what word they might have written. Additionally, the magician could have a pre-show work with the participant to get the information or to make the participant write a pre-determined word.🤖

Okay, so this is likely a trick called “mentalism.” Got it. And maybe the magician did it by using a hidden camera. Or, maybe he pre-showed me. Hmmm… I feel like that would be a sort of transparent way to fool me. But who knows. I’m dumb. Sure, maybe he knew what word I wrote down because we pre-determined it beforehand.

Clearly, at least at this point in time, ChatGPT is not a great source of magic secrets.

But then again, it seemed to know how David Copperfield flew. But… did it?

Did it know something? Or did it give the most obvious guess? Like it did with the coin in bottle. And perhaps it’s just that Copperfield’s Flying illusion happens to actually use the most obvious guess (wires and harnesses). Whereas a folding coin is a much less intuitive concept.

It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on with this thing. It definitely has a handle on some magic concepts. When I asked it how magicians make dollar bills float, it specifically used the term “invisible thread.” And when I asked it how magicians make a cigarette penetrate a quarter it mentioned a gimmicked coin called the “Cigarette thru Coin gimmick.” But then it finished with this bit of nonsense.

🤖Another way is called "Penny to Dime" trick, this trick the magician will borrow a penny from the audience, and then change it into a dime that is already pierced by the cigarette.🤖

Uhhhh… what the fuck are you talking about, robot? I think you had a little too much motor oil last night.

The thing is, I think there is value in ChatGPT’s answers for us as magicians. In a post last year I mentioned that the biggest takeaway I had from all the testing we’ve done is that you can never overly clarify the conditions of an effect. If you have an effect you want to perform, you can ask ChatGPT a few times how it thinks it’s done. It will give you a good amount of horse-shit, but it’s likely to hit on some methods that real humans will consider as well. If you’re able to explicitly demonstrate some conditions in your performance that apparently prevent the suggested methods from being used, then you’re likely to have a fairly strong method/presentation. It’s no substitute for actually testing the trick out in the real world with people you know, but it might be able to give you a head-start on addressing the concerns that actual humans might have too.

DiceBot 5000

Here’s a trick any of you with an iPhone can do. It just uses a free app.

I got very lucky with this trick. I got it set up on my phone and I was thinking of how I might get into the trick in the future. It’s a trick that uses dice, so it would be good for a game night or something like that. Other than that, how often do dice come up in the real world?

Two hours after I got this ready on my phone, I was sitting with a friend of mine trying to figure out where we wanted to go for dinner. We were in one of those semi-annoying states where we were hungry, but weren’t being called to any particular restaurant or cuisine. We had narrowed it down to a few places.

“Let’s roll a dice to choose one,” she said.

I know what you’re thinking. “Dice is plural! She should have used the singular, ‘die.’” Yes, I know sweetie, but that wasn’t what I was thinking.

I was thinking, how was it possible that the first day in my entire life that I wanted someone to introduce a die into the interaction was also the one day in my entire life where someone did? The odds of that happening aren’t quite matching-Rubik’s-cube-odds, but it’s way more unlikely than Any-Card-At-Any-Number odds.

She grabbed a Yahtzee box from her closet and took out some dice.

I picked one up and looked at it closely for a moment.

“What the heck… wait… why do you have these?”

“Huh?” she said.

“Why do you have these dice?” I asked.

“I don’t know. They came with the game.”

“Noooo, they didn’t,” I said, eyeing her suspiciously.

“Well, as far as I know, they did,” she said.

“Not these dice. These are like $450 a piece.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked.

“You can tell by the diameter of the spots that these are the rigged ones. These are those programmable dice. I had one once too. But I couldn’t afford five. That’s crazy.”

She looked at me like, No, you’re crazy.

Still looking at the die, I said, “Do you seriously not know what these are? I still have the app, I think.”

I told her to choose one of the dice while I looked for something on my phone.

“Here it is. Let me connect it.” I touched the die to my phone.

“Let me just program this…,” my voice trailed off as I did something on my phone.

I had her hold out her hand and I set the phone face-down on her hand. “Okay, roll the die.” She rolled a four

“Turn over my phone,” I said.

On the screen she saw…

“You didn’t know these were those bluetooth dice? Really? Who else has access to your Yahtzee game?

“Here… try this,” I said, as I punched something else into my phone and set it aside.

“Roll all of the dice. Take any three that you want and stack them up in any order. Then cover them with the dice cup.”

I turned my phone over and showed her this.

“This is the three dice stack mode. They roll pretty much like normal dice, yeah? And you stacked them seemingly however you wanted. But if we count all the spots on the outside of the stacked dice, we should get a total of 48.”

She lifts the cup and we count the spots on the 13 visible sides.

17+4+13+8+the 6 on top =

48

“Just be careful with those, that’s almost like $2500 worth of dice.

We eventually rolled one final die to choose our dinner. It was Mexican.

Method

The method here is Marc Kerstein’s free TimedOut app which I mentioned earlier this month.

Phase One

Set an image grid in the TimedOut app with these images.

The rest is self-explanatory.

Phase Two

Set an image grid in the TimedOut app with these images.

All you need to note is the number on the top of the dice stack before it’s covered up. That will tell you which out you need. It doesn’t matter the orientation of all the other dice. The (visible) sides will add up to 43-48. Only the top number matters.

My first introduction to this principle was in a book I read years ago. It was either a magic or math book with some magic for the public. You would have someone stack three dice and cover them up. You would also have 48 toothpicks in your pocket. You’d bring out all the toothpicks except [6 minus the number on the top die]. So if there was a two on the top die, you'd leave four in your pocket. The number of toothpicks in your pocket matched the number of visible spots on the dice. What is the point of the trick where the number of toothpicks in your pocket matches the spots on dice? Bitch, I didn’t make up that trick. I don’t know. I’m just using the same principle.

The nice thing about it is that it’s still a 1 in 6 out, but it seems like it should be much more.

Phone Placement

I put the phone on the spectator’s hand for the first phase.

For the second phase, I rest the phone on something on the table (for the app to work, the phone can’t be flush on the table). A book or a deck of cards works very well. In this instance, I just set in on the Yahtzee box.

Image Grid

TimedOut isn’t really designed to mimic a fake iPhone app. But if you put the provided images into the “image grid” section, that works fine. You just don’t show the spectator anything on your screen before you set the phone down.

There you go. Now you have the elements you need.

Thanks again to Marc for making this app available for free.

Dear Jerxy Week - Day 5: Exposure vs. Art

In [Monday’s] post you suggested that trying to get a large following by doing magic on YouTube wasn’t compatible with a love of the art. As an aspiring YouTube content creator, I’m wondering why you think that is. I realize exposure/teaching tricks is part of the gig when you’re making magic YouTube videos, but I think that only serves to bring more people into the tent and make magic more popular. Who loves magic more than magicians? And they’re the ones who know the most secrets.  —SC

Yeah, I’m not someone who is completely against teaching tricks. I teach people tricks. And I recommended some channels that teach tricks as well.

Magic can be appreciated in many different ways. The two primary ways are:

1. As a way to generate mystery and astonishment.

2. As a demonstration of skill and cleverness.

These are both valid ways to enjoy magic. But they don’t work well together.

The real world is where magic thrives as a means to generate mystery and astonishment. Vanishing a silk one-on-one for a person in real life affects them much more intensely than watching a video of someone vanishing a silk on TikTok (everything else being equal). Simply because watching a trick online presents all sorts of other options for how the trick was done. Maybe it was video editing, maybe the silk dropped out of the frame, etc. In addition, you frequently have people writing right under the video about how the trick was done (or how they think it was done). There are probably some exceptions, but the vast majority of the time, a trick done in person should be more impossible/mysterious than the same trick done for the masses online.

Because it’s so easy to dismiss the “mystery” element online, the focus is often centered on the cleverness or skill or]f the performer—which frequently involves talking about secrets. If you want to gain a large following, you’re likely going to have to expose magic on some level to feed into that.

Do I think it’s good for magic? Well, it’s good for the aspect of magic that is about cleverness and skill. But no, it’s not great for the part of magic that is about mystery and astonishment.

I used to make the same argument the letter-writer makes: “Hey, magicians are the ones who like magic the most, and they know the most secrets. So clearly just knowing the secrets doesn’t harm magic.” As I became a better performer, I found this to be not true. Magicians are just more willing to sit through shitty magic than others. But laypeople get much more excited and wrapped up in the experience with a good performer.

Imagine a future where everyone knew the secret to every trick. You would have to admit that couldn’t possibly be good for magic as a delivery mechanism for mystery and astonishment.

Once you understand that, then you’ll understand why I’m not a proponent of unfettered access to magic secrets. I think there’s some level of teaching and exposure that is good and healthy for the art. And there’s some level where I think it has a deleterious effect on magic. I think everyone would agree with that—we just may have different opinions on where that line is.

The problem with this discussion is that there are people on both sides of the issue that are losers. There are losers who don’t want any secrets exposed because they want to horde them for themselves. This allows them to get the ego boost of knowing things other people don’t. And then there are losers who are desperate for attention so they expose tricks as a way of getting acknowledgment and validation because this is the only way people will notice them. So whichever side you’re on, you’re going to be aligning yourself with some dumb dildos.

I once had a debate with a guy online—this happened pre-blog. He had a YouTube channel where he just showed the secrets to tricks. I told him he was corny and his channel sucked and he said something like, “What? It’s just magic secrets. Secrets are just tools. They’re like carpenter’s nails. In and of themselves they’re not important. It’s what you do with them that’s important.”

That’s something a lot of people say: “The secrets aren’t important.” Okay, You can make that argument. But if you tell me nails aren’t important, and then you have a channel devoted to just looking at nails over and over, that doesn’t really go with the point you’re trying to make. Plus, nails might not be important on their own but we need them to build the house. So if you’re just sitting in the corner bending them like some dipshit, that’s going to bother the people who are trying to do something with the nails.

Again, I’m not totally anti-teaching/anti-exposure. I just think there’s more of an art to it than people think.

Ultimately, secrets are as valuable as we treat them. As I wrote in the recent newsletter:

“Magic secrets are like nudity. Women don’t need to wear high-necked dresses that go down to their ankles to maintain their modesty—only showing their bare skin to their husbands when they desire a child. But they also don’t need to have an OnlyFans account where you can see hi-def pictures of their spread labia for $4.99 a month. Nudity isn’t inherently important or valuable, but we can make it so by being a little coy with it. Magic secrets feel the same to me.”

Striving for YouTube success while valuing the art of magic is similar to wanting to be the most popular webcam model while placing a high value on romantic sensuality. In real life, you can completely captivate someone with a slow, seductive striptease. Online you’ll get more views by fucking a Rottweiler.

Dear Jerxy Week - Day 4: New to Mentalism

I’ve been recently getting serious about mentalism and trying to invent my own stuff, but I’ve run in to some problems (probably due to inexperience) so I figured I’d ask you some questions, if possible.

(1) How do you pick what method to use, or even invent new methods in the first place? I feel like I’m far better at thinking of premises than actually figuring out how to make what I want to happen happen.

(2) How do you know if something you’ve come up with will fool people? Maybe this is just an experience thing but I feel like there must be some sort of baseline test. —HF

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(1) How do you pick what method to use, or even invent new methods in the first place?

You really answered this question in your first paragraph. The issue is a lack of experience. If you’re new to mentalism (or any branch of magic) before worrying about working on your own routines and methods, you need to familiarize yourself with what’s possible already. I’m not trying to stifle your creativity and suggest you only need to do what’s already been done. In fact, get a notebook and keep track of all the ideas you have so you can get back to them later. But before you start working on those ideas you need to invest a good amount of time learning as many methods and concepts as you can. If not, you’re going to end up spending a lot of time:

a) working on stuff that’s genuinely not possible

b) re-inventing stuff that’s already been created.

So you need to spend time getting your fundamentals in order. How much time? I have no clue. I was involved in magic for 15 years before I started regularly coming up with my own tricks. But I also wasn’t really trying to. If you haven’t been doing much mentalism to this point, spend a year or two focusing on the basics.

As you do this, if you’re naturally creative, you’ll start coming up with your own spin-off ideas from the basics. Most of these ideas will already have been thought of, but that’s okay, you’re giving yourself practice coming up with doable new ideas (even if they’re not new to the world, they’re new to you).

So you’re doing two things simultaneously. You’re keeping track of the ideas you have for tricks in a notebook and you’re learning and performing the basic methods and effects. Once you’re at that intermediate level of mentalism, then you can look back at your notebook of ideas you’ve been keeping and you can fit those presentations into the classic methods of which you now have a firm understanding. Or you might find out that there is no classic methodology that can be used to create the effect you imagined. At that point, you can either devote yourself to coming up with a brand-new method or resign yourself to the fact that if the greatest minds in magic haven’t cracked that nut yet, then maybe it’s uncrackable.

Again, I’m not trying to discourage you from creating a brand new method. It’s just not how I do it. The few times in my life I’ve come up with a completely new method for something, it came to me with no effort on my part. It just came to me out of the blue.

When it comes to creating something “new” in magic/mentalism, my focus is on premises and contexts and ways to incorporate magic into day-to-day life. And what allows me to focus on those things in a semi-productive way is a firm understanding of the basics.

(2) How do you know if something you’ve come up with will fool people?

The only way is to test it.

You might be uncomfortable showing something to someone without knowing if it will fool them or not. That’s understandable. Here’s what I’d recommend…

What you don’t want to say is, “Can I test this new magic trick I came up with on you?”

You don’t want it to sound like your ego is on the line. Depending on who you’re performing for, they might be hesitant to give you honest feedback.

Instead say something like, “Hey, can I try something with you? I was reading this article online about this concept in magic [or psychology, or gambling, or however you frame it]. I’m a little confused by it. I want to try it out and see if it really works.”

Now you’ve asked them for their feedback on this thing which you have nothing to do with. It’s just something you’re trying out.

At the end, when you get their feedback, they might say, “Well, don’t most people say ‘Rose’ when you ask them to name a common flower?”Or whatever weak idea your trick is based on.

Then you just say, “Exactly! That’s the thought that I had when I first read the article.” You see? It wasn’t your dumb idea. It was the article’s!

Road testing a new method is really the only way to know how it will play for others.

But you may not even need to get to that point if you can be really honest with yourself. This is not a skill many magicians possess. Or maybe it’s lacking in most humans—not just magicians. For example, when I see someone “levitating” a bill and it’s clearly wobbling on a tiny piece of thread, this seems to be someone who is dishonest with themselves. Because certainly if they imagine themselves without any of their magic knowledge watching that effect, they would assume it’s dangling from something they can’t quite see, yes? They wouldn’t be like, “I saw a dollar jiggling in the air and now I’m questioning the fundamentals of physics as we know it.” If you can put yourself in your layman’s brain and realize that it wouldn’t fool you, then it probably won’t fool others.

However, if you think it would fool you, that’s not good enough. When it comes to assessing the strength of a new method or a significant variation on an existing one, you can’t just trust your own judgment. You nee to test it. As famous birthday party clown, Richard Feynman, once said about this: "The first rule is you must not fool yourself. And you are the easiest one to fool."

Dear Jerxy Week - Day 3: ESP as EDC & the Moment of Transition

In your EDC post you said that one thing you wouldn’t carry around with you is ESP cards. Do you really think carrying around 5 cards in your wallet seems that unusual to normal people? I’m trying to get in the mindset of a non-magician and I can’t decide if I’d find that weird or not. —EB

Well, look, when compared to carrying around a Tenyo prop or a Hot Rod, five ESP cards is certainly not that strange. But compared to a dollar bill or a credit card, then yeah, it is kind of weird.

When getting into a trick in social situations, you want there to be as little friction as possible. The more unusual the props you have, the bigger the speed-bump you’re introducing en route to getting into the trick.

To a certain extent, the “weirdness” is going to depend on how they’re introduced. If you and I just meet at an airport lounge and I pull out my ESP cards and ask you to think of one, that’s going to seem socially clumsy to most people.

Instead, let’s imagine we’re chatting for a few minutes, and at some point during that discussion I mention an interest I have in magic or “powers of the mind” or something and it seems like you’re intrigued. Then—spurred on by your interest—I say, “Oh, wait… I’ve been carrying around these cards and trying a little experiment when I meet someone new. Can we try it?”

In that transition, I’ve somewhat “normalized” the cards. You know about my unusual interest. And I told you I carry around the cards for an experiment when I “meet someone new.” Well, you don’t meet someone new in your living room, for the most part. So, in that case, carrying them with me does make a little more sense.

So in the lead-up to getting into the effect, it’s possible to do some groundwork so a potentially unusual EDC item might seem a little more normal.

---

Let me take a brief detour…

Magicians have told me, “You’re overthinking things. Just show people a trick.” But just jumping into a trick isn’t my style. That moment of transitioning from a normal human interaction to one where they’re seeing some kind of trick is the moment of the greatest potential tension. And it can turn the other person off if it’s not handled well.

You’ve undoubtedly had similar situations in your life. You meet someone new in a casual situation and you’re really hitting it off—they’re charming and fun to talk to. And then there’s that moment where he says something like, “Yeah, man… that’s pretty crazy. Hey… do you think Jesus ever struggled with a decision like that?” And the interaction comes into focus. It’s no longer a fun conversation. You’re talking to someone who wants to convert you, or sell you something, or get you in bed. And the moment you realize that, there is a natural tendency to pull back from the interaction.

That can happen as you get into a trick as well. The pop-culture stereotype of the amateur magician is someone who is thirsty for attention and praise. If you don’t transition smoothly into your effect, then that’s what it’s going to feel like to people. So that’s why I don’t think it’s “overthinking” to be wary of that moment and the props you introduce.

Actually, I’m just coming to a realization…

When I meet people, I have a relatively easy time creating some rapport with them and having a good conversation. So my focus is on keeping that good energy flowing. But a lot of magicians are socially inept. Their inability to strike up a good conversation is why their pockets are jammed with 12 different tricks.

Ultimately, your personality is going to play a role regarding what tricks you carry and how you deploy them. In general, are you using magic to extend an interaction where you’ve already made a genuine connection? Or is it a safety net for when you’re feeling socially uneasy? In other words, do you tend to show people magic because you’re very comfortable with them, or because you’re uncomfortable with them? If it’s the latter, then maybe it matters less if you’re carrying around strange objects or stiffly transitioning into tricks. If you’re not coming from a great position to start with, you don’t really need to protect anything. You can be the guy who has a bunch of sponge rabbits in your pocket. That’s probably better than being the guy having a stilted conversation that’s going nowhere.

But if you’re a more social person naturally, and you tend to show people magic after you’ve built some rapport with them, you don’t want the transition into a trick to cause a hitch in that. You don’t want them to have that, “Hold up… is this guy actually some kind of weirdo?” moment.

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Getting back to the original question…

In the early 2010s, I regularly used five marked ESP cards for a trick I would do socially.

During one performance, I either didn’t have the cards on me or I just wanted to try something different, and I ended up writing the symbols on balled-up paper napkins instead. The response to that performance was through the roof. It may have just been a coincidence, but since that time I’ve used the symbols written on paper or business cards or something like that when possible.

I’m a big believer in creating the props you’re using in the moment to whatever extent you can (for example). If you ever had a date where you made a meal with someone, you know that meal tastes better than the identical meal if you made it yourself at home and then brought it over. And certainly better than the same meal if it was pre-packaged at the grocery store.

So while having ESP cards in your wallet might not be the most ludicrous thing ever, if you can do the trick in a seemingly more offhand manner, that could be to everyone’s benefit.

Dear Jerx Week - Day 2: Mismade

Matthew Wright has an interesting new T&R coming out where the card ends up in a mismade condition. Have you ever tested a mismade T&R compared to a traditional one? To me they feel like different plots. —JR

I see what you’re saying. The meaning of “restore” is to put something back to its original condition. If, in the end, you have some jacked-up frankenstein card, then you’ve reconnected the pieces, but you haven’t “restored” the card. Not that that’s a bad trick, it’s just a different trick.

We’ve never officially tested a mismade vs a normal restoration. If I had to guess, I think magicians appreciate the mismade style of restoration more than laypeople do.

I’ve played around with Shawn Farquhar’s Torn 2 Pieces on and off for years now. As a magician, I like it a lot and use it in certain situations (more info in a future post). But the reactions I get to it are more along the lines of, “Isn’t that clever,” rather than one of being truly blown away by what they see. It’s probably because there’s something inherently cerebral and “amusing” about the end-product. It’s more of a “thinker” than a “feeler.”

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When it comes to mismade restorations, I think you have to weigh one important factor: How convincing is the destruction of the object in the first place?

If you stood with me on the sidewalk and watched a tornado destroy your house, which would impress you more:

1 - I have you turn your back to the house and moments later I turn you back around and the house is just like it was.

or

2 - I have you turn your back to the house and moments later I turn you back around and the pieces of the house are reassembled in a mish-mashed manner. The roof is on the bottom. The chimney is sticking out the side. The windows are facing the sky.

I would say that without question #1 is more impressive. We saw the tornado tear through town. We saw it destroy your house. If the pieces of the house come together in any form… that’s incredible. But, anything less than the house coming back together as it was is… less than.

Okay, but now imagine the destruction of the house isn’t 100% convincing. Let’s say we’re looking at the house, and I have a large screen raised between us and the house. Then a light is projected behind the house and we see a silhouette of the house on the screen. Then we see the silhouette of a bulldozer knocking the house down.

If I now shout out a Franz Harary style “Do It!” and have them drop the screen and your house is “restored” to its original condition, that’s not that impressive. If your audience has half a brain, they won’t say, “He magically fixed the house!” They’ll say, “It was never destroyed in the first place.” Because they were never truly convinced of it.

But, imagine if after we watched the silhouetted destruction, I had the backlight cut off so the shadow of the house was gone. Then I made some gestures in the air like I was “rebuilding” the house with my hands. Then the screen was whipped away and the house was restored in some funky mismade way. That would be stronger than just seeing the normal house. Because—whether the audience believes the destruction was real or not—you have the transformation of the house from its normal condition to the mismade condition.

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That being said, I feel the most magical effect would involve a thoroughly convincing destruction and a restoration back to its original condition.

But there are times you might be going for something slightly different.

I really like the logic I first heard in Michael Ammar’s Albo Card routine. I don’t remember his exact words, but it’s something about the fleeting nature of the magic moment. And how, if you restore the card for them, they might be amazed, but eventually the only tangible thing that remains of the magic is a normal card. So restoring it the wrong way around creates a piece of magic that lives on. I think that’s an interesting premise. And that’s what I use when I do the Albo Card routine.

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Update: The full trailer is up now.

Apparently the spectator signs the card after it’s been torn, and all the pieces are held together in a little bundle by the magician while they sign them. That’s a little too cozy and controlled for my style. In a longer video on the trick, Matthew says it’s so convincing because they can see the torn edges when they sign the card. While that’s true, they can also see the torn edges once they fold the restored card back into quarters. What was a “convincer” while they were signing the cards now just points to the method once the card is in their hands at the end.

I have no doubt this will fool many people. But because I’m not a huge fan of mismade restorations and the specific handling required for this trick, it’s just not for me.