The Instant Replay Switch: An Everydayness Technique

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An “Everydayness Technique” is a concept I first mentioned in this post. The idea is to use natural, everyday actions to hide magic techniques.

We can see this in some professional magic scenarios. For example, instead of twirling a wand (a theatrical and conspicuous action) in order to divert attention from a secret action, the magician might push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. That movement will likely still draw the eye and create the necessary misdirection, but it is so commonplace that it won’t draw attention to itself and it will be forgotten.

As amateur magicians, performing casually in social settings, we can take more advantage of these types of everyday actions because the scope of things you might do while sitting with your friend on the couch is so much greater than the scope of things you might do standing on stage or performing for wedding guests. You have a much greater library of actions that don’t seem out of place.

The Instant Replay Switch is ideal for when you have an item at the end of a visual piece of magic that cannot be examined without a switch.

Here’s how it works.

Let’s imagine you’re showing someone a cigarette through quarter trick.

You ask your friend to take out their phone and record something for you. You have a new trick you’re working on and you want to get a good look at it from an audience’s perspective.

You have the cigarette thru quarter gimmick in your right-hand finger palm. You ask your friend for a cigarette and a quarter. (Most people don’t have either of those things on them. But knowing you, and the trash you hang out with, your buddies probably all sell loose cigarettes for pocket change outside of the liquor store. So your friend has no problem lending you these items.)

You take the cigarette and quarter in your left hand.

You take a few steps back and tell your friend to get ready to record a video on his phone.

As he turns on his phone and gets to the camera, you just drop his quarter in your left pants pocket.

You have him record you as you push the cigarette through the quarter.

Now you pause. “Did you get that?” you ask. “Let me see.”

Now you go over and stand side by side with your friend. You are on their left. As they play the video for you, your left hand with the gimmick goes into your pocket and switches it for the normal quarter.

Right after the cigarette penetrates the quarter in the video you say, “Hold on, let me see that.” And you hand them the cigarette and the quarter so you can take the phone from them. You’re not saying, “examine these.” You just freeing up your hands to take and operate the phone. Then you scrub through the video a couple of times while they are holding this fully examinable cigarette and quarter.

Some of you will immediately get this. Some of you might think, “Wait, how could this be a better technique than simply doing a false transfer of the gimmick for a normal quarter at the end and then handing the normal quarter to them?”

I’ll tell you. Here’s what we’re trying to avoid. We’re trying to avoid the moment where there is a peak level of suspicion on the coin and we do anything other than hand that coin to them directly. In a normal cig-thru-quarter performance, the cigarette goes through the quarter and people are thinking, “Wait… let me see that coin.” And what normally happens after that is the magician puts the coin away or he puts the coin in his other hand and then hands it to the person. Neither of these are good options. What they want is for you to hand that quarter directly to them. The moment you do something other than that (without a good reason) that trips their suspicion.

What we’re doing with this switch is giving them something to do other than just be suspicious. At the end of the trick, they will still be curious about the quarter. But handing them the quarter at this point is no longer the most obvious thing to do. First off, they have a phone in their hand and they’re recording. Do you want them to stop or keep filming? And now you’re asking to take a look at the video. So their mind is occupied with something other than: “I need to see the quarter.”

Not only that, but they weren’t really your “audience” here. They were helping you out with something. For an audience, it makes sense to prioritize handing them the quarter to examine. But with this dynamic (where their role is “cameraman”), not immediately handing them the quarter doesn’t seem as unusual. You’re never actually denying them the thing they want most in the moment.

What I’m trying to avoid is any moment that rings false. There’s no action in this choreography that doesn’t feel totally normal. It’s not that using this particular switch will completely prevent them from considering there was a switch. But what it does is prevent them from being able to identify one moment where they feel the switch happened. If they feel they know when the switch happened, then that means they feel they know a switch happened. But if everything flows cleanly and feels natural, then there never is that one moment when the switch must have occurred. And therefore their certainty that it did occur is lessened.

Mailbag #91

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Curious to hear your thoughts on this:

Feels like your wheelhouse-ish. —MJ

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I’m really interested in Chris Rawlin’s new effect Predictable. […]

Were you a part of this release? I assume so. But I don’t want to support it if he didn’t get your okay first. —NL

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Another one for the “Jerx Did It First” list. I’m sure you’re hearing this a lot but Chris Rawlins has ripped off your trick and produced it as a stand alone item. […] I do your version all the time and this feels like a step backwards to me. (Sorry if you were involved in this or if you’re actually Chris Rawlins.) —EV

These are representative of a bunch of emails I received over the break. Emails that fell into one of three categories:

  1. “This looks like something you would like.”

  2. “Are you involved with this release?”

  3. “You got ripped off.”

In my most recent book which came out in 2022, I had a trick called, “Kill 100 Strangers or Kill 1 Loved One.” The trick reframed Out of This World as a demonstration not of the spectator’s ability to separate red and black cards but of your ability to anticipate or know your spectator’s preferences through a series of either/or questions.

So to answer these questions:

  1. Yes, it does look like something I’d like.

  2. No, I wasn’t involved with the release.

  3. No, I don’t think it’s a rip-off. Chris emailed me after the last book came out to tell me he had a similar idea in the works and showed me some of his early prototypes. And I told him at the time I had no issue with him moving forward with the idea.

While the tricks are quite similar in the story that they tell, his is different enough in prop and method that even if he had come to me saying he was directly inspired to produce this after reading my effect, I still wouldn’t have had an issue with it. So I certainly have no problem with anyone supporting this release and I’m sure I’ll get one myself

I bought the Chronoforce app last week[…]

primarily because I liked the idea of having a Lotto Prediction trick that I could have on me at all times.

However, the first two times I performed the trick (which were also the ONLY two times I performed the trick) they guessed the method. Once was for a group of people at work and another time for people in my church group.

What do you think of this app? Is there a way to disguise it better do you think? —BP

I am very intrigued by this app. I’ll definitely be picking it up and trying out some ideas I have with it (which, if they work out, I’ll include in a future newsletter).

I can sort of see why the lotto prediction effect could be a bit transparent to some audiences for the following reasons:

  1. There is a disconnect between their actions and the “chosen” numbers. They’re tapping the screen and then seeing a number in the milliseconds place. This is not going to give the same level of conviction as a lotto routine where they are openly choosing numbers themselves. It’s even less conviction than if they were rolling dice to get a number or pulling ping-pong balls. Because at least those actions are in the physical world. So some spectators are going to inherently “feel” this disconnect.

  2. You’re repeating that same thing (“stop the stopwatch and we’ll look at the numbers in the millisecond position”) multiple times. And when you do anything multiple times, you magnify the weaknesses. Here you’re magnifying the fact that the stopwatch itself is doing a lot of the heavy lifting insofar as picking these “random” numbers goes. You’re focusing more attention on that than you would be if you only used it once.

  3. You’re performing for groups. I don’t think this lotto prediction is a great trick for a group of people. The secret to the trick (that the stopwatch is doing the work) is not a secret that you can really disguise via the strength of your performance. The stopwatch is clearly essential to the effect. So you’re really just hoping that the concept of “trick stopwatch” doesn’t occur to them. But let’s say 10% of people come to that conclusion. When performed one-on-one, you have a 90% success rate. But when performed for a group of six people, the likelihood that at least one of them has this idea is about 50%. And that one person will possibly (perhaps likely) spoil it for the rest of the group. So your 90% success rate one-on-one becomes a 50% success rate when performed for a group.

Again, I’m not saying it’s a bad app. I think it looks great and I plan on testing out some ideas with it. I’m just pointing out some of the potential weaknesses of the lotto prediction effect.

I think those particular issues are more specific to this usage of the app (the lotto prediction) than other tricks you could do with it that place less of a repeated focus on the app. So I would steer towards the effects with this that didn’t use the same feature over and over. And I would be more likely to use the feature that allows all the digits to add up to the force number, rather than just the numbers in the milliseconds place. Then at least they know that a direct result of their choice (“I intentionally stopped at 13 seconds”) is playing a part in final number. That would be less transparent, in my opinion.

The Limits of Visual Magic: Part Two

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Okay, so picking up where we left off yesterday.

We have the card that changes a couple of times—either visually or in an implied fashion.

The testing we did gave slightly higher scores for both impossibility and enjoyment for the implied change rather than the visual change.

My feeling was that when something happens that is that visual, a spectator’s mind has nowhere else to go besides: “I guess there’s something funny about that card.”

I don’t like the “Too Perfect Theory” mainly because the name is so inaccurate. Every effect people use to illustrate this theory has one big glaring weakness. It should really be called the “One Big Glaring Weakness Theory.”

If a cop pulls me over looking for a dead body in my car, and I say, “You can look everywhere except my trunk,” that’s not The Perfect Crime. That’s just me not accounting for the most obvious solution.

That’s usually what happens with tricks that people label as Too Perfect—there’s an obvious solution the performer has accounted for. Your first job as a magician is to eliminate those possibilities. That’s not a problem with the trick. That’s a problem with the performer.

So what happens if we account for the “trick card” explanation in the visual card change? How would that affect the spectator’s perceived impossibility and enjoyment of the effect? And how would we even go about eliminating the “trick card” explanation?

Well, to explain that, you need to have an understanding of the layout of the performing setting during the testing.

The testing was done for five participants at a time, around a circular table, with the performer a few steps back from the table.

So, in performance, the card would change once, then again, then the performer would step up to the table and slide the card to the person at position three to examine. Then it would be passed around the table for everyone to look at.

The reason this clearly gimmicked card could be examined is because the person at position #3 was not another random focus group participant. They were also a magician who would switch in an examinable card in the process of sliding the card off the table. But they sat through the entire testing, playing the part of another spectator (and helped out secretly with a couple of other aspects of the performance as well).

We did five rounds of this testing, performing for 20 people in total.

With the added element of the card being examinable at the end, the “Impossibility Score” rose from 6.8 (when we tested it as a non-examinable trick) to 8.9. This is a huge rise, but not surprising to me. We had tested “examinability” in the past and seen that it had a significant impact on how impossible audiences would find an effect.

The more intriguing thing to me was the other number—the enjoyment score for the effect.

With the unexamined visual card change, the enjoyment score was 6.2.

With the examined visual card change, the enjoyment score was 6.5.

So it went up a little, but not significantly. I was surprised by this because in the previous examinability testing we did (linked above) when the impossibility score rose significantly, the enjoyment score rose significantly as well (on average).

Why didn’t this trick have a similar boost?

That question led me to re-examine some old testing results. The conclusions I drew from that re-examination and how it’s affected some of my thinking in regard to magic will appear in the final post in this series next week.

The Limits of Visual Magic: Part One

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In March of this year, as part of a larger scale focus group test, the following trick was performed for 42 individuals.

Approximately half of the people (22) saw the trick pretty much as demonstrated in the GIF above.

The other 20 people didn’t see the card change visually. In other words, they were shown the face of the card, then the card was turned back towards them, then turned around and it was a new card, turned away, and finally turned back around to show a third card.

Each spectator rated the trick on a scale of 1-10 as far as how impossible the trick seemed, and gave another rating for how enjoyable the trick was. In addition, they were asked a free response question regarding any ideas they might have as to how the trick was accomplished.

(By the way, after years of testing and trying to come up with a system to standardize reactions and keep the ratings from being bundled in the 7-9 zone, we hit on a simple and obvious solution. I’ll go into that in a future post sometime.)

For the Visual Change -

Impossibility Score: 6.8

Enjoyment Score: 6.2

Where 5 is meant to be “average” for both of these categories, this trick ranked somewhat above average for how impossible it seemed and how much they enjoyed it. That’s not too bad given that there was nothing to the presentation at all. It was literally just, “Take a look at this,” essentially.

For the Implied Change

Impossibility Score: 7.3

Enjoyment Score: 6.6

Both scores jumped a little. Not a crazy amount. But these scores are actually pretty decent for a quick trick performed with no presentation. You’re not really going to get in the 8s or 9s with such a trick, in my experience of testing.

The sample size wasn’t large enough that I would bet my life on the idea that the implied version is definitely better than the visual change. But I am confident the implied version isn’t significantly weaker than the visual version.

As magicians, we’re always drawn to visual magic. “Visual” is a term that’s used to sell tricks. And I think it’s difficult—or, at least, it’s difficult for me—to think the visual version of a magic trick wouldn’t be stronger than the implied version in almost all cases. Surely seeing the magic would make for a stronger, more entertaining, trick. Right?

I looked further into the feedback and noticed something which I thought provided an answer.

When looking at the suggested methods for the visual version, 20 out of 22 said that it was likely a “trick card” or words to that effect. They didn’t mention anything about the mechanics, or suggest that they saw that it was a trick card. So I don’t think they registered the flap card… at least not consciously. It’s just, when you see a card changing to other cards so openly, there’s really no other possibility.

With the implied version, a lot of people guessed that it was a “trick card” as well. 17 of the 20 respondents put that as a possibly. But 18 of the 20 also thought it could have been “sleight of hand”—secretly switching cards in and out.

You would think having more options for how a trick is done would make it seem less impossible and therefore less entertaining. But that wasn’t the case.

In a way, I thought we had just proven the Too Perfect Theory. When there was only one possibility for people to consider for the method, the trick was weaker than a trick with multiple potential methodologies.

It probably comes down to a question of certainty. I think if we had asked the participant to rate their certainty of how the trick was done, the visual group probably would have stated that they were fairly certain that “trick card” was the answer.

But the implied group likely wouldn’t have been so certain. For them the method might have been a toss-up between the card being gimmicked or the magician secretly switching cards.

That’s the first weakness of very visual tricks—they often lead you to the one and only correct method because it so clearly can’t be anything else. Look at the gif above. No one would suggest that’s sleight of hand. So the card itself becomes the only other option.

But I don’t think that’s the only issue with visual magic. So I wanted to try the test again, but this time I wanted to remove the “too perfect” issue. This time, the card would change in either a visual or implied manner and then that card would be handed directly to the participants to examine. How then would they process the visual or implied effect? That’s coming tomorrow.

Until June...

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This is the final post for May. New posting resumes Thursday, June 1st. Newsletter subscribers will receive the June issue that day as well. If you’re a subscriber at the $25/month level and you have an ad to get in for the next issue, try to get it to me by the 28th or so

Speaking of ads, I forgot to get this one into the last newsletter and it’s time sensitive so I’m placing it here instead.

This is another way you can use your ad space even if you have nothing to sell. You’ve got a page to do with as you please.

Dear friends of the Jerx....

I am using my Jerx advertising to share some very grave news with you.

The Magic Nook will be closing at the end of this month.


You know the site. The one that only sells to VERIFIED magicians, and also does nothing to define what that means.

Magic is an art, and they know it when they see it:

https://www.magicnook.com/verified.htm


But perhaps it is most famous for these very good and very funny and very tasteful pandemic jokes:

https://www.magicnook.com/FREEpostPandemicJokes.htm


So please, if you will, pour out some woofle dust for one of my favorite magic shops.

Memorial armbands will be available in the lobby.

The Magic Nook
"Do-It-Yourself" Magic for "Build-It-Yourself" Magicians

CLOSING WEB SITE ON MAY 31.

If you would like some insight into where modern magic and modern culture are, consider tricks in the past that have been popularized for the people whom they fooled.

The Ambitious Card was known as “The Trick that Fooled Houdini” after Dai Vernon was purported to have fooled him with it.

Out of This World has been known as “The Trick that Fooled Winstons Churchill.”

Then there is the mathematical trick known as “The Trick that Fooled Einstein” as dubbed by Al Koran.

Houdini! Churchill! Einstein!

A master magician. An esteemed statesman. And the greatest physicist of all time.

Where are we at now…?

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If you’re looking to “freak out” someone of the status of a Post Malone, the trick is Hook by Eric Ross.

For those of you who have the last book, you will recognize this concept from the trick in there called The Line Code. If the premise of that trick escaped you in the written form, then this might help explain the idea behind what you are pretending to do in that trick.

In a few days, while we’re away, the 8th anniversary of this site will occur. I can’t wait to receive all your presents. 🥰

I’m looking into ideas of how I might celebrate…

That “nerf war party” is really calling my name.

And what’s the deal with a “cozy movie night party”? Cozy? You don’t have “cozy” parties with 8-year-olds unless you’re Jared from Subway.

Actually, what I’ll probably end up doing is throwing a soccer ball, going rollerblading, and playing Explosions on my gaming system. Typical 8-year-old stuff.

At any rate, thanks to those of you who have supported the site and allowed it to continue all these years. This will be one of the busiest months for me related to this site as I’ve had to complete a full month of posting, a newsletter, and finishing up the next book. I’m already beat and the next 10 days are going to be crazy.

What does year 9 hold? It’s likely going to be the busiest year yet: A brand new effect for the Jerx App, unlike anything I’ve seen in app magic. The first release in the Every Deck A Story trick series. The new book in October. The reprint of The Amateur at the Kitchen Table in early 2024. And another physical trick release probably before year 9 is up.

That’s assuming the site survives a bit of self-sabotage I’m considering doing next month. We’ll see back here on June 1st, Flip-A-Coin Day, where’s I’ll flip a coin to decide if I’m going to dox the person writing this site.

Every Imp Everywhere All At Once

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“Okay,” you say, “I admit, this is going to sound crazy.

“Have you seen Everything Everywhere All at Once? Did you like it? Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool too. I don’t know if was Academy Award-worthy, but it was fun.

“Do you remember the term ‘verse-jumping’ from the film? Right. It’s short for ‘universe-jumping.’ And it’s where you do some statistically unlikely action and because of that, you’re able to unlock the memories and the skills of yourself in another universe within the multiverse.

“I didn’t quite understand that when I first saw the movie, but I had a physicist explain it to me. Apparently, it’s based on a real-life concept. The idea is this… imagine some alternate universe where you had made a series of different decisions that had led you to become a master of… say… archery. So in that universe where you’re an archery master, there is going to be some action that you did in that lifetime that you did in no other universe. Some action that is completely unique. Something so unusual that you didn’t do it in any of the 43 quintillion other universes. Maybe you put crunchy peanut butter between your toes, or you got a full back tattoo of James Corden, or you licked page 32 of a TV Guide.

“And because that action is completely unique to that one universe, if you were to do that action here, it would link you to your consciousness there. And you would briefly possess the skills you have in that universe.

“Look, this is all very complicated science. I don’t know how it works. But I did discover something cool… there is an underground service—totally illegal—and if you text them and ask them about any particular skill, they will let you know whatever weird action you need to do to ‘universe-jump’ into the consciousness of a version of you that has mastered that skill. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it. Given that there are essentially infinite universes, there’s one of you somewhere who has mastered any skill you can think of. And for a few minutes you can experience living in that version of yourself.

“I made a list of different skills I would like to know what it feels like to have masteedr. I’m going to have you choose one, and then I’ll figure out what I need to do in order to acquire that skill…”

This Imp might not make a ton of sense if you’re not familiar with the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once. But anyone who has seen it will get the general concept pretty easily. And even if they haven’t, you could probably make the concept clear enough just by describing it to them.

So here you have a way to get into any trick that would otherwise be just a demonstration of some impossible skill.

It’s obviously a fantastical, unbelievable premise BUT it makes sense as an overall story. “There is this process that allows you to briefly sync up with other versions of yourself with distinct skills in other universes… I’ve just done what I need to in order to sync up with this other version of me… And now I can memorize a deck of cards in 8 seconds.”

That’s a cohesive fictional story.

This is what I find people respond well to.

If I just come out and say, “I can memorize a deck in 8 seconds.” You—as my friend—might think, “Well, no he can’t. I know him. His memory isn’t that great. So it’s just a trick.”

And I might fool you with that demonstration but it still comes off as just a detached moment of fake impossibility.

It would be as if I showed you a video clip of a person flying. You might think that was a well done video effect. But it probably wouldn’t stick with you in any meaningful way if you didn’t see it in the context of some kind of story.

An Imp’s purpose is to establish a greater context for the magic moment. And this Imp does so in a particularly fun way.

First, there is a direct correlation to a very popular movie.

Second, they get the pleasure of watching you do whatever unique “linking” activity you need to do—giving yourself a mohawk with mayonnaise, or shoving a tennis ball in your mouth, or whatever.

Third, you could use something like a Svengali pad or Digital Force Bag to force the skill you’re going to immediately acquire to further up the impossibility.

Fourth, it’s easier to enjoy this type of demonstration because it eliminates the desperate show-off element that a lot “look what I an do” tricks possess, because you’re not really demonstrating a skill you have. (At least not the you of this universe.)

You can also turn this idea around and have your spectator do something unusual which allows them to briefly acquire some incredible skill as a prelude to any Spectator as Mentalist/Magician effect.

New Release Round Round-Up #6

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Time for more uneducated opinions on new releases based primarily on first impression of the ad copy.

Heartbeat by Juan Colas

There’s been a lot of chatter in my email box about this effect. And understandably so, as it’s definitely something that grabs your attention more than some tired coin or card trick. But there’s also a sense that the effect itself, while unique, is also kind of random. The title of that video is, “They FEEL Your HEARTBEAT Through a Pencil.” Well, that’s kind of like, “They FIND Your DAD’S GUITAR PICK In a BEEF Ravioli.” Or, “They SEE Their MENTALLY SELECTED FLIP-FLOP In a Glass of Room Temperature TURTLE Ejaculate.” These are all things that are impossible but also fairly arbitrary.

Hopefully, in the instructions, there is some attempt to make this moment seem meaningfully impossible as opposed to just randomly impossible.

I have a couple of different presentational ideas for this that I will test out when I receive it, and I will report back on how they go (if they go particularly well, you’ll read about it in a future issue of the Love Letters newsletter).

The problem with tricks that are unique and arbitrary is that they become profoundly googleable. There is a real danger of a trick like this getting fucked-out real quick. Which is unfortunate, but also it’s just the time we live in.

I should also mention that Ellusionist’s advertising and marketing, while still gimmicky in some ways, has become a lot less embarrassing for them in recent months. That’s unfortunate for me, because I’ve had a ton of fun goofing on their shit in the past. But if I’m going to dunk on their stupid shit, then it’s only fair to acknowledge their new approach too. So “well done” to Geraint Clarke or whomever is responsible for that turnaround.

Heroes Hat by Marcos Cruz

Okay, sure, the trick itself may suck. But the voiceover! It may sound like they used a free text-to-speech generator rather than pay someone $20 to do the narration, but I know for a fact that’s not the case. I’ve heard it on good authority that they spent $114,000 training an AI on the stilted, awkward, charsima-less delivery of your typical magician and this voiceover perfectly mimics that style.

Haze by Wonder Makers

I can’t speak about the quality of this product or the nature of the smoke it produces, but I think if you put an object in your spectator’s hands, and smoke starts coming out of it, then their reaction is likely going to be, “Oh, I guess this object produces smoke.”

It looks like you just need one card to disguise the gimmick and can therefore use any poker-sized deck. So if I had to use this in a way that the spectator wouldn’t immediately think that there’s something funny about the deck, I would use it when visiting someone’s house. Set up the gimmick to use some deck in their own house, ideally one with an unusual back design (assuming you can just tape a card to the gimmick in a non-destructive way). And then you might have a chance of getting away with this. However they still might just turn the deck over and be like, “Oh, so that’s what’s happening.” (Assuming they don’t just drop the deck outright when it starts smoking.)

By the way, if your intention is to email me and say, “If you’re worried about the audience looking at this gimmicked deck, you need better audience management.” You’re right. I don’t really do “audience management.” Instead, I manage the tricks I do so my audience is free to think and act in a normal human way.